Starting out as a teen I worked in food service and then retail. While working retail I started to transition from front end to the back room warehouse processes. I used that experience to transition into warehouse work. Following that I worked in a call center for a few years. That covers my teens to around age 31. All of those jobs were in Washington state. I always lived and worked around a large amount of immigrants the entire time I lived in Washington, and they were constant competition in every industry and for every job I had while I was there.
Yeah, food service is one of the industries where you'll see more competition between immigrants and natives. That's always been the case, and there's no easy answers given how bad margins are in the food industry, even with immigrant labor.
And this is where I have a major issue. We have normalized the idea that there’s all sorts of work that we can’t pay people a legal wage to do.
I'll make my stance clear here. I benefit from illegal labor, like most Americans, but I'm willing to pay more for most staple products in exchange for higher wages. My general opinion is that if you've worked illegally in an industry like agriculture and kept your nose clean, you have as good a case for American citizenship and naturalization as any other immigrant. That's my preferred solution.
As for why wages are low in agriculture, it's also due to how concentrated it's become, with antitrust or less subsidies in exchange for improvements probably being an option.
Even shady job listings that don’t mention pay and benefits, when you look into it whatever the shit rate is it will be at least several dollars above the minimum wage. Absolutely nobody will show up for it here because you can’t live on it.
I think posting accurate wage ranges should be a requirement for employers. It's a small change that goes a long way toward equalizing the playing field when looking for a job.
Then you’re going to sell me on the idea that all these jobs are so unprofitable they can’t even pay the already criminally low bare minimum? That’s a problem, and it indicates one of two things is happening. Either these companies are fucking lying about being unable to pay a living wage, because they’re dicks. Or we have large systems in place that require slave labor to function or the entire economy will collapse. If that’s the case that’s a fucking dire situation that we should be looking to remedy, not throw our hands up and say well indentured servitude is bad unless, you know, it’s the most convenient option for us. Then it’s fine.
It's mostly that America has always relied on an underclass of wage workers. Slaves, Irish immigrants, Chinese immigrants, Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc. It's built into the country's structure.
I don’t know but I think you’ll see from my above statement that it’s not relevant to me personally. Just because we’ve been doing it this way for awhile, that doesn’t mean we mindlessly continue to go this route without even considering the impacts to the economy. Frankly I think it’s a very bad thing that we’ve become so dependent on foreign labor done for pennies on the dollar, that everyone just hand waves things like having an unsecured border and not knowing how many people are here illegally committing crime and siphoning tax dollars. Oh you see we have to have slave labor and we can’t make Americans do it, so we have to accept all these other negatives.
The fundamental issue is that Americans don't have enough babies to sustain their current trajectory, with immigration being what brings us up above replacement rate. So your options to maintain what we have are bring in more people to work and be citizens, reduce safety nets such as SS, or have the existing workforce pay in more (or some combination of those three).
There's no way around it, so what's your preference?
Do we? I think more Americans are starting to say maybe we don’t. Maybe just because this has been the status quo that doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for America, and maybe it’s time to look into making some changes so things are more sustainable in the future.
See above. You want one person entering the workforce for every one that leaves (realistically, more since people live longer).
I get all that, but it for sure doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want a bunch of strangers continually just dumped here to suck up government funds and be used against me to suppress my wages and benefits.
You're describing the country's entire history. Not to mention immigrants pay in far more than they take out of government coffers. Like.. can you name what welfare programs they have access to that accounts for your worries?
The working class has caught on that this sob story that we ever bring a single person over here to help them is bullshit.
I'd point out that your concept of working class makes no sense since you are arbitrarily excluding migrant labor. I don't know if you're also drawing it on racial lines, but the whole notion of "working class Americans" is frequently not actually what working class looks like.
