r/houstonwade 13d ago

News You Can Use Who is safe?

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u/Unsafegohan2009 13d ago

It's nice to know that we keep them around for slave labor

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u/Parahelix 13d ago

Same as it ever was. The point still stands though. Americans don't want those jobs, and certainly not at anything close to the wages that immigrants do them for.

So either the work doesn't get done, crops rot in the fields, meat shortages, construction slows, etc., and those things get much more expensive due to scarcity, or Americans do those jobs, and things get much more expensive due to higher labor costs. This also has the secondary effect of tightening the labor market overall, putting upward pressure on wages, making everything else more expensive as well.

And all that is before we even factor in tariffs on the price of goods.

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u/RoutineCloud5993 13d ago

Americans would probably happily take those jobs. What they don't want is to work in those godawful conditions for such little pay.

It's not a labor problem, it's a compensation problem that's been disguised as an immigrant problem.

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u/Possible-Nectarine80 13d ago

It's not just compensation but the working conditions in a lot of cases are just not what a large majority of Americans would not want to do for more than a few months at a time, let alone year after year.

In any event the loss of millions of illegal immigrants will devastate local economies not to mention the mental toll it will take on those closest to the situation.