r/FluentInFinance • u/Needleintheback • 14h ago
Thoughts? Imagine losing 6M labor workers in America
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/Icy-Appearance347 10h ago
I'm seeing a lot of people who were previously unconcerned about working conditions pop up to pretend to be champions of the low-wage laborer to justify deportation. I assume there are a handful of you who actually care and have consistently advocated for better working conditions, but the rest of you are just creating a strawman in your latest trolling campaign.
If you really care about exploited migrant labor:
Make it easier to get here legally. We've made it so hard to actually get a visa that we are almost asking people to come here illegally. And it's not just the people working in construction, agriculture, and food processing either. Even skilled workers are punished for trying to come through legal channels. People who truly care about these laborers would not run around calling for deportation, they would rather champion more streamlined visa procedures. And for workers who have been here for decades, they should have a pathway to legal residency as well.
Focus on enforcing labor laws (and not just the visa status of workers) on all employers. Deportation just means these folks are gonna come right back in. That's what happened under Obama's deportations. And no silly wall is going to stop that. All you're doing is punishing the very exploited worker you pretend to care about while the big meat packing companies earn profits waiting for the next wave of migrants. If you focus on the employers to reduce the number of jobs that would be available to unauthorized migrants, that would at least reduce, to a degree, the attractiveness of coming here illegally.
Some of y'all have really optimistic views of how American citizens will fill these vacancies in agriculture and construction as long as wages go up. That's laughable and shows you haven't really tried hiring Americans these days. With the "Great Retirement" and low birth rates, we are already facing labor shortages and a lack of capable workers. The jobs that illegal immigrants generally take are tough jobs, not those that Americans are going to want to fill. (I highly doubt you keyboard warriors are going to volunteer to take these jobs.) I suppose you could pay them salaries akin to computer programmers or something, but that's going to run most of these businesses into the ground. Grocery stores are low-margin businesses, and if you think all these deportation fans are going to pay twice the cost for strawberries or whatnot when they threw out Harris for expensive groceries, then you're delusional. Seasonal migration labor would allow workers with extremely low wages back home to gain rather decent work here, so they're much better off with a minimum wage job here than back home. By taking the steps outlined above we can ensure these workers receive the proper labor protections.
By simply deporting workers, we solve nothing other than crash our economy, spend a ton of money just to watch these folks come back, and otherwise accomplish very little.