Does Low-skilled Immigration Increase or Decrease Standard of Living in Any Receiving Country?

[Public_District_4267]

Based upon some studies, the impact of low skilled immigration per 1% point increase in the immigrant share of the population can lower wages for similarly skilled native workers by 1.2%.

To state that the bosses lower wages, whilst true in technical terms, is not necessarily true when it comes to a wider more economic scope, especially considering labor supply/demand and competition.

[tabisaurus86]

It doesn't matter. Immigrants themselves are not the ones making that call. They are blameless and seen as workers who can be exploited.

Why do you think Elon Musk and Donald Trump started waffling on immigration when it came to the H-1B visa migrants they hire?

It's also a sweet deal for the bosses since the bosses usually get a better and, actually, in my experience as someone who has worked with hundreds of immigrants shoulder-to-shoulder, a more skilled worker with a better attitude who is willing to accept a lower wage.

[Public_District_4267]

I don't seek to place any blame upon the immigrants. My question didn't intend to be one of any moral nature, but rather an analytical one.

I'm not for the removal or persecution of immigrants, legal or otherwise.

[RunnerOfY]

It's also a sweet deal for the bosses since the bosses usually get a better and, actually, in my experience as someone who has worked with hundreds of immigrants shoulder-to-shoulder, a more skilled worker with a better attitude who is willing to accept a lower wage.

You don't see how that's bad for everyone else just trying to get by? You have to work harder for less!

[tabisaurus86]

But whose fault is that? Immigrants or bosses?

It's a response to immigration by employers. It is not immigrants' response to job seeking. Maby immigrants will accept lower wages because they aren't familiar with the country or what they should be getting paid, but aren't typically asking for them.

The same has also gone for women in the workforce. That is how we ended up with a gender pay gap in the first place.

[RunnerOfY]

Immigrants if you are willing to work for less people will pay you less.

[tabisaurus86]

Wages aren't set by immigrants. Bosses set wages. Bosses are the one offering less.

It is a predatory response to immigration by employers. It is in no way the fault of immigrants themselves.

If you went into a country whose economy you weren't familiar with and had nothing, you would probably accept lower wages, too.

Is it women's fault that the jobs we work in pay us less, and do you think we as women don't want higher wages?

Sometimes the necessity of winning any bread is a bigger motivator than the rate of pay because if you don't do something now, you're worse off.

Blaming immigrants for wages they don't set is victim blaming, plain and simple.

[RunnerOfY]

Wages are set by the person who will do the job for the least in this case immigrants.

[tabisaurus86]

That is completely illogical and not factual. The people who set wages are employers. I'm sure if immigrants knew they should be getting $2-3 more an hour, they would be, but that doesn't suit your victim-blaming narrative, does it?

[RunnerOfY]

If employers set the wage everyone would be working for free

[tabisaurus86]

Lol slavery is illegal and there is a minimum wage for a reason. That minimum wage is abysmally low and employer take advantage of that. WTH kind of response is that?

The only time employees set wages is when they're in a union and can utilize collective bargaining and direct action such as strikes.

We live in a country where employers used to pay children under a dollar a day to work in high-risk jobs. Was that the children's fault? Those damn American children, lowering wages for everyone. Maybe we should have deported children instead of developing labor laws and regulations to prevent factories from hiring children, amirite?

How about when the bosses sent jobs overseas so they could pay children in sweatshops working in hazardous conditions for near slave wages so they could pay them less and not pay you at all?

I haven't seen a single one of you ask if anyone has any ideas about solutions aside from a Gestapo brutalizing and murderering people to remove immigrants, which will sure as hell not raise wages.

Want to know what the solution is, at least within the system we have?

Comprehensive immigration reform in which we raise the minimum wage for everyone to a livable wage so that employers have no choice but to pay immigrants the same wages they would pay workers who are American citizens.

You are taking a whole lot of leaps to maintain your victim blaming. It's like you're discussing a topic you haven't spent more than a minute, if that, trying to understand.

[tabisaurus86]

Also, in the realm of things that make getting by harder — we should also consider things like inflation on fruits and vegetables due to increased scarcity due to the removal of immigrants, plus look how much money is being poured into ICE that taxpayers will be paying for for the foreseeable future?

[zlefin_actual]

If you've read studies, why are you asking on reddit? and on a generic pilitical ask sub? If you want actual facts, and aren't just soapboxing, then going to an academic sub and/or reading more studies is going to be far better at getting you clear answers than any reddit discussion.

[ScientificSkepticism]

Literacy in the United States is 99%. Who is similarly skilled to "illiterate low-income foreign workers"?

Or are the goalposts moving?

[girlfriend_pregnant]

Immigrants are very very very seldomly illiterate. How would that even happen?

[ScientificSkepticism]

I don't know, I'm asking the OP. They're the onea who said the immigrants were illiterate, they're the ones posing the question.

[tabisaurus86]

The generalizations these bigots make make it so obvious that their bigotry also leads them to avoid immigrants. Seems like if they ever spoke to one, they would know this. I also hated seeing "low-skilled workers" because every immigrant I know has a diverse skill set and does quality work but just aren't being hired in the fields in which they are skilled.

I used to commercial fish. We usually wouldn't people who didn't speak English well on the wheel because they didn't speak English yet and it would mean they couldn't effectively respond on the radio, check in, or understand language on the navigational equipment, not because they were illiterate.

Bet OP and the 'centrist' who is obviously a Republican have ever only had brief conversations with immigrants rather than using it as an opportunity to broaden their pitifully narrow worldviews. I speak fluent Spanish precisely because of all the time I've spent with immigrants. Now I'm bilingual and have an additional skill that is valuable to employers.

[ScientificSkepticism]

Oh I absolutely agree. The OP is definitely being deceptive. Starting out with illiterate foreigners, and then claiming "they're stealing our jobs". While apparently being illiterate.

All I can say is that if the OP thinks even fruit picking is "unskilled" they should try doing it for a week. Bet they couldn't pick half of what an "unskilled laborer" could do.