{"id":632,"date":"2014-02-02T20:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T20:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/more-on-immigration-and-globalization.html"},"modified":"2014-02-02T20:54:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T20:54:00","slug":"more-on-immigration-and-globalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/more-on-immigration-and-globalization.html","title":{"rendered":"More on immigration – and globalization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Three more thoughts on immigration, all connected to the issues of labor force.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

(I haven\u2019t really\u00a0written about the cultural issues \u2014 concerns that Mexicans, for instance, lack a sufficient commitment to the value of education, or that integration into American, and English-speaking,\u00a0society will not follow the path of prior waves of immigration due to the proximity to Mexico combined with sheer large numbers, as well as increased accommodation of non-English speakers \u2014 \u201cpress 2 for Spanish\u201d.\u00a0 These questions are, at this point, somewhat speculative and I don\u2019t really have any good ideas on this topic.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 A reader highlighted the fact that Canada encourages immigration, at least of high-skilled individuals, to a far greater degree than we do.\u00a0 I tried to hunt around on the web for some useful information on the degree to which Canada has issues with immigrants reducing wages for the existing population, or with low-skilled immigrants in general \u2014 and exhausted my attention span on this one.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I did read an article, which I can\u2019t find any longer, highlighting the fact that Canada has a below-replacement birth rate, and that their immigration policy is, in part, intended to keep the population stable, or growing slightly.\u00a0 I also ran across a pro-illegal immigrant group in Canada, No One Is Illegal, which pretty much advocates immigration for anyone and everyone, \u201cregularization\u201d for \u201cnon-status individuals\u201d (including immediate access to all social welfare programs).\u00a0 Their platform is here<\/a>, for what it\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n

And \u2014 to pull in my experiences in Germany again \u2014 one of my favorite shows there was called \u201cMein Neues Leben\u201d \u2014 My New Life \u2014 and each episode profiled a family moving overseas. Doctors were common emigrants, due to the comparatively low wages, and Canada, especially\u00a0western Canada (e.g., Alberta)\u00a0was a popular destination, for people with all kinds of occupations, for instance, truck driver.\u00a0I imagine that there was heavy recruiting especially in\u00a0areas\u00a0booming due\u00a0to the oil economy.<\/p>\n

In any event, Canada does emphasize high-skilled immigration much more than we do \u2014 and especially given that we\u2019re contemplating legalizing a whole slew of non-skilled immigrants.\u00a0 Their philosophy is that high-skilled workers benefit the economy; ours is \u2014 well, I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 To hear the politicians, our philosophy is that we\u2019re wealthy enough to be able to hire low-wage workers to do various and sundry low-paid jobs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 \u00a0On guest workers:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an easy way to tell if there\u2019s a labor shortage in a particular industry:\u00a0 if the wages in a particular field consistently, for a number of years, rise at a level significantly higher than the average wages in the country, then there\u2019s a labor shortage.\u00a0 Wages for low-skilled work in the U.S. has stagnated or declined = no labor shortage.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Not in such fields as roofing, where it\u2019s now a given, in our area at least, that the roofing crew won\u2019t speak English.\u00a0 Not in such businesses as housecleaning, where I hired a maid service for a short time a number of years ago, and was uncomfortable with women who didn\u2019t speak English and seemed barely literate cleaning my home.\u00a0 Nor in yard work, where I was surprised at how inexpensive it was to hire a landscape service, compared with the rates your typical \u201cteen boy with a lawnmower\u201d would have charged back in the day.\u00a0 (We don\u2019t actually have a landscape service \u2014 we did briefly but I didn\u2019t like the fact that I was paying for likely illegal false-ID workers and my husband didn\u2019t like the fact that they mowed every week, whether it needed it or not, or even if it would harm the lawn to be mowed mid-summer.)<\/p>\n

Is there a labor shortage in agricultural work?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 This is one area where I find it particularly disturbing to say that \u201cAmericans can\u2019t cut it.\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re too soft?\u00a0 Is it congenital?\u00a0 Cultural?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s the issue that highly-seasonal work is highly undesirable.\u00a0 And beyond that, our unemployment and welfare system is dysfunctional, so that\u00a0some people are indeed\u00a0worse off taking temporary employment than having no job at all, and others of the unemployed are comfortable enough with whatever government benefits they\u2019ve got that the hard work of harvesting isn\u2019t worth it.\u00a0 Could farmers recruit Americans, if they improved working conditions and pay?\u00a0 Maybe \u2014 the problem at this point is that, having been hiring illegal workers for so long that to suddenly pay American market wages would be significantly disruptive.<\/p>\n

Quite some time ago I read an article that described a protest by farmworkers against mechanization of the harvesting process.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t find anything about this just now but it seems to me that the workers were trying to persuade consumers to support continued hand-harvest by the dual claim that hand-harvested tomatoes (or whatever it was, but I think it was tomatoes) were of better quality, and that the tomato-harvesting jobs should be preserved (even if those jobs were filled by illegal workers).<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 The big picture:\u00a0 immigration, globalization, the labor force, and the job market.<\/p>\n

I had said in my prior post that I tended to view limited immigration, especially limited low-wage immigration, as a way of mitigating the impact of globalization on American workers, because, though, when taken as a whole, globalization benefits the American economy, low-skilled workers have been left behind \u2014 there are all too many instances of former factory workers now trapped in some retail job.\u00a0 Yes, in general, the whole point of globalization is that, in general, the American workforce has become more skilled and better able to take on the high-value jobs and leave the low-skilled jobs \u2014 such as basic manufacturing \u2014 to workers elsewhere.\u00a0 But it\u2019s still the case that there are workers who have been left behind, and who, for multiple reasons, can\u2019t be expected to get those high-skill jobs that were expected to replace the low-skill factory jobs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the labor market is not fixed \u2014 a woman who enters the workforce doesn\u2019t displace some young man just joining the workforce.\u00a0 A 65-year-old who continues to work doesn\u2019t take a job away from a young person.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t a 1 to 1 correspondence.\u00a0 The economy, and the number of jobs, expands.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t magically expand sufficiently rapidly and seamlessly to employ everyone who wants a job, and to meet everyone at the skill level they possess.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Globalization, large-scale immigration, automation\/mechanization\/computerization have all impacted the job market, and we don\u2019t really understand the long-term impact.\u00a0 Sure we can gripe that the unemployment rate is due to the recession, or to the uncertainties of Obamacare, or increased labor costs.\u00a0 But at the same time, there have also been jobs created that really shouldn\u2019t have been \u2014 the increased number of workers whose jobs are dedicated to compliance with regulation, accounting rules, the sustainability jobs, etc.\u00a0 The teachers hired out of the unproven conviction that low student: teacher ratios are the answer.\u00a0 The layers of security (TSA, school security guards, etc.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n

What will the economy, the job market look like in, say,\u00a0a decade?\u00a0 What other jobs will be automated?\u00a0 Will we have the mechanical harvesters, the robotic lawn-mowers, the mechanical helpers in nursing homes, etc.?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And what jobs will exist then that we haven\u2019t really conceived of now?\u00a0 So far as I can tell from my own town, the biggest growth industry is fitness studios of various kids \u2014 yoga, boot-camp training, etc.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But these transitions will be tremendously disruptive, with winners and losers in the US and elsewhere.\u00a0 I admit, I\u2019m a winner in the new global economy, a knowledge worker (along with hubby) getting paid well.\u00a0 But I have three boys.\u00a0 Will they be winners or losers?\u00a0 And we need to think about what the right actions are to mitigate the harm the losers experience.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three more thoughts on immigration, all connected to the issues of labor force.\u00a0 (I haven\u2019t really\u00a0written about the cultural issues \u2014 concerns that Mexicans, for instance, lack a sufficient commitment to the value of education, or that integration into American, and English-speaking,\u00a0society will not follow the path of prior waves of immigration due to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMore on immigration - and globalization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Three more thoughts on immigration, all connected to the issues of labor force.  (I haven't really written about the cultural issues -- concerns\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/more-on-immigration-and-globalization.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More on immigration - 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