Conservative pundits revived the narrative almost immediately, illustrating the centrality of xenophobia to their coverage

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[–] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

In some ways it is and in some its not. Personally I do believe that there shouldnt be an exemption to minimum wage laws for farm work, and that is messed up.

That said, it still wouldnt change the fact that those would be the primary jobs taken by migrants. The baseline for most entry level service jobs in the US, which makes up the majority of jobs available, is that someone has a highschool level education and is fluent in speaking English. Even that is just a baseline for making minimum wage or above it to whatever degree the market ends up setting as the functional minimum. Even if they did speak English more fluently and had a GED, then there is still a ton of competition in that market segment because those are generally the basic standards required to be met by every native born citizen at the very least

Migrants arent getting underpaid just because people dont want to pay them. They are getting underpaid because they dont have that many options to not be underpaid in the way the economy functions right now. Its also part of why they take the risk of starting businesses more often, because then it really doesnt matter if they meet minimum standards of communication or education.

And as much as it is in many ways exploitative, the same would be true in the inverse. You could have a PhD in the US but realistically not be able to do much other than drive an uber if you moved to Medellin or Mexico City or whatever. Youd need to be fluent in Spanish to get anything other than a low paying job. Its market forces more than anything

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (2 children)

    Market forces!? No it’s the destruction of worker power through artificial abundance of low wage workers. In Holland we have a union of house cleaners and legally protected trade standards (cao) sadly the amount of people who take part in protests is small - progress is non existent or devolving.

    https://www.fnv.nl/cao-sector/schoonmaak/cao-schoonmaak/actie

    That’s nothing compared to polish farm workers who don’t even know their rights to even request a state provided lawyer to bring their employer to court.

    But the fact still remains that immigrants who don’t have the same rights create tthe conditions of a lower class that dare not ask for more.

    Just like schooling is valued, so should dirty or physically difficult jobs be rewarded.

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  • Youre kind of proving my point without realizing it. A union is a mitigating factor, just as regulations (like a minimum wage) are, against a full blown brutal capitalistic “free market”. One without any limits on the exploitation of working people.

    Like I said before, migrants (especially without work authorization) are basically screwed in the economy as it is right now. No unions, virtually no regulations. Not much chance to get out of it either. They are one subset of society that is still subject to the most brutal unmitigated capitalist forces in that sector of the labor market.

    The government knows and has always known there are tens of millions of people working under the table without any labor protection, but they never really attempt to do anything about it. Up until deciding to try and deport many of them, which is just idiotic. Not to mention the execution of it being borderline genocidal

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