Depending upon whom you believe, there are some 10 to 12 million illegal
immigrants in this country. Why? (I’ll
warn you ahead of time: you won’t like
the real answer.)
Short form:
This traces directly to inaction by Congress since the end of WW2, when they ended the Bracero program with the
mass deportation of Mexican agricultural workers.
Long form follows:
There are H1A visas for technical people, and there are H2A and H2B visas for unskilled
labor, intended to be work permits for mostly-Mexican
laborers. These H2A and H2B visas cover
the laborers, plus the dependents they
bring with them. H2A visas are specifically
for migrant farm workers, and H2B visas are
for all the other migrant worker trades,
such as the truly grungy stuff at construction sites, concrete work, road work,
lawn care guys, and toilet
cleaners at motels, etc.
Because these jobs are both low-paid, and very hard and unpleasant work, almost no Americans really try to apply for
such jobs, despite what some
claim. We are awash in fake news about
this issue, among many others. You can recognize a fake news echo chamber by
the lack of divergent opinions, it
really is that simple.
The low pay for the immigrant workers is a vicious
cycle: because most of the workers are
illegally here, their employers simply extort
labor at very low pay from them. This is
immoral and unethical, but VERY
widespread. If these workers were
legal, pay for that work would have to rise, and more Americans might even apply for such
jobs.
These workers are a huge factor in our economy: reportedly around 15% of construction
jobs, and apparently almost all the crop
harvesters we have ever had since WW2. If
you deport them all, important sectors
of our economy not only crash, but you
will go hungry because of high-priced foreign food imports. Now that's the real facts, unpleasant though they are.
Why are these workers mostly illegal and thus subject to extortion
into wage slavery? Because the worker permit visa
quotas controlled by Congress are completely out-of-line with the "ground
truth" of our economy. The
demand and corresponding need is there,
the accommodation is not.
According to the Brookings Institute, the annual cap on H2A and H2B visas totals to
about 125-150,000. That's roughly a factor-of-100
out-of-balance with reality: the
10 to 12 million that are here doing the work,
and paying taxes on their meager wages, despite what some say.
What no one wants to hear (but the painful truth will set
you free, when political lies won’t): we brought this on ourselves; more specifically, our Congress did, with over 7 decades inaction on this issue. That is utterly inexcusable.
Worse, some of them
run for re-election promising to do the wrong thing about this problem! But we keep electing and re-electing all the
idiots that did this!
So, stop re-electing
them! Elect instead somebody who will
really fix this, by actually doing
something about the out-of-balance visa quota system. You’ll see this problem melt away in a very
few years, if this imbalance is
corrected.
(And by the way, fixing this permanently fixes the DACA problem, as well.)
