Supposedly immigrants do jobs that "Americans won't do". Obviously the more accurate statement would be that Americans tend not to be willing to do them given their present pay. But say the minimum wage was indeed raised to fifteen dollars an hour. At that wage Americans would likely change their mind, especially those who might have lost their jobs due to the wage hike. Are people plugging all this into their stances regarding these issues?

Yes.

Minimum wage should not be increased.

awesome thread

Are we discussing illegal immigrants or legal immigrants? I assume you are discussing amnesty for illegals, a $15 an hour minimum wage, and current U. S. citizens that are under employed/unemployed who would be willing to work for $15 an hour. A minimum wage of $15 an hour is arbitrary, we can assume that there is a threshold minimum wage where current underemployed/unemployed U. S. citizens would be willing to take jobs that they previously thought payed too low. That would put them in competition for jobs with illegals that were granted amnesty thus illegals would be on equal footing for jobs as legal U. S. citizens. Is that fair? I think this is what you are getting at.

David. What are you doing? Is there something you're trying to tell us?

Well it was definitely one of the pull factors that were enticing boatloads of asylum seekers to Australia before we re-implemented all the tough border protection control methods such as turn back boats and off-shore processing.

If the liberals in America want to raise the minimum wage, it is just a necessary consequence they have to deal with, although many liberals they are for a greater intake of immigrants.

Yes, but nothing about the subject of politics. Only about the subject of thinking.

There is no conflict in opening borders and increasing the minimum wage to protect local jobs

The percentage of immigrants doing jobs "Americans won't do" is somewhat small as a percentage of overall immigrants.

Having people come to do the jobs "Americans wont do" is just one of the factors in creating immigration policy.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour doesn't necessarily mean Americans now will do these jobs. DUCY?

Its OK to just post "I like Trump and think Im going to vote for him for president" you know.

it will encourage under the table jobs done by illegal immigrants or others willing to do that

so it should help them!

Just my two cents, but immigration is this election's high oil prices from the McCain/Palin campaign. Remember all the "we need to drill in Alaska to lower oil prices" talk that ultimately turned out to be untrue?

Well, here we go again. Republicans have latched on to the idea that somehow illegal immigration is a problem, and that solving it will make everyone's life better.

There's literally no actual evidence this is true, but, hey, who cares, let's run with it. But let's call it what it is, another stupid gambit by Republicans to get people to vote for them despite their ridiculous economic and social positions that make zero sense to anyone with half a brain.

Thinking in a vacuum?

If the actual question matters at all, there are facts you could consider. There have been efforts to get more Americans to pick crops by increasing wages in the past. They largely failed. Why? You could research this. The answers might not jibe with your internet speculations, but you could see for yourself- get a job picking onions for a day and report back.

Or you can trust me, I've done it-- you don't want to pick onions.

About half of farm workers in this country are unauthorized (source). Probably some portion of the authorized workers are U.S.-born children of unauthorized workers.

The proportion has increased from less than 25% in the early 90s. If you go back far enough, say to 1941, when Woody Guthrie wrote the song Pastures of Plenty, unauthorized workers may have been rare, as Americans must have been particularly eager to pick crops in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl, what with many having lost their own farms and all. For extra incentive, they would have had the Great Depression fresh on their minds. No doubt they would have been grateful for the $0.25 federal minimum wage, except it didn't apply to farm work at the time. Grapes of Wrath, man.

I particularly like this version of Pastures of Plenty. It is sung by Paul Kelly, an Australian musician. I don't know his immigration status.

David I don't know if you've noticed but, there's not much thinking going on in the Politics / PU (not that PU expects critical thought or intelligence, as its meant to attract the bottom feeders). The Politics board is very cliquey and there's rarely any room for actual discussion, expansion of viewpoints, or critical thought. As soon as someone or a few people hint at their positions, lines are drawn and a thread quickly devolves into simply lol-ing@ the opposing viewpoints. Of course, i'm not saying there are no cases where lol-ing at a person or people (Silverman is a great example, TheKid was another) isn't warranted, but generally speaking- this is a hostile and unfriendly place towards people who want to learn about topics or share their opinions.

Put differently, I notice that political types vette questions to see how possible answers jive with their political stances. Not good.

Meanwhile I ask again about your background. If you answered before I didn't see it.

Even if you are right about picking onions, there is no doubt that there are many jobs that are unacceptable to most Americans at seven dollars per hour that will become highly sought after at fifteen.

So you keep saying that and also keep not showing your work. We wouldn't be turning $7 jobs into $15 jobs all else equal so its not an obvious logical truism.

For starters, if people prefer to work in fast food to farming the fields today that's still likely to be true if we turn the minimum wage from $7 to $15 right?

I don't understand your first paragraph.

Those who would seek the less palatable jobs are those who are presently unemployed plus those who became unemployed due to the minimum wage hike.

You have provided no data on how many jobs would be lost from the wage hike, the magnitude of that in relation to the number of jobs that "Americans currently wont do" that need to be done,or what the reservation price is for the currently unemployed to take the farming jobs.

How do you explain that the jobs were simply not being filled when the visa programs were shut down earlier this year? We have unemployed people still today. Farmers with their crops sitting in the field rotting if they aren't picked certainly are legally allowed to pay $15 an hour if they chose to today right?

I mean, it could be those jobs become highly sought after at $15 an hour in a world where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, but you haven't made the case this is true.

This is irrelevant to my point. Which is that people form opinions about two related subjects without worrying whether the interaction between the two may result in one of them being wrong.

OK. Seems pretty relevant to me if you are asking if people are plugging the bolded into their stances when the bolded might either not really be true, or not solving the policy issue of immigrants doing jobs that "Americans wont do", but what do I know.

That seems like a good way to begin forming opinions. Possible interactions can be noted and dealt with as needed. Here I guess immigration is one subject and the related one is minimum wage.

I favor raising the minimum wage. I'm liberal on immigration too. What is the interaction that makes one of these opinions wrong? You're saying immigrants are going to be in real competition with Americans for the now suddenly highly desirable $15/hr jobs? So now the immigrants really are taking our jobs?

I think you seriously underestimate the difficulty of farm work. $15/hr is not an incentive if you simply can't do the work. There is no large group of Americans who are currently qualified. The jobs may be "highly sought after" but people will not stay in them. If they have any reasonable alternative, they will last a day or two and realize that a life of constant pain is not worth it. This is what has happened before when higher than normal wages were offered.

If a higher minimum wage makes the availability of unauthorized labor an actual problem for Americans seeking work, we could try employer sanctions-- put people in jail. But try getting the GOP to agree to that! It's been unacceptable going back to Goldwater. I wonder what Trump's view is?

I'm sorry, I went back to your first post and I don't see a question about my background. Do you mean my political orientation / race / age / gender / sexual orientation / religion / socioeconomic status / stuff like that?

Sorry if I missed the particular question you wanted me to answer, regarding my background- I definitely did not answer before.

Anything you want to tell me I would be interested in. You seem to analyze things well.