President Donald Trump received backlash from supporters on Thursday after he proposed legislation that would allow migrant workers who entered the United States illegally to remain.
Trump announced he was “working on legislation right now,” which would allow illegal workers to stay, telling supporters at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, “You had cases where, not here, but just even over the years where people have worked for a farm, on a farm for 14, 15 years and they get thrown out pretty viciously and we can’t do it. We gotta work with the farmers, and people that have hotels and leisure properties too.”
I’ll say the same thing I said in the other thread.
There’s a reason why past Presidents have avoided this subject like it was the fucking plague.
An unspoken truth about our society that nobody likes to acknowledge or admit is that the exploitation of cheap labor (particularly in agriculture and construction) is literally the cornerstone of our society that everything else is built on. Before we were exploiting undocumented workers, we had literal slavery. There has never been a point in US history where agricultural workers were getting anything close to fair pay for the work they do, nor have citizens ever had to pay the prices they’d have to pay if workers were getting paid fairly.
You can’t claim to crack down on immigration, and then make huge carve-outs for farmers, hotel workers, etc., because that’s where the majority of them work. Trump is finding this out the hard way. He has to look tough on immigration to please his base, but even he acknowledges that it would devastate our entire agricultural system.
If you leave these industries alone, you are essentially and willfully turning a blind eye to the numerous legal and ethical violations these farmers commit on the daily, including sub-minimum pay, no benefits, hazardous working conditions, etc. You also appear to be weak on immigration to the general public, who see the policy as an open invitation for even more illegal migration.
If you were to try to force these industries to use legal labor under fair working conditions, the price of the goods and services they provide would be unacceptable to a general public who does not understand the true costs of labor and have never had to pay what the true cost of food would be if workers were paid fairly, and may not be able to pay it even if they were willing to accept it.
This is not a problem that is unique to Trump, though I’m sure he’ll find new and innovative ways to make the whole situation exponentially worse. This is a problem that has existed throughout US history, and there’s a reason why past Presidents have done little more to address the subject than pay some lip service that they never actually act on. Try to do so and you quickly figure out that the entire cornerstone of our society and economy literally relies on people turning a blind eye to this exact issue, and attempting to fix the problem – no matter what you think the ‘solution’ to the problem even is or what side of the issue you’re on – just risks causing ripple effects that bring the entire economy crashing down like a crack addict trying to play Jenga.
I want to point out that this is not unique to the U.S. - farming in Europe and the U.K. suffers from the same problem. I suspect that many other countries have the same issue too.
I wonder what the effect of raising wages for farm labourers would be? Surely, it would cause inflation. Does everyone get a pay rise, including the farm labourers, to compensate (inflationary spiral) or will we revert back to norm by excluding them?The truth is - we (yes that includes me!) need to get used to a much simpler lifestyle if we are going to fix this. That will be political suicide though… so here we are with the only compromise that is politically viable.
Check my post history. I gave a couple of examples in another thread on the same subject. In a nutshell, if undocumented immigrants were getting paid a living wage + benefits and that cost was passed onto the consumer, it would likely cause the price of food to double, if not more. The wage gap between undocumented workers and even low-paid union workers working above board is fucking enormous, and society at large does not have a grasp of how much impact that has on food prices, and for that matter, goods and services in general. We live in a society where we have become accustomed to high quality goods and services that we think are created by people making a fair wage, without realizing just how much of that work actually is being done by people making barely a fraction of what they deserve. You’d be amazed at how many people think that the fair cost of labor is already baked into the price.
In another example, I discussed the fact that this is common in construction as well. If just one or two undocumented workers were replaced with union construction workers at a competitive wage, it would probably add anywhere from $30-$50,000 in extra labor costs to the cost of a house. A house worth $150,000 today would probably start at $200k+ if it weren’t for undocumented labor.
You’d end up with a whole bunch of people making what we would think would be a “living wage” until you realize that the cost of everything has gone up and you’re right back to being barely able to afford the basics. You started off making $400 a week and having $500 worth of expenses. Then your pay was raised to $500 a week, but that caused the price of goods and services to rise so now you’ve got $700 worth of expenses. So you demand a raise and now make $700, but this causes the price of goods and services to go up to $1000. So you…well, you get the idea.
And then when people stop spending money on tourism and electronics and luxury goods because they can only afford the basics now, that’s when you start seeing job losses. And more people unable to afford things, which causes more job losses. And the ripple effects just keep going on, and on, and on, and on…
And the reason for this unending loop is because our entire economy is built on the idea of cheap, exploited labor. Take cheap, exploited labor out of the mix and the entire system becomes unsustainable and quickly collapses. Why do you think we so heavily rely on shit from China and third world countries that wipe their asses with safety standards and pay their workers less than what a homeless man would make begging on a street corner, if they pay them at all. Because if we tried to make that stuff here while paying our workers a competitive wage, 95% of that stuff would be completely unaffordable to all but the wealthy. There’s a reason why, like I said, every President before Trump has done exactly nothing to address the problem outside of paying it some political lip service when they’re campaigning. Because they know that if you fuck with it, the entire thing comes crashing down.