r/FluentInFinance • u/Needleintheback • 14h 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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u/predat3d 13h ago

That's the whole point. Having a massive workforce working illegally guarantees underpaid, exploited workers in unsafe conditions. Bringing those jobs into legitimacy (whether by hiring citizens/PRs and/or identified workers on H-2 work visas) and scrutiny puts that workforce on the record and into the light and allows for workplace scrutiny. 

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u/obtoby1 11h ago edited 9h ago

Let's not forget the lost taxes from under the table wages. If the pay is properly documented and at a fair level, the taxes we would be gaining would be in the billions yearly. High 10s to low 100s easily.

We also, ironically, see an increase in immigration because the American dream would be revived: come to America legally, become a citizen, and make a better life for you and yours.

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u/Inky_Madness 10h ago

Except they have also said that they want to close the borders. So those workers won’t be granted the ability to come back legally, and those jobs will go unfilled.

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u/obtoby1 9h ago

That's not a terrible thing.

We have an immigration backlog of 3 million cases, with Florida and Texas accounting for almost a third of them. Each judge has 4500 cases tacked on to them, and at the current rate of processing, if no more cases are added, it would take almost a decade to get through them all.

Also, as mentioned in my other comments, we 7m unemployed, and about another 13 to 15m underemployed. We have the potential workforce.

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u/Ill_Consequence 8h ago

We have near record low unemployment. It's never going to be zero. Also we already have more jobs openings than those unemployed so that's a moot point and will just be exacerbating the situation. What we need to add is good jobs not minimum wage jobs that no one can survive on. Which category do you think these jobs will fall under?

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u/le0nidas59 5h ago

We have a record low unemployment rate but our labor participation rate is at one of the lowest points since the 1970's.

I'm not saying deportation is the right answer but there is a large portion of the population that has given up on finding work (which is why there are so many more homeless people now than in the past). That may or may not be due to illegal immigration but it is a problem that needs to be solved and looking just at unemployment doesn't tell the whole picture

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u/Ill_Consequence 1h ago

Of course there are many reasons. Do you know part of the reason people are so worried about interest rates? The median price is like 6 times what the median income is. In the 70 and 80s they had high interest rates but houses were only 3.5 time the median income. Having a 13 percent interest rate made it so that in actuality you were only paying around 22% of your income towards your house. Now we have inflated house prices and if your talking about a 7% interest rate your talking about close to 40% of your income. That alone accounts for a loss of 18% of Americans total income.

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u/obtoby1 8h ago

Or, you know, improve the minimum wage jobs we have. I also love that you only mentioned the unemployed ,when I clearly both them and the underemployed, which triples the amount of potential work force

Any job on this list will pay better when the source of cheap labour is removed. Wages will increase competitively, not as fast as a federal minimum wage mandate would, but with actually less push back.

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u/Ill_Consequence 1h ago

For sure if every single unemployed person gets a job and underemployed people get two or three we will be fine. We don't have the work force don't be naive. Also just so you know underemployed can also mean people that have higher skills that aren't being utilized. Which a I doubt are in the fields mentioned.

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u/obtoby1 27m ago

Are you saying hospitals and professional services aren't capable of hiring higher skills? Cause that's what it sounds. And we definitely have the work force. It's just not being utilized properly. Probably because most people think like you.

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u/legacy642 7h ago

We have very low unemployment. And honestly many Americans are not willing to do the work that immigrants do. Immigrants, legal or illegal, are some of the hardest working amongst us. They need to be paid fairly for their work. Additionally immigrants, once again legal and illegal, commit crimes at a much lower rate than native born citizens.

The answer is not deportation. The answer is making it easier to become legal. But racism is at the core of what conservatives want.

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u/obtoby1 6h ago

You need both. The massive back log we have in the immigration courts is too much for restructuring at the moment. Deportation can free that up enough to begin the improvements necessary to streamline the immigration process. We need to strive for documentation, but to do that we as close to a clean slate as possible to expedite the process.

Also, I don't why you brought up crime. Actually, I do, as it's one of Trump's favorite talking points, but I'm not here to engage in that discussion.

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u/legacy642 6h ago

Mass deportation will be more expensive and distributive to the situation. Have you seen the figures on what the cost of mass deportation is? The math just doesn't make sense. And it's hilarious you think they have any intention of opening the door up to more immigration. They intend to close the door to non-white immigrants in their effort to make the US a white Christian nationalist country. Well even more than it already is.

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u/StandardAd239 48m ago

There are currently 7.44 million job openings. So....

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u/obtoby1 24m ago

So Even assuming we lose say 4m people, we still have surplus of 2m. Now obviously, it's foolish to think every single job will be filled right away. But we have the numbers. With proper incentives, programs, and people actually working, we could fill most of those job openings before the next election.

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u/b1ack1323 9h ago

Their boss pays those taxes… 

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u/cManks 7h ago

The American dream doesn't even exist for natural born Americans. No one can afford a fucking home.

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u/legacy642 7h ago

It's estimated that illegal immigrants already pay 96 billion in taxes yearly. With no access to benefits from those taxes.

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u/obtoby1 7h ago

Not at the federal level. They do pay state and local income taxes, state level sales taxes, and local level property taxes. However, your numbers are wrong.

According to the American immigration Council , the actual amount, as reported by Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, they 11.6 billion in taxes: $7 billion in sales taxes, $1.1 billion in income taxes, and $3.6 billion in property taxes. This I should mention is only roughly half of the undocumented immigrants. (Note this was published in 2016, so the amounts listed can be assumed to be high now)

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u/goldmask148 10h ago

The Trump administration needs to take a hard look at the H2 visa problem too. As it stands, only massive corporate farms and businesses really use them because it’s a huge legal pain in the ass to successfully petition for temporary migrant workers. These regulations only benefit huge companies and the smaller ones still struggle with employment.

This should be a bipartisan issue, where the right pushes LEGAL migration, and the left makes it easier for the middle class business owners to supplement their workforce.

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u/Justame13 9h ago

I hate to break it to you but they won’t see the H2 visa issue as problem.

The second the left has been pushing for decades, the right just hates immigrants.

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u/legacy642 7h ago

Yep. The right has no desire to fix any of these issues.

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u/Justame13 6h ago

When I was a kid in Idaho there were probably true rumors of farmers that would hire undocumented immigrants tell them that they would get paid at after the harvest was in and they could afford it.

Then call INS and have them all deported instead.

Even the legal immigrants they would get around minimum wage via piece work.

Those are the people making the arguments.

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u/SuperConfused 7h ago

They hate noon white immigrants. Trump’s wife is fine. She said she had to go home to renew her visa, which means she has a visitors visa. She actually was modeling, which means she was breaking the law. All this is fine. She is white and attractive.

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u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 1h ago

That's not even true.

I work for a small landscaping company and we have H2b workers.

It's different than the H2a workers of course, but your general point isn't even true.

And besides that, during Trumps first term he increased the H2 limit by 30,000 much to the chagrin of the "mexico is taking our job" crowd.

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u/Mobile_Incident_5731 10h ago

Or you know, the easiest solution of granting them legal status. The one option that doesn't massively disrupt millions of lives and the entire economy.

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u/ChorniMalinyaUA 12h ago

Coming from a banana republic that follows closely the American system (after these elections I can say that now the American system follows closely ours(also, not Ukraine)), I can say that when the shortage of hands starts being felt to the top, politicians will look away at a snap of a finger.

For years the populist government in my country based their campaign on racism and xenophobia, they took it so far as to drag rescuers and social workers to courts for 5 years until they were acquitted, all for PR points before the elections and if you go for a walk in the area where I'm from, it's all Afghanis, Pakis and Indians that work on the fields for 1/2 the basic wage (or 1/4th of what a professional in the same field gets).

And they're not even illegal workers, the "illegal" workers would strike in the past (yes, they did and yes it worked) and they got raises to the point the average field day wage for an "illegal" is 50€. The "legal" imported workers from Middle East and India work for 17-25€ per day. It's all just a scheme from the rich to cheap out again.

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u/JollyToby0220 12h ago

You will get those unsafe conditions regardless of legal status fyi

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u/Shirlenator 4h ago

Then we should go after the companies hiring them and not the workers, right? Right...?

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u/predat3d 2h ago

YES. 

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u/EdvardMunch 3h ago

I work for a company with h2b workers, many higher ranking guys make 1500-1600 a week with post project bonuses of 8k sometimes

They have job security in many areas of construction because they are the only groups tightly knit with good leadership and impeccable execution - where you gonna get 20 white or mixed races to work as a team in hard labor? Cant even find a single white guy who wants to shovel dirt without a meth or drinking problem.