While some contractors dismiss the plan as political rhetoric, many say they can’t afford to lose more people from an aging, immigrant-dependent workforce still short of nearly 400,000 people.
Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.
Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.
“It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems,” said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor” to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.
That’s because these anti immigrant views aren’t supported by data, or logic, or common sense. It’s not like Americans are lining up to do the jobs immigrants are taking. The US can’t function as a society today without those immigrants. But the right just wants to coddle its racist base with “brown man bad”.
Surely we can acknowledge the difference between a person who came to the country legally and someone who illegally crossed the border. It’s not racist to want a functioning border. A huge number of people voting for Trump are immigrants from Latin America themselves, and even they don’t want people illegally entering the country.
Yeah, I think maybe you’re some sleeper account or something : 7mo old account & comments only today with dilute the issue responses. Curious if a human will get assigned extra work to respond to my j’accusal to “refute” it lol
Americans aren’t lining up to do these jobs at low wages, without proper worker protections. Creating a society that depends on a lower tier of people that have fewer rights is seriously fucked up and is not something we should be embracing.
Siding with the rich business owners who are taking advantage of illegal immigrants is extra weird.
Thank you. I’ve always thought it was fucked people used this line of argument. If we can’t build our buildings and clear our own trash? We need an endless stream of low paid poorly treated brown folk to do all those troublesome chores? Seems kinda fucked to me
I’ve always thought it was fucked people used this line of argument.
Nobody is arguing that this is a good arrangement, they’re just saying it’s an arrangement that benefits (typically) conservative business owners who utilize undocumented immigrant labor. Which means mass deportations are probably just Trump pandering to his base and not something he would really do - although there’s no guarantee of that.
Industrial facilities, particularly in the food processing industry generally have decent wages and worker protections (safety does however vary wildly from plant to plant) but still rely on immigrant labor because those are often the only people willing to work these jobs, so they end up being the only workplaces that cater to hiring immigrants by having the knowledge of how to legally hire a non-citizen or just having Spanish language documentation and translators on hand.
I know this because I currently manage some databases for a contract industrial cleaning company, so I’ve seen the hard data. It’s not a challenge of pay and benefits, but a challenge of “who’s willing to work third shift cleaning cow guts off of a factory floor for $20-25/hr in bumblefuck Kansas?” And the answer is simply people who don’t have better options, and they’re usually either immigrants or felons. The work itself sucks donkeyballs (and would literally if it’s a plant processing donkey meat) so nobody wants to do it
We should be building apartments, stop building unscalable housing
Orrrr how about everyone has the freedom to live in the dwelling of their choice that they can afford .
Our economy depends on a base of low cost labor that used to be from kids or young people. It’s almost like Democrats have decided to fill that void with immigrants while Republicans are trying to get back to the low cost labor being from having more kids. It makes sense if your goal is to keep the machine running the way it was designed, or at least how it evolved to operate. Social security, insurance, fast food, service industries, construction would all need overhaul to function without low cost labor being their base. Seems like you could reduce consumerism in general to compensate for the reduced low income work force, but that would hurt the economic numbers and cause an overall contraction in the stock market. Tough pills to swallow for everyone who has accumulated any significant amount of wealth in this system.
Conservatives have always been about creating and maintaining have exploitable underclass. First it was owned slaves, then prisoner slaves, than “illegal” immigrants.
Conservatives are trying to deport illegal immigrants and stop allowing them in, which may have a motive, but exploitation is not it.
Isn’t one of the arguments for raising minimum wage that higher incomes will result in more consumption and social program contribution?
If you want an economy where every citizen has a chance to be middle class, you have to find some other source of labor to do working class jobs. That’s why we shouldn’t even want American citizens to do these jobs. Bring in immigrants that get paid well relative to where they came from to do that stuff and send our citizens to school and do middle class work. It’s a win-win for all involved.
That’s not even mentioning our problem with an aging population that requires immigration to sustain social programs.
If you want an economy where every citizen has a chance to be middle class, you have to find some other source of labor to do working class jobs.
Or labour jobs could pay middle class wages, like they did a couple of generations ago.
Yeah, but it’s still difficult manual labor. Not work I’d want for myself or my hypothetical children.
I would absolutely be happy for my kids to land that type of job as a start to their working life. Everyone needs some sort of a first job and work experience on their resume before they can hope to get a better job.
Yeah… IM no fan of trump but the reason housing is so expensive has nothing to do with needing more houses.
