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How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

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Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#151

Post by Two4 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #17

> Immigration has lifted U.S. population growth to almost 1.2% a year, the highest since the early 1990s. Without it, the U.S. population would be growing 0.2% a year Population growth is always announced as a great thing but is this really the case ? For instance, house price are increasing because more and more people wants it, it also prevent salary from increasing because there are always people without job looki…

Your argument is in the wrong direction: enforcing a liveable federal minimum wage ensures that there's a reasonable bottom to how low you can bid on labour. The housing crisis, on the other hand, is a net supply restriction effect caused by real estate speculation and investment, rather than it being a commodity (it never will be a commodity, but I'd wager there's a real estate bubble pop coming soon)

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#152

Post by the_real_cher »

surgical_fire wrote: post #140
the_real_cher wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and those countries that were colonized by Western Civilization countries are very lucky. they are typically the top performing GDP countries of their region with some of the best quality of life for their citizens

Oh yes. Get the list of countries colonized by the awesome Western Civilization. You will be surprised to learn the world is a lot larger than US and Canada.

Just look at African or South American countries by GDP and see which ones are at the top of the list

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#153

Post by surgical_fire »

the_real_cher wrote: post #152
surgical_fire wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. Get the list of countries colonized by the awesome Western Civilization. You will be surprised to learn the world is a lot larger than US and Canada.

Just look at African or South American countries by GDP and see which ones are at the top of the list

You are aware that all South and Central American countries were colonized by Western Powers right?

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#154

Post by alephnerd »

deepfriedchokes wrote: post #150
prewett wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Americans aren't willing to work a lot of lower wage jobs. I think that Mexicans harvest most of the crops in California. A friend of mine in California needed roof repairs and he says that all the American workers were pretty lackadaisical, while the Mexicans worked pretty hard. I believe a lot of hotel staff are immigrants as well, and after the pandemic smaller hotels were simply unable to…

The jobs wouldn’t be lower wage in the first place if businesses didn’t have immigrants to exploit.

Wages are not significantly lower.

For example, Trump's H1B prevailing wages rules are still in place so at most the salary difference is 15-20% (which is basically nil as a hiring manager)

In "lower skilled labor" like manual Construction the average wages tend to be middle of the pack for those states [0]

For white collar jobs, the biggest driver for the slowing hiring market is the fact that companies have shown that they can operate in a global async manner, which means shareholders and board members like my Peers are increasingly pushing for hiring abroad as a way to speed delivery.

[0] - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472061.htm

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#155

Post by alephnerd »

the_real_cher wrote: post #25
cherryteastain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recent immigrants tend to earn less than U.S.-born workers...because they are working without permission This is the real problem. The Indian PhD grad on a H1B won't create the kinds of problems in the article. Media loves to put H1B/L1/EB1/EB2 holders with random people walking in via Mexico and doing odd jobs for cash in hand in the same category when their economic impact could not be more different.

Their economic impact is to deprive opportunities from Americans just like the people walking in from Mexico. There is a strong equivalency there. More people graduated in computer science in the United States in the last few years than ever before and they can't find jobs. Doesn't it beg the question...if they're so good for the economy in America why aren't they good for the economy in their own country?

Before the pandemic, tech companies were not as async.

The pandemic proved that operations can continue in a semi-async manner.

Now in the post-2023 market, companies have begun to make that shift to global hiring now that async is normalized.

Outside North America, the salary for the top 15-20% of SWEs is roughly comparable to each other in every country so it makes it easier to scale out teams and speed up product and feature delivery, especially now that American trained engineers on visas were the first to be let go during the 2023-24 layoffs, and for the past decade, CS majors from the top universities in China (Project 985 programs) and India (INIs) have largely stopped moving abroad except for graduate programs.

I warned this would happened in the start of the pandemic, and have kept saying it since.

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#156

Post by indoordin0saur »

carom wrote: post #10
pavlov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "you also have to wonder where the salaries would be at in tech, and how many more citizens would be training for these roles if it weren't for H-1B visa" On the flip side, you have to wonder where the American tech industry would be without immigrants. Nvidia was founded by the son of Taiwanese parents who sent their children to live with an uncle in the US. That's one of the many immigration paths that the MAGAs…

I don't disagree, getting smart and ambitious people to move to your country is a really good policy overall. It is just worth weighing it against the opportunity cost for the citizens of the country.

One thing I seldom see discussed is how if you're attracting the best and brightest it is leaving the original country poor. These places invest in their children hoping that they'll start businesses and then all that investment just ends up going to those countries that are already the richest.

I certainly don't blame anyone for wanting to move to improve their situation (I did it too!) but I wonder if developing countries would have caught up to the West decades ago if this brain drain wasn't going on.

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#157

Post by eddd-ddde »

Two4 wrote: post #151
aucisson_masque wrote: post #17

> Immigration has lifted U.S. population growth to almost 1.2% a year, the highest since the early 1990s. Without it, the U.S. population would be growing 0.2% a year Population growth is always announced as a great thing but is this really the case ? For instance, house price are increasing because more and more people wants it, it also prevent salary from increasing because there are always people without job looki…

Your argument is in the wrong direction: enforcing a liveable federal minimum wage ensures that there's a reasonable bottom to how low you can bid on labour. The housing crisis, on the other hand, is a net supply restriction effect caused by real estate speculation and investment, rather than it being a commodity (it never will be a commodity, but I'd wager there's a real estate bubble pop coming soon)

At the end of the day the Earth's resources are very much finite. We simply can't have indefinite growth, so it doesn't make sense to use it as a metric.

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#158

Post by carom »

prewett wrote: post #148
carom wrote: post #5

>Recent immigrants tend to earn less than U.S.-born workers because of their lower level of education, lack of English, and in some cases because they are working without permission. They might also compete with existing workers with less education and put downward pressure on their wages, too. This is my biggest problem with immigration. It is a handout to corporations. If we think about the poorest Americans, this…

My understanding is that Americans aren't willing to work a lot of lower wage jobs. I think that Mexicans harvest most of the crops in California. A friend of mine in California needed roof repairs and he says that all the American workers were pretty lackadaisical, while the Mexicans worked pretty hard. I believe a lot of hotel staff are immigrants as well, and after the pandemic smaller hotels were simply unable to…

>Americans aren't willing to work a lot of lower wage jobs.

Then the wages are not high enough in those jobs. They should either pay more or get automated. Bringing in desperate people who are willing to live and under worse conditions is not an ethically sound solution.

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#159

Post by carom »

jyounker wrote: post #50
carom wrote: post #5

>Recent immigrants tend to earn less than U.S.-born workers because of their lower level of education, lack of English, and in some cases because they are working without permission. They might also compete with existing workers with less education and put downward pressure on their wages, too. This is my biggest problem with immigration. It is a handout to corporations. If we think about the poorest Americans, this…

There is an easy solution: Don't require residency for employment. Everyone is entitled to full protections of labor law, document immigrant or not. This eliminates much of the incentive to abuse non-documented labor. Then make it even stronger. If a non-resident employee brings suit against an employer for violating labor laws in a significant way, and they win, then they are entitled to citizenship as repayment for…

So now workers have unlimited competition. That sounds like it will put a lot of power in the hands of corporations in terms of being able to replace workers.

Re: How immigration remade the U.S. labor force

#160

Post by pacerier »

the_real_cher wrote: post #119
pacerier wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> didn't used to be That's false. By definition none would have come if there wasn't opportunity. You don't need to be a geography student to see that it wasn't just irreligious opportunity.

do you think opportunity just magically springs up in places or do you think people make it?

As stated, the geography of north America provides the opportunity, before there were Americans.

Gold rush and stuff is just a bonus, the big money is in cattle and agriculture.

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