It’s not unreasonable to offer asylum to people being persecuted in their home country, is it? But it feels like many immigrants are really coming to improve their economic position and not to escape oppression.
That’s not been helped by many business owners who see immigrants as a cheap source of labour.
Every job is essential. If they weren’t, business owners wouldn’t waste money employing people to do them. They’re not charities, after all. So shouldn’t every job reflect that by paying a wage that values workers rather than making them compete to work for the lowest wage?
In this race to the bottom for wage levels, immigrants will always have the weakest hand. And as employers exploit the most vulnerable workers, the immigrants, it removes job opportunities from domestic workers.
Both issues can be addressed in the same way. By preventing employers from exploiting workers, both immigrants and domestic. Our societies can insist on genuine living wages for all jobs and ensure zero hour contracts can only be taken by workers who genuinely want the freedom.
Those two changes will ensure jobs pay wages that are attractive to domestic workers and the opportunities for economic immigrants will largely disappear.
But it’s not just at the bottom of the market where employers take advantage of immigrants. Highly skilled workers are also attractive to employers, and arguably even more so to the government.
Why waste money educating your own people and giving them ideas above their station, when you can let other countries pay to train their people and then poach them?
That may explain why Republican and Democratic governments alike have let US public education slip to 31st position in global rankings, despite having the wealthiest economy in the world to pay for education. Particularly as highly skilled immigrants will also work for lower wages than their domestic counterparts.
Of course, employers will insist that higher wages will increase unemployment and cause the loss of jobs. The wealthy always have an answer for anything that threatens their privilege. But they never have a good explanation for why the poorest 50% of Americans have to struggle with just 2.5% of all US wealth, while the wealthiest 10% have hoarded 68.3%.
If politicians really think immigration is bad, why don’t they take the most obvious steps to reduce it?
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