To your first point: The wall in Texas is expensive and poorly thought out - no argument there. A better wall could be built but possibly not in the current political climate Isn't that what EU is doing by making a deal with the Turkish dictator to keep the migrants out and not letting non Syrian economic migrants in. Unlimited flow of people into your country just is unreasonable and creates way too many problems and is a net drain on your economy and standard of living. There aren't enough jobs as it is for both skilled and unskilled laborers in this country so more people will just make the problem worse check out the labor participation rate (% of people employed) As for farming you are right. We may loose strawberry farming in California. Its unfortunate but they probably don't have the water for it anyway. Farmers will have to switch to less labor intensive crops, some farms will close. I'm sure the Southern states before the end of slavery made the same argument that the author of the article made that if plantation owners had to pay the slaves they wouldn't be competitive. As a country though we have to enforce labor rights and standards as failure to do so will cause a huge decrease in quality of life for most people. For me American workers being too expensive is not a good justification for allowing farmers to smuggle people in and treat them like slaves with no legal protections. If the job cant be done when paying people a fair, and legal wage then the job shouldn't be done. Per your last link farming for export in Hawaii probably isn't realistic, being that the price of land is insane and transpiration can fuel and labor costs are insane. It will be replaced either with a new housing development or lower cost/impact farming for local consumption. Similar things will happen in California. Either more automate crops will be sown or land will be used for other things. Plastic tasting strawberries that are available all year may become too expensive but they will still grow in many regions and be available for you to go and pick them ripe and delicious in season.So you're basically saying that you want to put up a wall to prevent all of these people who are often fleeing for their lives just so that you don't have to deal with the monetary consequences. If that's fine with you, then I can't really argue with you, i guess.
Its also costing Europe 15K per person per year so its a huge resource drain.
hey man, I've put the EU on blast before about this too. Their actions are totally unconscionable, IMO. I'm working with a Syrian refugee at the moment. He's working two jobs to try and bring his family over, while also studying for his AZ (transport license) so that he can get a better job. Dude's salt of the earth, and is just trying to provide a better life for his family. As for there not being enough jobs, we're going to run into this problem eventually - consider this a practice run of what's to come. (he goes into more depth here: What I'm trying to tell you is that if this happened, we would be royally fucked, me up here in Canada included.Isn't that what EU is doing by making a deal with the Turkish dictator to keep the migrants out and not letting non Syrian economic migrants in
It will be replaced either with a new housing development or lower cost/impact farming for local consumption. Similar things will happen in California. Either more automate crops will be sown or land will be used for other things.
Im curious why lack of strawberry harvesters in California would royally fuck you up there in Canada? Seems unrelated unless you have a big plant that builds strawberry harvesting equipment. I guess were all fighting for a piece of an ever shrinking pie (actually the pie is getting bigger but 1% of people get more and more of it) so jobs are getting more scarce and that's why I don't feel like the US should take any more economic migrants. Talented people sure, we should take more but low skill workers are loosing their jobs to robots on a daily basis and if we keep giving those jobs away eventually a lot of people will have to get basic income or there will be rioting in the streets.
Or maybe, just maybe, we could make the loss of jobs a good thing. Who actually likes work anyway? Why do we need to do it if robots can do it? Why do we allow the Capitalists to reap enormous profits at our expense, then blame the migrants(who, let's be clear, are also shafted by the Capitalists)? Why do we hold on to this insane idea that the "free" market is a sacrosanct entity that can only be nudged one way or another, never defeated?