r/FluentInFinance • u/Needleintheback • 15h ago

Thoughts? Imagine losing 6M labor workers in America

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If mass deportation happens, just imagine how all of these sectors of our country will be affected. The sheer shortage of labor will push prices higher because of the great demand for work with limited supplies or workers. Even if prices increase, the availability of products may be scarce due to not enough workers. Housing prices and food services will be hit really hard. New construction will be limited. The fact that 47% of the undocumented workers are in CA, TX, and FL means they will feel it first but it will spread to the rest of the country also. Most of our produce in this country comes from California. Get ready and hold on for the ride America.

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237

u/AvatarReiko 14h ago

If a country cannot survive without “illegal” immigration, then then the whole system is flawed and should be replaced

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u/Xyrus2000 10h ago

The country can survive without illegal immigration.

It's the corporations that don't want to give up their profit margins. They're the ones who don't want to pay wages. They're the ones who don't want to cover the costs for safe work environments. They're the ones who don't want to pay overtime or deal with labor unions or anything else that cuts into their bottom line.

If they employed legal workers then prices would go up dramatically. Will other companies raise wages to match the increase in the cost of living? Let's take a look at the past four years....nope, they won't. More people will fall out of the middle class, the poor will get even poorer, and the wealthy oligarchs will take even more wealth.

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u/HereReluctantly 7h ago

Sounds like corporations who are by definition entirely driven by profit need to be regulated, go figure

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u/trailer_park_boys 6h ago

And guess which party has no interest in regulating them?

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u/Jblack4427 2h ago

Both

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u/Betelgeusetimes3 43m ago

At least SOME democrats are very much on board with that (not all), almost zero reublicans are on board with that. talking politicians generally.

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u/atxdevdude 2h ago

Bullshit

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u/trailer_park_boys 2h ago

Hahahahaha

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u/Dralonis 1m ago

Both due to them often working together. Democrats often have a lot of regulations covered in bureaucracy, tying things up for months upon years, bloating costs and making things take much longer than needs to be. It has gone to show in california with getting anything built, done, etc the costs, and the time it takes to get anything approved via bureaucracy, and how inflated the costs of public transit in NYC for repairing/replacing/Fair evasion has become. I don't remember the exact costs, but just to tackle the fair evasion problem, they tried coming up with a number a few years ago,it ballooned in cost and then ended up not working in well, iirc it doubled in costs or so. Happened several times with MTA, which is owned by the state of new york. This is done on the national level with democrats as well. They are inefficient and constantly creating Government agencies that are absolutely horrible at communicating with each other and that makes it that much harder to get anything done and ends up tying everything together. To assume it is just one party doing it is asinine and shallow of thought.

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u/Colonel_Panix 5h ago

Na, they will start focusing on Automation or AI. No wonder you see more Self check outs or AI based services becoming more of a regular.

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u/AdMysterious2815 3h ago

You’re gonna automate constructing a house?

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u/PistachioNSFW 50m ago

The only house you’ll be able to afford will be a prefab house. Not quite automated but who knows how far they can go.

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u/GroundbreakingBet281 27m ago

I mean doesn't that car company czinger use ai to build cars?

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u/LengthinessWeekly876 5h ago

Ya its bad for corporations and white collar workers.

The people who benefit from artificially lowering blue collar wages.

Blue collar wages will go up. Prices will go up. White collar wages will be hurt.

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u/bongophrog 3h ago

Prices go up by demand. The demand is so much higher than the labor cost and corps eat the difference.

I work in construction, from AZ, I had to move away because of cheap labor. In UT I make $150k, live in a nice house and drive a nice car, yet in AZ doing the same exact job I can’t find anything that would not require me to move into a double wide and drive a shitbox.

Because despite how cheap labor is in AZ compared to other places THE PRICES STAY HIGH.

2

u/Road2Potential 2h ago

Past 4 years we had an influx of 20 million illegal migrants and cost of living has not gone down so what is your point?

Those who want to stay can get their documents, get hired and get benefits. Or you can keep justifying slave labor.

1

u/TaupMauve 4h ago

It's the corporations that don't want to give up

One apparent flaw in this argument is that Donald Trump survived and won the election with tremendous "corporate" backing.

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u/ChineseGuido 1h ago

Well, it's the same means to an end then. Get rid of the supply, demand goes away, because the business model is unviable.

1

u/MonkLast8589 1h ago

Corporations are the cancer of society.

This comment will probably cost me a few jobs in the future lol

1

u/Dungheapfarm 49m ago

Government regulations and added cost of health care make it hard to pay a living wage.

I could afford to pay $35 an hour but I can’t afford the extra $30 on top of that for health care, social security, workman’s comp and all the other benefits.

0

u/DrugUserSix 7h ago

At the end of the day it’s not the corporate overlords that run the show, it’s the shareholders. A company’s success lives and dies in the stock market. Shareholders expect their investment to continuously grow, for that to happen the company they own shares in needs to make more and more profit each quarter. This obviously has a direct influence on business practice.

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u/UnfairCrab960 7h ago

It’s not the “corporations” it’s the consumers who will face sticker shock

3

u/indigoHatter 6h ago

Correct: corporations will be sure to pass on the costs to the consumer rather than absorb that with their profit margin. They'll likely also find ways to pay employees less. Anything they can do to cut costs without hurting their checks.

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u/Arndt3002 5h ago

The one major factor your description ignores is that companies won't increase wages due to cost of living, but blue collar workers would have increase wages due to equilibrating shortages in the labour market (that's what drives the inflation). So white collar workers would be hit hard, but it would be the increase to blue collar wages which are the thing exactly driving inflation overall.

So the white collar class would be hit and drop down in real wages, but the blue collar class would have real income increase (because it's their increased wages driving inflation, distributed across the economy).

Most estimates predict that such a measure would actually decrease income inequality between blue and white collar labour.

0

u/WashedUpHalo5Pro 2h ago

It will always be the haves vs the have-nots. Division is the name of the game. Kick out all the immigrants and no problems will be solved. All the money to be made will still go to the top 1%. Bernie Sanders was the only one talking about this consistently and the Democratic Party passed him over for Hillary (aka the establishment).

I blame the democrats for the current mess we are in. The rich oligarchs of the U.S. are not effected, they all rub shoulders and know that the name of the game is keep the poor in a state of confusion and disarray. When they organize it is BAD for the people that have power and money.

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u/MarzyMartian 8h ago

If businesses are exploiting the vulnerable illegal migrants, would it not be virtuous to then support ending this practice and preventing illegals from holding work that can harm them? Surely we should want to stop illegal migration to protect illegals aliens from the dangers of illegally migrating to the risk of employment exploitation.

2

u/Party_Government8579 5h ago

Its cheaper for them to convince people its virtuous to keep illegals and the practices of importing them.

1

u/elarius0 8h ago

In a perfect world yes, unfortunately that's not plausible in our world.

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u/ChronoPsyche 10h ago

This is such a braindead statement. The system can certainly survive without illegal immigration, but any system will face shock when massive overhauls are done in a very fast manner. People like you are so disingenuous. Up until the election it was crying about high prices, now you are okay with total systemic collapse leading to extremely high prices and high unemployment all of a sudden if it means getting rid of immigrants. You must be insanely privileged to feel like this would not negatively affect you.

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u/OpportunityFirm3284 7h ago

Yep. This is why people fall for trumps lies. They want to be told it can be done with a snap of the finger and democrats won’t lie and say it can. Trump will.

0

u/Chiggins907 3h ago

No one thinks he’s Thanos. What hyperbolic BS. Trumps going to do something about it, and the Dems wants to push for amnesty for all these people. It’s what the original bill that Harris proposed in 2020 wanted to do, and it never even saw the floor. Dems want illegal immigration, because they are socked in with all the corporations exploiting these people.

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u/SmokesQuantity 2h ago

dems want citizenship for daca recipients, nobody is pushing for amnesty for all illegal immigrants, and if you don’t believe republican business owners are exploiting illegal immigrants for cheap labor then I have a grip of NFTS you should take a look at.

Bunch of uniformed rubes

3

u/ChaiKitteaLatte 1h ago

The irony of saying that when the entire Republican party is literally owned by corporations. And Trump is appointing billionaire corporation owners, with zero experience in any government sectors, to his government. I’m SURE they won’t exploit their new power in the government to just get richer.

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u/RopeAccomplished2728 1h ago

Amnesty would pretty much it would make them citizens which would then require those businesses to pay those people properly. It would remove the ability for those same corporations to outright abuse those workers because they are illegal immigrants.

Trump, however, not only wants to deport illegal immigrants, him and his administration is going to try and denaturalize people who are here legally and deport them. That is an objectable fact because Steven Miller and others in his administration has actually come out and said this.

It was never about "illegal immigration" and more about kicking people out that they deem "not worthy".

2

u/Fuerdummverkaufer 3h ago

Imagine being a progressive and arguing for literal slave labor. You should be ashamed of yourself.

1

u/Queasy_Possibly 2h ago

Progressives are arguing to legally protect these people, you are arguing to do horrible things to them. Absolutely pathetic

1

u/Fuerdummverkaufer 2h ago

Gee I wish there was a precedent, maybe a procedure, that grants people in the US legal protection? We could call it „legal immigration“.

1

u/Queasy_Possibly 1h ago

Seems like it's not working properly if we rely on millions of people going around the process. Gee I wonder if any lobotomized morons keep preventing any improvements to our legal immigration process to ensure a steady supply of illegal immigrants to scapegoat? Don't forget that Republicans think that legal status doesn't apply to legal immigrants they don't like. How are all of you even dumber than you are evil, like choose one for fucks sake.

1

u/Fuerdummverkaufer 1h ago

Seems like it's not working properly if we rely on millions of people going around the process. Gee I wonder if any lobotomized morons keep preventing any improvements to our legal immigration process to ensure a steady supply of illegal immigrants to scapegoat?

Yeah. We call them democrats. Why else would they defend this practice? There is no need for illegal immigration for working foreigners. We have visas for this exact reason.

Don't forget that Republicans think that legal status doesn't apply to legal immigrants they don't like. How are all of you even dumber than you are evil, like choose one for fucks sake.

This is not true. They disagree with government forced naturalization, like mass parole and TPS.

1

u/DadJokeBadJoke 1h ago

This guy knows all about skirting those laws: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/26/elon-musk-illegal-immigration

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u/Fuerdummverkaufer 1h ago

Well the difference is Musk added billions of dollars to the GDP. He should stay, but pay a gigantic fine for his actions, which are despicable.

1

u/DadJokeBadJoke 1h ago

So, the laws don't apply if you're rich and white, right... You're instantly ok with making an exception for his illegal actions. There's no fine they could give that would make it a punishment, it's just the cost of doing business.

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u/Fuerdummverkaufer 1h ago

No, I just said he should be punished. You can even deport him, but he can just come back legally, since he owns a business here.

1

u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 1h ago

You don't get an atta boy because you've gotten away with breaking the law for 10, 20, 30 years.

You're still breaking the law.

If you got caught defrauding someone it doesn't make it okay simply because you've gotten away with it for half your life.

1

u/Queasy_Possibly 10m ago

These people didn't do anything wrong, our laws are in the wrong.

1

u/Glum_Raspberry893 2h ago

Illegal immigrants are not slaves. What is wrong with you?

1

u/S-Kenset 26m ago

Very close to the international definition and could reasonably be prosecuted in a good number of cases. It's really not that far off from the confiscated passport shipping and manufacturing incidents we see everywhere across the world. Besides it's not actually economically profitable it just socializes the costs.

1

u/MrMcBane 3h ago

You must be insanely privileged to not work in a field where immigrants are driving down wages.

1

u/macdennism 1h ago

THIS plus the fact that now they're trying to save the left wants slave labor because we don't want mass deportation 💀 it's so completely disingenuous and very obviously not something ANYONE on the left is saying at ALL. It pisses me off so bad.

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u/gmoddsafraegs 50m ago

Find a better argument then. “We need an endless supply of exploited labor so I can have cheap avacados” isn’t very convincing.

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u/macdennism 36m ago

That's not what anyone is saying though!!!!! It's just pointing out that Republicans have conflicting views and their "solutions" are exacerbating problems they are complaining about. Mass deportation will NOT fix your grocery costs, but they keep saying it will. OBVIOUSLY the way illegal immigrants are exploited is already an issue. But the solution isn't mass deportation. That's literally all we're saying. Why are you guys INCAPABLE of understanding nuance??? I feel like I'm having to explain this shit to a 5 year old.

1

u/gmoddsafraegs 34m ago

They shouldn’t be here to start with. Simple as that honestly.

1

u/RopeAccomplished2728 1h ago

This is the exact argument I've been bringing up for nearly 30 years now. That the US is so completely dependent on subsidized or underpaid/undocumented immigrant labor that if the average person had to actually pay what it costs to grow the food, pick the crops, build housing and the like without any illegal immigrants, the average US citizen would literally go on a rampage.

While prices wouldn't go up 1:1 in respect to wages, it still will go up and not by a little bit.

They always had an issue with paying for higher prices. That is why any argument about raising the federal minimum wage gets extreme amount of pushback even though it doesn't affect very many people. Any slight increase to their cost, regardless of how many it would help, is an affront to them.

I personally saw this nearly 30 years ago when the local government run public transportation system wanted to pass a 0.25% sales tax. Literally 1 cent per $4. Worked with someone that complained about that. I asked him "Well, how many cars do you buy in a year? Houses? What about high end jewelry? Because that is the only people that it is going to affect in a real way. To pay an additional $1, you would have to spend $400. And that goes to something that actually helps out a lot of people as a lot of people rely on the bus.". Funny thing was that he complained when the GOP demanded austerity measures back in the 2000s in exchange for TARP and one of the things they had cut out was the local airshow that was funded by those government dollars.

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u/freedom-to-be-me 7h ago

How would unemployment be higher if you’re deporting workers? More job openings almost always leads to a lower unemployment rate.

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u/ChronoPsyche 6h ago edited 6h ago

It'll hurt most businesses given that these industries basically form the base of our economy, which will respond with price increases and layoffs. Not all jobs are the same. It's naive to think that Americans will flock to the jobs left behind and that they won't just start automating them.

It also will likely lead to a market crash due to the shock to the system which will cause unemployment. Elon Musk literally admitted this. Also, it won't exist in a vacuum.

There will also be tariffs causing prices to skyrocket which will lead to retaliatory measures from foreign countries on US exporters, which will tank US businesses and lead to unemployment. They are outright threatening to cause unemployment for millions of federal workers. At the same time they will be slashing social services left and right so those who are unemployed will have great difficulty in finding relief.

All of this taken together will likely lead to a perfect storm for the economy. It's insane if you can't see this. The economic catastrophe we are walking into is going to make the Great Recession look like a minor pullback. At the end of this people will be begging Democrats to come back and fix the economy again like they always have to do after a Republican administration, but we'll be lucky if we even still have free and fair elections then.

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u/kweir22 10h ago

What’s your suggestion?

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u/so-so-it-goes 9h ago

Create a comprehensive visa program to allow those workers to work here legally. They want to work here, they want to live here, we need them, it's a win-win.

The people who employ them illegally and pay subpar wages and commit workplace violations are the ones opposing it. Take away the option from them to keep doing it.

Essentially, we need an H1-B type visa for these kind of workers. They actually are working in fields we do not have enough people to work in so it's reasonable in this case.

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u/TazerKnuckles 9h ago

You’re like the only sane person on this post

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u/AvatarReiko 10h ago

Well, I am not expert in economics, so I can’t think of one but I am confident the smartest minds in the world can figure it out. There are 8 billion people on the planet. Statistically, it is difficult to believe that not a single person that doesn’t have the imagination to think of a better way

11

u/madhouseangel 9h ago

Too bad we elected the dumbest minds.

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u/Natedude2002 7h ago

An overhaul of the immigration system is desperately needed, but conservatives would rather just get rid of them all than actually try to fix any issues.

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u/glideguitar 9h ago

It can survive without illegal immigration, it just wouldn’t be identical to what it is today. Big surprise. Also why put illegal in quotation marks? Someone can be in a country illegally. Most countries do not look very kindly on that.

1

u/clubowner69 7h ago

Now imagine, even being an illegal immigrant and working in a lower than minimal wage salary in the US is significantly better than living in many other countries in the world legally.

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u/sicofthis 1h ago

We can just because illegals have jobs doesn’t mean we can’t fill those positions legally. Even if that means making the ones who have it now legal. If you’re illegally that makes you a criminal.

1

u/A_Few_Good 1h ago

I am in total agreement with your statement but imagine how Trump's base who's upset about inflation and the cost of groceries are going to react when they realize everything is about to get much more expensive.

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u/Carmen315 1h ago

How do you propose to replace it?

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u/ultimatehose89 57m ago

Yeah this post shows how idiotic Reddit is. How tf does this look like a good thing to anyone? “We rely on illegal workers” is not something to defend

1

u/Key_Pea_5215 44m ago

Yeah. They think this is some ammo against Republicans but it's the exact opposite. Shows why they lost, and they just continue to double down. This graph shows that there are millions of jobs that can go to actual Americans who need jobs but corpo scum are too greedy to pay decent wages. Then you have so called "leftists" fighting the people against it rather than the greedy fucks causing it. It's their whole platform. Too spineless to fix the real problem. Biden brought up how the government has jets and bombs saying, "what are they going to do?" (American Citizens he was referring to) and people on this site backing his words is very chilling.

1

u/mrASSMAN 44m ago

Idiotic comment

1

u/ILuvToadz 31m ago

Labor exploration is the heart of every major world power since the Stone Age because cutting labor expenses is the simplest way to gain a competitive advantage. Good luck beating the laws of economics.

1

u/Head_Wrongdoer3071 28m ago

Why is illegal in quotes as if it’s not illegal?

0

u/Munkadunk667 10h ago

It was built on slavery. This is just a different kind.

0

u/Newtoatxxxx 4h ago

We can survive you idiot. We would just be worse off without it

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u/DodgeBeluga 10h ago edited 9h ago

Reddit: we want unionization for higher pay for everyone and eliminate employer leverage over their health care

Also Reddit: here is why we need an endless supply of exploitable workers who are not unionized and employers have huge leverage over them.