What's really odd is that the folks who talk the most about the problems for lower-class American workers will get most offended the moment you suggest that competition for cheap labour from millions of illegal immigrants might have something to do with it.

It's not the Lump of Labor fallacy to say that the economy has a limited appetite for low-skilled workers. In Australia, where illegal immigration is quite limited, it's not a choice of Wal-Mart and the gas station for folks without white-collar skills, there's also farming jobs, cleaning jobs, and best of all, tradesman jobs like builder, electrician or plumber. You'll need an apprenticeship for some of those, but can quickly work your way up from earning very little as an apprentice to earning six figures as a competent and fully-qualified tradesman. But in America, all the job categories which I mentioned are dominated by illegals, so it really is true that the uneducated have a really rough time.

This just simply isn't true as a matter of fact.

If you look at states like Georgia (and i've seen similar articles about parts of the UK), there's a massive shortage of farm workers, and regardless of what the supply of illegal migrant workers is. Even after Georgia began holding farmers directly liable for employing illegal immigrants, local workers have not stepped up to fill the gap.

Besides, American immigration policy, rightly, allows white collar workers from other nations, especially Canada and Mexico into the country via NAFTA. That is, frankly, a good thing. All we're doing is keeping out a labor supply that is currently needed.

If you want to level the playing field for native low skill workers, require farmers and the like to pay all the taxes and health benefits for all their workers, illegal or not.

There was a documentary aired here in Australia which follows several out-of-work UK natives as they're given the jobs that (legal) immigrants do. These are jobs like picking asparagus, working at a packing plant, and carpentry. Out of the 8 or so natives only a handful actually show up for work, and of those only one or two actually do the work to a reasonable standard and would be considered employable.

I've also seen reports in the news where Australia needs more seasonal agricultural workers, as Australians don't necessarily want to do the work. Most recently there's been a trial program to get pacific islanders in on temporary visas to work these farms. And traditionally it's been backpackers that have worked these fruit-picking and misc jobs.

So it seems to me that a lot of the population of the "developed" world, especially the native people, don't want to be doing those menial, labour intensive, and repetative jobs themselves. Also I don't believe that the immigrants that do these jobs now want their kids to be doing them. Therefore I would say that we should work harder to try and automate these kinds of menial mind-numbing jobs as best as we can.

I worked on a farm in high school. I was making $12/hr in the 90's -- pretty decent money.

Sitting on your behind is easier, regardless of pay.

Given that the median farmworker (crops) made $8.98 in 2010, your experience would seem a little extraordinary. The better-paid median ranchworker made $10.56. $12 in 1999 had the same buying power as $15.71 in 2010.

Sources: BLS http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#45-0000 http://146.142.4.24/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=12.00&year1...

I started doing hay (which involves throwing and stacking 40-50 pound bales in a hot barn) at $6.00/hr. After a year or two I was doing a variety of jobs that were a higher value to my employer. Also worked for an awesome family who worked us very hard.

There were fewer illegals in the 1990s, though, right?

Why do you believe that?

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that in the 1980s the net advance of the undocumented population was at the 130,000 per year, increasing to 450,000 per year from 1990–1994, and further increasing to 750,000 per year from 1995–1999, and staying at 700,000–850,000+ per year since about 2000

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigrant_population_of... )

NAFTA was the catalyst the created the waves of immigration from Mexico.

Why?

"Free trade" destroyed many US factory jobs, but it vaporized Mexican agriculture. Small proprietor farms were out of business overnight by the flood of cheap US corn.

The human element in illegal immigration is usually completely ignored. People don't pull up stakes and walk across a desert because they think that working in a poultry slaughterhouse is a great life. They do so because it is a better life than complete destitution that they face at home.

That Wikipedia page agrees with him.

Well i mean, sort of, but not really. The influx in immigration took place in the 90s and stabilized, and is now falling due to the economic collapse in the US.

Either way, i think we're well served by including some specific claims (and that's why i cited the wikipedia page)

hugh3 is talking about first derivative of the number of illegals, and you're talking about the second derivative.

Another thing to consider is the basic IQ requirements of modern high quality jobs. You don't need to be a genius to be a Doctor or Programmer but good luck finding them with subs 80 IQ's (~16% of the population). It may have been more dangerous and paid less to build the Model T but it was also reasonable to send just about anyone to that type of work. Now add to that Illegal immigration which results in fairly intelligent people doing manual labor for low pay it's even harder for people that are a little slow to compete.

I think the "dey took our jawbs" line is a little bit of a red herring here. Sure, there's an impact, but automation and outsourcing are both bigger impacts, and for all 3, they're here, we better deal with them.

I feel like a path to citizenship would bring the wages for these jobs back above-ground and create a fair marketplace for labor where people could compete.

What's the other option, "ship them all back to latin america"? If you think that's a good idea, I'd invite you to think about what that enforcement action would look like, and if it fits into your concept of "America".

EDIT: Watches blanket downvotes without counter-proposal or likely even reading my comments. Whoever that is should run for the House.

I downvoted you for presuming he prefers "ship them all back to latin america". That sort of douchebaggery does not belong on Hacker News.

(I agree with most of the rest of what you say in this post.)

Fine, edited to modify the presumption wording.

Frankly, it seemed like the next obvious step from his initial complaint. We're talking about underemployment and he brings up immigrants out of nowhere as a scapegoat? Was that a prelude to an argument for amnesty? It's not my fault if it sounds bad.

And accusing me of quote "douchebaggery" while being high and mighty about what belongs on hacker news is a little rich.

Hey, I'm just musing on the causes of unemployment. For the record, I do support deporting illegal immigrants back to wherever they're from, and I'm shocked that this is even controversial in this country.

I'm not actually even an American. I'm merely temporarily here on a visa. But once you've spent as much time and money on US visa renewals as I have, you don't have much sympathy for the line-jumpers who enter the country illegally.

Well, thanks for justifying my presumption :)

I went to a school that was big into the wine industry and they said many farms in New Zealand and Australia use machines to pick fruit. That doesn't leave as much room for low skilled workers on farms.