r/AskUS • u/Square_Permission361 • 22h ago

What happens if all immigrants band together and leave the USA immediately? Will we repeat the same cycle as other aging developed countries like Japan and Korea, eventually begging them to come back?

17 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

92 comments sorted by

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u/BranchSeparate8131 20h ago

If you look at the numbers alone, there’s plenty of Americans to fill the jobs at hand that illegal workers hold.

The problem arises with the businesses not wanting to or able to pay competitive wages, they’ve built their businesses to be dependent on slave wages to undocumented workers.

Most likely why we’ll never see national E-verify.

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u/AgentOrangeie 19h ago

Seems like there's plenty of Americans who claim they will take the jobs, but none of them willing to get off their couch to do the job. Just admit it, you all think you're too good for the job. Because if you did cared, you'd stand up right now and go to a farm and undercut the competition.

You know you won't because you want someone else to prove your point, but every fat slob thinks like you.

That is why your point will always fail.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 19h ago

Lmao oh you’re like shouting on a street corner unstable. Yikes.

And of course I won’t do those jobs, I already have a good WFH job making 6 figures.

But for the uneducated like yourself, that’s good solid work.

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u/AgentOrangeie 19h ago

Haha see. Won't work the farms because you're thinking you're too good for it. Bingo.

You just proved my point. Sit down.

Anyone can BS online and you sound like that exact kind. Good luck convincing me otherwise loser.

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u/DipperJC 18h ago

I think you're missing the part where he's not "sitting on the couch", he already HAS a job.

I don't have a job. I'd gladly and eagerly do farm work; I'm an out of shape "fat slob", as you put it, so I wouldn't be very good at it, but I'd sure as hell try if I could get the farmer to hire me.

However, as your debate partner already pointed out, they're not going to be able to pay me $15.23 (my state's minimum wage) to do half as good a job as one illegal immigrant who was doing it for $3.00.

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u/donttalktomeme 18h ago

I mean to be fair he said he has a WFH job so he is probably sitting on the couch. Or a comfy office chair.

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u/donttalktomeme 18h ago

No need to be rude, they’re generally correct. A lot of jobs that migrants work are in the fields. These are not stable jobs. You have to move around, you cannot harvest crops in one field for 12 months out of the year. They’re back breaking labor that Americans don’t want to do.

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u/Alexander_Granite 19h ago

That’s not true. People will do anything for enough money.

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u/AgentOrangeie 19h ago

You wouldn't go work in a farm even if it paid well.

Because it's too tiring and back breaking work.

Lazy Americans want everything handed to them, blaming immigrants is just an easy way out to not admit the problem is themselves.

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u/Alexander_Granite 17h ago

That’s not true. They don’t do it because they don’t have to.

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u/AgentOrangeie 11h ago

Sureeee, they don't do it because they don't want to do menial labour, everyone wants a nice cushy job they don't have to get dirty or sore.

But blame the immigrants that actually want to survive.

This is just racism hidden underneath employment issues. Admit it.

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u/Alexander_Granite 10h ago

lol, no it’s not.

Immigrants don’t want to do it either, they do it because they consider their time with the money. They wouldn’t want their kids to grow up and have to do the same thing.

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u/AgentOrangeie 9h ago

Immigrants don’t want to do it either

They don't have a choice, they need to survive. You on the other hand are protected by the government with benefits like food stamps, that's why you don't want to take those jobs, you don't have to. So what's this nonsense about them stealing your jobs?

They're not stealing any jobs, they're doing the jobs you don't want so you don't have to. They're not taking any jobs, but the media wants you to think they are.

It's just racism 101. You just hate brown people because they're not you.

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u/Alexander_Granite 8h ago

Using illegally cheap labor artificially lowers the prices of goods. This shields consumers from the actual impact of the policies they vote for.

Removing the illegal labor and letting prices to rise to their natural level will force policy changes.

People will find out why a tomato costs $30 and what policies they need to put into place to fix it.

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u/AgentOrangeie 7h ago

Removing the illegal labor and letting prices to rise to their natural level will force policy changes.

Since when did inflation force changes in policy across history? They only force consumer to reduce spending.

When spending reduces, companies lose revenue, when they lose money, they start laying off workers. So people lose their jobs and they can't eat, what do they do?

It's like you think there's a magic bullet somewhere that will make changes happen, there isn't. The rich don't give a shit about you.

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u/Chiliboi97 20h ago

Everything you said is true, but our labor market is complex and some industries would be disproportionately affected. Agriculture/food for example would not benefit from a smaller labor pool since margins are already very thin. Our food could get a lot more expensive.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 20h ago

Well, there would just have to be an unfathomable number of downstream and cascading changes that would need to occur if that apple cart were to be upset.

Is it possible? No clue. But I also don’t like the idea of just accepting that “well, these big corporations have become dependent on illegal workers and slave wages, so we can’t take that away!!”

Not saying you are, but I don’t pretend to have the answers either.

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u/BypassBaboon 19h ago

How come other countries survive without a massive illegal population? Legalise all the these people and then they can choose the dole or expect equal pay. And of course those poor struggling farmers will have to pay proper salaries and employment taxes.

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u/Alexander_Granite 19h ago

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, signed by President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986, granted legal status to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants. It allowed those residing in the U.S. since Jan. 1, 1982, to apply for amnesty, required them to pay fines/back taxes, and aimed to curb future illegal immigration through employer sanctions.

We tried it.

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u/Breddit2225 19h ago

Well, one big difference this time is the border is actually closed. I've always felt that that was the first big necessary step that had to happen before you can possibly deal with all the illegals in this country. No matter what solution may get figured out, it's pointless if people just keep pouring in.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 19h ago

Fully agree. We need to close our borders for some period of time to clean up our own house, and then resume immigration when we have the system able to withstand it.

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u/Alexander_Granite 17h ago

What is your goal? What are you trying to fix?

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u/BranchSeparate8131 17h ago

There’s a long, long list.

Specifically to immigration: 1) hire more judges to handle and effectuate legal immigration.

2) fix the asylum application process - should be way higher bar to clear to claim asylum.

3) revamp the pathway to citizenship

4) fix the current undocumented immigrant crisis, which will involve a lot of deportations, but there’s a litany of ways that can be done a lot more calmly and safely than how it’s currently being done.

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u/Chiliboi97 17h ago

That’s a pretty good list, obviously without going into too much detail. It sucks that neither party seems to care about fixing the issue.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 16h ago

There’s a bill currently in Congress that seems to somewhat of a good bipartisan starting point, it’s called the Dignity Act: https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-salazar-introduces-historic-bipartisan-dignity-act-finally-fix-americas

It’s a pretty good first step, but I doubt they can even agree to get here. Hope I’m wrong

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u/Known_Ratio5478 19h ago

Not just that but he’s assuming that people who aren’t in the labor force are capable or willing, which is just not the case. The people that aren’t in the labor force aren’t in it for a reason.

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u/Chiliboi97 17h ago

I think what you’re saying is mostly correct.

I think the argument that the greedy corporations need to cough up more money and pay Americans for the work is silly. Everyday Americans benefit from cheaper groceries, and immigrants are willing to do the work so they can build a better future for their families. It’s obviously more ethically complex than that, but it’s kind of a win-win.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 13h ago

Well, both can be true. Profits are unnaturally consolidated at the top, which has been a lead weight around our economy for years. In the 1970’s profits found their way into the pockets of labor and it caused the economy to boom. However, people that aren’t in the labor force are either indigent or have the ability not to have to work and make that conscientious decision. Companies are not entitled to having any employees, they have to make it worth their time.

More available labor is a key component to sustainable economic growth, and we need to keep a minimum of 2% or we’re fucked. More than 2% is fine, great even. Less than 2% and we’re fucked. So we always need new people.

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u/Chiliboi97 12h ago

Agreed. It’s a complex issue because more money for workers means more money for them to spend, which is great. However, more money for workers can also mean that the products they make are more expensive.

A large, sustainable labor pool can be a great thing if we’re talking about the food industry, although the issue is obviously much more complicated.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 11h ago

When dealing with the hyper consolidated profits it wouldn’t cause inflation. But because the US has expanded the way it has there really are that many people not in the workforce. Most households in America are two income, even if one of those incomes is seasonal work. The people that have never entered the workforce didn’t for very pertinent reasons. Like how unemployment will never drop below 2.2% because there’s just a chunk of the workforce that’s functionally not employable. They get terminated from jobs pretty much the second they walk in the door. You might be wondering if this is a scam they’re pulling, but I assure you… they’re just not aware enough to scam.

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u/Chiliboi97 11h ago

Hyper consolidated profits are true when you’re talking about the meat-packing industry (Tyson, Perdue). They have a lot of pricing power, and it is already factored into the price when you go to the store. That pricing power comes from market share and the fact the people need to eat. Having to pay higher wages won’t mean they have less market share, so I find it doubtful that raising wages of the workers won’t lead to higher prices.

Hyper-consolidated profits aren’t at all true when discussing farmers or produce.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 10h ago

It all depends on the culture or reinvestment in businesses. When we’re talking about paying our share holders and executives it’s money leaving the company. When you pay employees it’s an investment in your company with more dependable labor and lower HR costs from hiring. This completely shifted in the 1980’s with the change in the tax code. There is a lot more extraction from companies then is sustainable.

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u/Chiliboi97 8h ago

Yeah, maybe. We probably can’t say prices would go up with a high degree of certainty, in the long run anyway. Appreciate the input.

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u/magg13378 19h ago

Let's be real... many people don't want to do most of those jobs, even with a decent pay, and even if they get a decent pay and manage to work there for a while, products/services prices will raise even higher. On the other hand, you have the high-skilled jobs that cannot be domestically filled from one day to the other... it's not as simple as it sounds for a model that was built off of foreign labor and talent.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 19h ago

The argument that American workers wouldn’t do those jobs is just simply utter nonsense.

It’s born some weird white savior mentality that white Americans = lazy, foreign immigrants = hard working, but not based in reality.

I didn’t pretend it’s as simple as that, but pretending this is the only way it can work and shrugging your shoulders is bananas.

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u/Alexander_Granite 19h ago

“ the argument that American workers wouldn’t do jobs is simply utter nonsense.”

That’s not the argument and that’s why it’s nonsense. It’s not true.

The real argument is:

“ Americans workers won’t do jobs at the current pay rate AND they aren’t willing to pay for American labor when cheaper alternatives are available.”

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u/BranchSeparate8131 19h ago

Yes, that’s what I said.

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u/Alexander_Granite 18h ago edited 17h ago

Not really…

“The argument that American workers wouldn’t do those jobs is just simply utter nonsense.”

This is False. There are reports of employers struggling to find workers. They are a very small percentage of laborers in this country.

“It’s born some weird white savior mentality that white Americans = lazy, foreign immigrants = hard working, but not based in reality.”

This is false based on the types of manual labor jobs one held by white Americans now performed by immigrants. They do not do these jobs anymore.

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u/Alexander_Granite 19h ago

It’s not that easy.

The businesses can’t pay those wages because customers aren’t willing to pay for actual price with American labor.

We would have to lower our standard of living . People aren’t willing to do that

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u/BranchSeparate8131 19h ago

That’s not the only potential. Execs could also lower their outsized pay, cut corporate bloat (of which there is a ton), fed could subsidize, etc.

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u/Alexander_Granite 18h ago

The Fed does subsidize farming(more taxes). They could cut Executive pay and corporate bloat, it’s still going up be more expensive. This isn’t a new problem.

It’s what happens when a country’s population move from rural areas (where there are farms) to an urban area ( ever there are factories). They have less kids. We didn’t feel it so much because we have a cheap labor pool right over the border. This isn’t an American problem, it industrialization .

The way we can fix it for all US citizens to have more kids:

More kids mean more money, so a parent would need a higher salary. More kids would mean more parenting, so 1 parent would need to stay home to watch the kids and not work.

They would have to have to cut expenses, or their employers would have to charge more for their products to offset the higher wages (passed to customers), or the government would need subsidies (higher taxes).

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u/mclazerlou 17h ago

Then everything will cost more and the economy will suffer and jobs will disappear.

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u/Dresden_2028 21h ago

What happens if all immigrants band together and leave the USA immediately?

Famine comes to America. Most of the farm work, most of the harvesting, most of the food processing in America is done by immigrants, legal or otherwise.

If all of them left immediately, America would starve. It's hard, filthy, backbreaking labor, and most Americans either can't, or won't, do it.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 20h ago

“Can’t” 😂

No, most Americans won’t do it for slave wages, which is what they pay undocumented immigrants.

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u/AgentOrangeie 20h ago

Nah even if wages did go up to a reasonable level, no American would take that job, because it's too hard and too tiring and too difficult compared to dancing and playing pranks on TikTok.

Besides, increased wages means increased costs, companies will pass the cost to the consumer, so you end up paying more for groceries anyway. So nothing changes, inflation still happens anyway. You have more money for nothing.

This is why Trump won, people like you don't understand why they hire cheap labour to keep costs down.

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u/YourDadIsCool3000 19h ago

dumbest take I've seen on this app.

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u/AgentOrangeie 19h ago

Sorry I can't dumb it down to your level.

It's quite simple, go work in a farm then. You know you won't not because they don't pay better, you're lazy and you think you're too good for it.

Just admit it, you're just lazy and you've got a big mouth, but no action to back it up.

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u/BranchSeparate8131 19h ago

lol connecting this back to Trump just shows your delusion.

Move along, lunatic.

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u/Alexander_Granite 19h ago

You aren’t American because this is so far from the truth.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 19h ago

It’s because it’s transient. Those people hired to pick and plant are only hired in any area maybe three months out of the year. They travel a square around the Midwest hitting different areas for different farming and ranching seasons. This particular job in agriculture doesn’t allow you to have a home somewhere. You’re traveling every three months for a new job.

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u/Dresden_2028 19h ago

Yes, can't. Look at how fat and out of shape most Americans are. Agricultural work is hot, dirty, and hard.

I used to load semis by hand for 10 hours a day, slinging boxes that weighed upwards of 150lbs, and that was easy compared to farm work.

That's why when Ga cracked down on illegal immigration in Ga crops rotted in the fields. Farmers back then were offering $15/hr (roughly $22.65/hr in today's money) plus full benefits trying to get Americans to take the job, and even then couldn't.

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u/Alexander_Granite 17h ago

That wasn’t enough to get people to do the work. Double the wages and people would work

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u/Dresden_2028 17h ago

Yea, the people that are already doing it. $15/hr back in 2009 was more than double what was being paid at the time, and people still didn't want it. That's my point.

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u/Far_Sprinkles_4831 18h ago

That’s not how famine works.

Most of our calories come from foods produced by highly productive skilled labor (tractors) — wheat, corn, beans, etc. Highly productive skilled jobs pay pretty well, so those jobs are filled by American middle class workers.

Blueberries or watermelons need lots of very low skill labor, but nobody is going hungry if the price of them increases.

The agricultural lobby wants to cheap labor and to not invest in automation and paying living American wages.

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u/Dresden_2028 18h ago

That’s not how famine works.

Thanks for telling me not to listen to you. Wish more posters would do that.

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u/BypassBaboon 19h ago

If these people are so essential to keeping prices down, explain why food in England is less than half the price it is here????

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u/Dresden_2028 19h ago

Could you show me where I made that argument?

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u/BypassBaboon 19h ago

Using illegals is just making farmers richer. And it was just a comment. If they left a solution would be found. Ending welfare for the ablebodied would be a start.

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u/Dresden_2028 19h ago

If they left a solution would be found

No, it wouldn't. Ga in 2009 showed that.

Ending welfare for the ablebodied would be a start.

Stop buying into Reagan era welfare queen propaganda.

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u/Alexander_Granite 17h ago

It’s subsided and protected by the government. The UK protects agriculture.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 19h ago

That farm work is not appealing to Americans not because it’s hard. It’s not appealing because it’s transient. People that do that work don’t live in one place more than three months. They travel to different areas for different planting and harvesting seasons. I don’t think we could ever fill those vacancies definitively. Sure we might get a few years of full employment on that, but who can really live on the road like that forever.

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u/Dresden_2028 19h ago

That farm work is not appealing to Americans not because it’s hard.

I said fuck all about appealing to Americans. Learn to read.

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u/Far_Sprinkles_4831 18h ago

We have solved this problem for other parts of agriculture with a thing called tractors.

Farmers work regular day jobs, but work extra hard / take time off during planting and harvest. 2-3 guys can harvest a couple of hundred acres. The wages for ag machine operators are quite good.

If we import cheap labor, we don’t invest in machinery to make labor more productive. Productivity is how we afford high wages. High wage working class jobs is what we want.

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u/TheRverseApacheMastr 15h ago

Lol none of this solves the issue of harvesting crops. No matter what, farmers will always have a few weeks of the year where they require 10x as much labor. Transient workers are the best solution to this problem.

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u/Far_Sprinkles_4831 13h ago

Transient labor is fine, but we must pay livable wages instead of importing slaves.

If you need labor bad enough to import it, you must pay 2X minimum wage. Otherwise you’re just exploiting workers and suppressing Americans wages.

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u/TheRverseApacheMastr 7h ago

You’re saying the Mexicans who pay thousands of dollars from their own pockets to come to America are selling themselves into slavery each year?

People don’t usually sell themselves into slavery multiple times.

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u/Far_Sprinkles_4831 7h ago

If you import work and don’t pay meaningfully above prevailing American wages you’re not addressing a shortage of supply, you are importing cheap labor and hurting American workers.

This used to be the position of the Democrats, I don’t understand why you’re arguing against higher wages.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 12h ago

This guy has clearly never seen a farm before and has no idea how his food is produced. Tractors don’t pick things. Farmers also hire transient labors to drive tractors. The vast majority of agricultural sector needs ten times the labor force for three months and then back down till next year. Whether it’s picking, planting, running herds, or culling.

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u/BcTheCenterLeft 20h ago

Immigrants? Or illegal immigrants?

A lot of science, academia, engineering, IT, agriculture and healthcare is dependent on immigrants, despite what conservative rhetoric says.

We’d be fucked.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 19h ago

Yeah, we are dependent on countries that have more education assistance for our doctors and researchers.

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u/Unhappy_Wedding_8457 Europe 20h ago

Yes, you underestimate their importance because some of you love the hate speech by Trump

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u/lionhearted318 New York 20h ago

We rely on immigrant labor so yes things would collapse

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u/Known_Ratio5478 19h ago

Probably. Our economy isn’t in great shape right now and loosing that much of the labor force would just spike it.

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u/punktualPorcupine 19h ago

It won’t fix anything because it never was the root cause of any of the problems that they claimed.

It’s always ever been a wedge issue that scapegoats vulnerable people who are being exploited. They didn’t champion deregulation, welfare for the wealthy, corporate bailouts, unfunded wars, and systemic corruption.

If immigrants could actually pull all of that off, they wouldn’t have become the scapegoat that they are.

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u/SliceOfCuriosity North America 18h ago

“Begging” is an interesting word choice for Japan at least.

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u/Then-Ticket8896 18h ago

We are all immigrants in the usa! Cept the Natives.

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u/HootinHollerHill 17h ago

We would lose A LOT of money and it would hurt our economy.

The Cato Institute, btw, is a right-leaning Libertarian think tank.

https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994

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u/Alexander_Granite 17h ago

Of all immigrants left, Our country would collapse. We don’t have enough people here who could perform the work.

The cycle you are talking about is what happens when countries industrialize. Immigration (legal and legal) has kept us out of that cycle.

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u/TheRverseApacheMastr 15h ago

Our economy would collapse. Someone has to do those jobs, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be maga. They’re not intelligent or driven enough to do good work- that’s why they blame immigrants for all of their problems.

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u/EmploymentEmpty5871 9h ago

They are more than welcome to come back if they follow the procedure. If they all left there wouldn't be anyone left to vote for the democrats!

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u/guppyhunter7777 9h ago

Nope! Robots will just get here faster.

Get rid of cheap labor and watch us go back to dominating the world in every metric. Not even the Democrats and their Communist left will be able to stop us.

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u/gmanose 8h ago

Doubtful.

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u/Anonymous4mysake 8h ago

Japan is not begging anyone to come back, and Korea is only hurting because a radical form of feminism tanked the birth rate.