A survey of rural and urban Americans

Parent Cafe
61

I agree that they need a new PR strategy to deal with immigration because I also agree that many republicans are in fact pro-legal-immigration.

I can see how the idea of building an “impenetrable” wall might send the idea to Mexican immigrants that they are not welcome here, but the other side of the argument might be that we are simply trying to deter illegal immigration across the border. Either way, I think the idea of a wall is pure stupidity, as the wall itself is bound to fail once the border crosses figure out a way to exploit it… at which point we’re left with a multi-billion dollar wind fence (?)

62

“At the salaries they choose to pay.”

Nope. If you read the articles I posted they have even raised salaries and are giving benefits and they still can’t find “American” workers to take the jobs.

63

Re building a wall, it does seem like a waste of money and likely to achieve little. Supposedly illegal border crossings are down significantly merely due to the increased enforcement efforts. Additionally, any wall can be climbed so it seems technology would be a better means to patrol the borders than a wall.

64

@emilybee Then the salaries should go higher. There is certainly a price point which someone will take the job. This might result in astronomically high prices and then businesses would push for allowing in labor. Businesses are not able to do this because competitors employ illegals and pay them less than otherwise required. Everify would help stop that but is not perfect. Crack down on anyone employing illegals and it would stop pretty quickly.

65

As @zoosermom has implied, we don’t really have a huge problem with illegal Mexican immigration at the Mexican border. Net annual immigration of Mexican citizens has been negative for the past decade. It’s not a wall, or technology, or border guards that has done the trick; it’s more jobs and better economics in Mexico. But we clearly continue to have a problem with illegal immigration by Central Americans at the Mexican border. I honestly wonder what would happen if, instead of building a nearly useless wall, we took half the money and used it to improve economic conditions and public safety in Guatemala and El Salvador.

66

I live in Texas and trust me, in 40 years I haven’t seen a white crew in residential outdoor construction. But there are plenty of whites in large commercial and public works. Which tells me it is about the money, probably more to do with salary vs. daily rate and guaranteed work terms than the actual rate of pay.

67

I think that there’s a lot of truth to the idea that low-skilled immigrants are doing jobs that Americans won’t do. Remember HB 56 in Alabama? Americans didn’t take the jobs that were suddenly open when immigrants fled the state. Food was just left to rot because in the fields there was no one to pick it.

Also, I think there’s been a cultural change in this country… The history of America has been people asking “where are the opportunities, and how do I get there?” Now, though, it seems like people are asking “Where are the opportunities, and why won’t people give them to me?”

I saw an interview (will try to find) with the owner of a hardware store in upstate NY who said he had a "Help Wanted’ sign in his window for over a year. He only had a few rules - no criminal record, no drugs, legal to work. He would only occasionally find someone who met those criteria, and even they didn’t work out; each of them would start showing up to work late, eventually not coming in at all.

Or to use the example of restaurants, which depend on illegal immigration. Anthony Bourdain said once that cost isn’t the issue. To quote him, “in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as prep cook.”

It seems like Americans aren’t willing to work for things anymore; we want to be on top of the world, but we want that to be given to us. Before we start blaming other people for our problems we should take a long hard look in the mirror.

68

@JHS – No, they’re not fake questions. Is there a limit to the number of people you want in this country? I assume you have some sort of limit. Is it 500 million? One billion? Two billion? Ten billion?

Also, what are the ethics of taking in high-skilled workers from other countries? It seems to me that everyone would be better off in the long run if we didn’t “brain drain” the rest of the world.

69

There’s really no need for a hard limit. The limit is controlled automatically by the free market system… if immigrants can’t find a job because the market is saturated, then there is little incentive to come here, right?

On the other hand, if the incentive is to come here for free education/healthcare, then we should address those issues as needed to prevent abuse of American social services.

70

It’s hard to immigrate. Not so much if you are part of a global elite selling yourself to the highest bidder, and you are moving from Paris or Toronto to New York, or vice versa. But really hard if you are leaving your entire social network in Syria or Guatemala to go someplace where you don’t know the language or the culture, and you don’t have a lot of skills. People don’t do that in the hundreds of millions. They do it in the low-single-digit millions only when there has been a near total breakdown of civil society where they live.

71

There was an irony to one post,that talked about a meat packing plant that busted the unions and within 10 years or whatever 70% of the help was Hispanic and the job payed very low wages. This is a perfect example of attitudes in rural areas, they have wholeheartedly supported the anti union party line, that unions destroyed companies, that unions weren’t needed any more, yet when they get their wish, they suddenly are whining that the jobs pay lousy, have no benefits, etc…the same people who denied that unions were responsible often for those benefits and such. Yet they continue to support politicians who are decidedly anti union, anti government regulation (that would, for example, take care of things like workplace safety), or they support politicians who are anti tax and as a result, they can’t pay for decent schools and roads and such, but instead of holding their local reps responsible, they continue to support them…put it this way, congress has an approval rating half of the presidents, yet when asked 90% of people give their local rep good grades…figure that one out.

As far as @roethlisburger’s contention that most of the illegal drugs are coming in from Mexico, what does that have to do with immigration, legal or otherwise, that is illegal drug trafficking which is a separate issue. Are you arguing that since illegal drugs are coming in from Mexico, that it must necessarily be illegal immigrants are using them? Or are you arguing that the drugs coming in from Mexico were forced on people living in the towns and areas we are talking about? The problem with that is drug use is demand driven, the dealers come in to fill a need, and blaming the source of supply leaves out the demand side of the equation, that drug dealers are going where there is demand, pure and simple, whether it is rural america or the inner city or suburban USA, it doesn’t matter. This was the mentality by the ‘war on drugs’, that if you cut off the supply, you get rid of drug use and it basically has failed…but that is divested from this thread, when you look at drug use in rural America it is the sons and daughters of those towns, not illegal immigrants, who are driving the demand, and the reality is if we got every Mexican illegal immigrant out of the country, the dealers would simply change what language they speak. And I’ll tell you something right now, a border war or going after illegal immigrants and deporting them won’t stop the drug trade, Mexico is the prime pathway these days for opiods and things like Cocaine, meth is mostly being made in this country, whether it is meth labs or mega labs doesn’t matter.

And now we come to the crux of the matter, how much immigration do we need and what kind do we need, and it is the crux of the problem. Someone said that our immigration laws as currently stands are a system, but a broken system can be as bad as one that doesn’t exist. For example, in the high tech world we have a visa program that as currently designed is in many cases a cats paw to send well paying, high tech jobs overseas and to suppress wages here. H1B was designed for highly skilled workers, this was supposed to be computer scientists and high level network engineers and the like, not what it is often used for, hiring the equivalent of IT trade schools to do Java programming and the like, which is not that high tech, it is basically cheap labor. What is worse is employers who are trying to hire high skilled candidates have problems because the H1B pool is dominated by consulting firms like Infosys and Wipro and the like…and it hurts people in the US who want to go into those fields, among other things it basically has decimated entry level hiring, because they can get some worker from India for a lot less than a US educated candidate…it is broken, and other than the consulting firms, few deny that.

With low skilled jobs, there is a problem as well, restaurants and the like with busboys and prep cooks pay relatively little, and the only people who will take those jobs are basically immigrants, usually illegal ones in my area. If there wasn’t a demand for those jobs, as others have pointed out, immigrants wouldn’t come, and it is telling that at the height of the recent recession, there was a net outflux to Mexico and Central America, more were leaving than coming in, because jobs were tough.

Again for rural voters, they support politicians who make a big noise about illegal immigrants, who talk about the toll on jobs, but they dont’ look at what their representatives and such are doing. Putting up a wall is great, but do they note that their representatives almost to a man/woman, refuses to put heavy sanctions on companies employing illegal immigrants, it is all about ‘throw them out’…why? If you want to cut the flow, cut demand…but they refuse. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, a ‘throw them out system’ both caters to those who see Mexican immigrants as ‘a threat to our culture’, and it equally helps employers who hire illegals, since illegal employees afraid of being deported won’t complain if the boss doesn’t pay them, if the guy gets injured and the employer dumps him at an ER, if the guy is put in dangerous conditions and is killed or wounder, they don’t have to worry about consequences, employers love it, it gives them total power over the workers…but yet they go to the voting booth because their rep is ‘anti immigration’.

And it is notable that the ‘anti immigration’ politicians have refused to even talk about immigration reform, making it easier to fill jobs that truly need filling while protecting those that are being undermined, they are basically saying keep the current system (which is broken) while ‘throw the bums out’. There is no doubt we need immigration, to fill low wage jobs and high wage ones as well, but we need immigration laws that reflect that reality, not laws that as currently in place are of benefit to employers wanting to have cheap labor that is powerless…

72

Came across this article today https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-democrats-immigration-mistake/528678/

73

And there were different barriers depending on which non-favored group.

For instance, the exceedingly restrictive quota on East Asian immigrants wasn’t really lifted until the mid-1960’s due to inertia from past racist policies banning/restricting immigration from that and other parts of the non-European societies.

And most of those admitted were those who already had family in the US and/or were very well-off immigrants.

Not surprisingly, this came to bite my father and even his experienced immigration lawyer who worked on his case for 20 odd years was outraged at the inexplicable red tape and runaround they both encountered with the immigration officials…especially the senior officials who had been working there since well before those restrictive immigration quotas were lifted.

Hence, the reason why the lawyer felt so outraged and ashamed at how the immigration officials and the entire legal immigration process treated my father that he adamantly refused to take any further payment beyond the initial retainer despite the fact he worked really hard on my father’s case for 20 years.

74

“I live in Texas and trust me, in 40 years I haven’t seen a white crew in residential outdoor construction.”

I live in New England. When I needed a new roof, and again when I needed several feet of snow shoveled off my roof (in the massive snow debacle that we have a few years ago), the crews that did the work didn’t look white and didn’t speak to each other in English. They did however, do a good job in both cases.

In both cases I was very happy that someone was available to do the work.

75

Believe me, when the immigration bans were being talked about there was much concern in Northern Michigan about the apple, cherry, and wine grape crops and whether there would be enough labor to get the fields picked in time. Now, would citizens jump for joy that suddenly those jobs were available. I wonder. It’s hard work and hard physiccal work doesn’t always fit the national sentiment.

My problem is not that they “come”, my beef is that for decades we, the United States, have failed miserably at creating immigration paths to citizenship. I guarantee you most of the workers would happily be citizens and not dodging the issue and I guarantee you that local law enforcement knows what a valuable role these folks play in the economic cycle. Another issue in rural areas is the collapse of the service industries and small manufacturing during the downturn. There are many rural areas where people are dirt poor…piecing together whatever seasonal work they can find. Tourism coming back helps, but not in the small towns outside the more urban areas unless it’s a pitstop lunch or dinner on the way to or from somewhere else.

76

Ask anyone in construction or IT if immigration is a problem, and you will get a resounding yes. The difference is that construction wages are depressed because of illegal immigration and IT because of legal immigration. Illegals cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually in medical care, crime losses, and educational expenses. Legal immigrants, especially high skilled ones, are a net positive and many create new firms and jobs. Those mid-skilled H1B immigrants are here because of immigration abuse by businesses.

My point is that everything is local and abuse is happening in multiple sectors.

77

The economy is always dynamic. As the world changes, as things develop, there are always going to be winners and losers. Especially in what is essentially still a capitalist system, where central planners do not try to tell people where to live. If rural areas have lost a good deal of vitality, it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, and there aren’t villains here or abroad that have stolen anything away.

It’s sad and hard and difficult for people, I know. No one wants to be forced by necessity to move, to say goodbye to the places that feel like home. I think that’s part of the negative reaction of people in depressed rural areas to immigrants. The immigrants have already done what some of the rural dwellers who are barely hanging on know they must eventually do, too, or have watched their children do, but are resisting: Pull up stakes and move.

78

Meth is not mostly made in this country. Most meth is imported.

79

Another day - another article.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/-i-need-more-mexicans-a-kansas-farmer-s-message-to-trump?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-businessweek&utm_content=businessweek&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

80

I actually live in rural America most of the year. For several years, until she passed away, I took my very elderly neighbor, whose daughter had confiscated her car keys, to a mid week ladies Church event and then on to visit her homebound friends. I am not a Church goer myself, but I understand the culture since I was raised in it. And like to think I’m pretty tuned in to my local community.

My county is 39,000 (falling) population with a median age of 42, and median household income of $41,000. It’s a traditional farming community. The birth rates are low, and grown kids are leaving for brighter pastures. Eight and nine generation family farms are barely viable, and only due to migrant workers. Some families that used to do tenant farming in previous generations managed to send their offspring to college and those kids became wealthy urban professionals. They are never ever coming back home. Quite a few locals tried to make a living with construction. Even paying their immigrant employees $6 an hour, they didn’t have much economic success. I can’t think of any of them still in business.

Basically, farming is no longer profitable because there is no cheap labor, other than migrant workers. And even then not much profit margin.

As we all know, health insurance is a huge issue for the self-employed. I’ve had neighbors in my parlor asking me for help negotiating it. I don’t think I was any help. There are no good options for us here. However, the options could be worse. My non-immigrant neighbors are a whole lot more worried about healthcare and taxes than local immigrants. Our county is overwhelmingly Republican. I am not…

Edit… my elderly friend lost a child because they couldnt afford access to medical care. Late 1940s.