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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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A LOT of Immigrants and Illegals in the US are very pro-Trump. I spoke with a few in my old neighborhood to get their take.
They said that the government didn't worry them because it wasn't that far off from where they came from. They felt elitism created niches where someone knowledgeable could profit. Party of the entrepreneurs and all.
Two said they didn't want any more immigrants here, they felt pressure from the incoming immigrants to take their places and out-compete them for work.
Because this was the last trump presidency, there was less deportation talking. I'm sure that gave some concern, but If I had to guess based on their psyche, I'd say they expected the deportation to lighten the low-hanging fruit and take the pressure off their own jobs at the same time, expecting them would just be ok because they were always ok.
Works even for inmigrants
I get the concept of the meme. There are a lot of people out there 'worried' about immigrants taking their (absolutely safe, no fucking way they are going to get that job) jobs
However, fresh immigration does drive down the pay for trade work in areas where immigrants are skilled. Bricklayers, Drywallers, Painters, and Guys slinging up ductwork are getting paid peanuts.
Immigrants coming in do compete for the jobs other immigrants already hold. Any if their status is in question, they'll work even cheaper.
That's not the concept of the meme, you have 100% missed the point. Or rather, that's expressed in the meme. Yes, "foreigner" would want a cookie which the white guy has. But your conception is still that they're fighting over that one cookie, while the rich dude is actually hoarding all the cookies. You have fully fallen for the propaganda.
-proceeds to not understand the concept of the meme and repeat provably false anti-immigration talking points-
Is this the literacy crisis everyone is talking about? Chat, are we cooked?
Yes, you're cooked.
Cookied.
Any research into immigrants’ impact on economy has found that they benefit the local economy. Moreover when immigrants are picked up by ICE, e.g., during Obama presidency, research also found that jobs didn’t increase and incomes were stagnant.
Check out this book, if you want to look at the research yourself: The Truth About Immigration by Zeke Hernandez
From the excerpt:
Skeptics fear that newcomers compete economically with locals because of their similarities and fail to socially assimilate because of their differences. You'll see that it's exactly the opposite: newcomers bring enduring economic benefits because of their differences and contribute positively to society because of their similarities.
Obviously, they're filling jobs that are hard and undesirable. They're filling those jobs often at rates far below the actual value because of their status. It's like a relaxed version of slave labor. They live together near poverty, doing better than where it was where they came from, and the local economy thrives because the people paying them are making tons of money and spending it locally. Then there's always the local service economy because they have to eat, rent, and have personal care.
It would be great if they had fast tracks toward citizenship and made a livable wage. But then the farmer employing them wouldn't have as many people on staff.
Let's just be realistic about one thing, there will always be fresh immigration and you will never see all 20million undocumented people deported.
The problem is that people who told you to be worried about immigrants are using your fear to keep them as an 'illegal' underclass. If they were just accepted as human beings and given the same legal rights and protections as everyone else, they too would have to be paid above minimum wage. They couldn't be forced to work crazy hours for fear of deportation. You would have more people able to join your unions and make your attempts at collective bargaining stronger.
So the answer to your concerns, if genuine, is to stop demonizing these people and start the process of giving them all documentation.
funny enough, I covered those points in the same manner you mentioned in another post.
https://lemmy.zip/post/31282360/16396674
So do you support giving them citizenship, or are you advocating that we continue to allow the farmer to exploit these people?
fuck slavery, give them citizenship
And therein lies the problem. "It's always been good for me so the suffering of others doesn't bother me."
That lies at the root of most of our problems. There are more than enough resources to support everyone at a reasonable level if they were distributed fairly. People with empathy think that's the way it should be. People without it are happy to have everyone else suffer as long as they benefit. Our political system, our press, and large parts of our cultural heritage all favor the latter.
How can anyone think that a few people having billions of dollars is reasonable in a world where there is hunger, homelessness, and lack of medical care?
So what you're saying is mentally they were already republicans in that they had the "fuck you I got mine" mindset.
Yes, unfortunately, a lot of the rhetoric resonated with them. I pondered trying to reason them out of it. After poking around a bit, it seems like it's part of their social integration. They took a chance, made it in, and worked hard for what they had. It was like a survival instinct to beat out the competition without empathy. I don't even know how to argue against that.