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There is plenty of demand for unskilled labor in the USA, just look at the farm industry (especially fruits and vegetables) or in other areas (landscaping). Most USA citizens, however, aren't keen on working long hours, in back-breaking conditions, for low pay. And so the migrants come to fill those roles.

If we had better pay and working conditions for those industries, more citizens would take those jobs, and there'd be less for illegal immigrants.

But there was such a stink about raising the minimum wage... I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. No one cares about the farm workers it seems.

>There is plenty of demand for unskilled labor in the USA, just look at the farm industry (especially fruits and vegetables) or in other areas (landscaping). Most USA citizens, however, aren't keen on working long hours, in back-breaking conditions, for low pay. And so the migrants come to fill those roles.

This is a microcosm of moving a factory to China. It's not that no Americans are willing to do those jobs, it's that companies hire illegal immigrants instead because they'll work for sub-minimum-wage and never contact the Labor Board about anything because they fear deportation. Illegal immigrants are also unlikely to complain about under-the-table cash payments that allow the employer to skirt tax law.

I have direct, personal knowledge of an establishment in middle America, in a place that doesn't have many undocumented immigrants, that routinely turns away American teenagers seeking employment because they'd rather pay illegal immigrants $2/hr and never have to worry about overtime.

>But there was such a stink about raising the minimum wage... I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. No one cares about the farm workers it seems.

It's funny you mention minimum wage and migrant workers in the same comment because an artificially high minimum wage is precisely what creates a market for underground labor. Employers are willing to pay because it's much cheaper for them; migrants, but not Americans, are willing to work in bad conditions for well below the minimum wage because without a SSN, under-the-table wages are their only way to make money, and if the authorities find out about them (e.g. during the course of investigating a complaint to the state's labor board), they may end up deported.

Yes, so part of all this is that we need to do a better job of enforcing the existing labor regulations. But the businesses don't want that, they don't want more oversight and investigation.

> And with all the companies of the world racing towards robotic labor and domain applied machine learning, the kinds of US manufacturing job growth here will be few, high paying, and highly technical. But these innovations will mean net fewer manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing may go up.

> And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.

> These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.

You've pointed out that automation, particularly of the trucking industry, has the potential to lead to extraordinary job loss.

I agree that automated cars are the future, and I look forward to the day when all cars on the road are automated.

There's also an extraordinary amount of money to be made in this space. But it's likely going to be made by private companies.

If there were a way that workers (rather than capital investors) could primarily reap the financial benefits of this new technology, I would think that would help ease the job phase-out.

Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect worker-owned cooperatives to catch up to those private companies at this point. But could there be an alternate way?

I wonder if the federal government could do something similar to the auto-company bailouts of a few years back.

It essentially purchased shares of the companies, and then later sold them at a profit.

I wonder if it might somehow institute a way to purchase shares of automated-trucking companies on behalf of truck drivers, so that when automated trucking causes job loss, the truck drivers would have a cushion of investment income. Perhaps it could be on a subsidization basis, where the government matches investments.

There are probably terrible problems with that idea. Just spitballing. But I don't want to say, "meh, welfare" until more creative solutions have been exhausted.

The argument could be made to role back the clock make import tariffs very high and limit automation. If I'm unskilled why would I not join a political revolt to limit the effects of my future irrelevance.

If you're an unskilled and undemanded worker, you cannot simply join a political revolt in <one> nation. Every major company in the world is racing for robotic manufacturing and machine learning-applied services and products.

A robotic future is very amenable to elite interests in all corners of the globe.