• Nougat@fedia.io
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    3 days ago

    I have a problem with this:

    “Undocumented immigrants also play a large role in food processing,” Krugman writes. “For example, they account for an estimated 30 to 50 per cent of workers in meat-packing.”

    The predictable effect, Krugman says, would be less food production and distribution, unless employers started paying far higher wages to attract new native-born workers. That in turn would boost the cost of groceries, when current prices are already too high.

    The plain and obvious subtext here is that we’re all exploiting undocumented workers already. I wish that when one of these articles talks about the “predictable effect” of deportations, that that would be mentioned out loud.

    • SquatDingloid@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Throughout the last 30-50 years Democrats are exclusively the ones who acknowledge this problem and push legislation to get them on naturalized citizenships, while also giving the subsidies needed for farmers to pay their workers fair wage.

      Republicans block these bills every single time.

      Putting people in camps is not a good solution to any problem.

      • kreskin@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        You’d think that’d be true judging by the modern republican party, but IRCA in 1986 under Reagan was about the only large scale amnesty program ever done in the US. It legalized 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, which was about 75% of the undocumented at the time. It required that they pay back taxes, had been here 4 years, and had “good moral character”, evidenced by no criminal history. Reagan was well aware of how critical immigrant labor was.

        Modern dems talk about these issues but are either unable to get it done or think along much more limited goals. The Dream act and then daca were targetted at minors who entered the US undocumented, not the general undocumented immigrant population.

        Reagan also appointed the first woman, Sandra Day Oconnor to the supreme court. He was full of paradoxes (he hated unions) and his personal life was an awful mess, but in some areas he’d be to the left of Biden.