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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

Well, I'll venture into non-pc territory here, but for some reason immigrants do not seem to have the same homelessness problem, and undocumented workers can work for much less than Americans.

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It may seem that way, but at least here in the UK homelessness is a huge problem in the immigrant community. It is virtually invisible though. You can get kicked out of the UK as a migrant (even from the EU) for being homeless, so keeping a low profile is essential.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/05/st-mungos-ho...

https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/jan/10/migran...

That's because undocumented workers live in undocumented housing which is to say illegally subdivided dwellings that people who aren't part of that community will not have access to even if they wanted to live in a fire trap.

Yes, it seems that our legislation on wages and housing make it harder for citizens to have a home than it is for undocumented immigrants.

I think this has more to do with a "social safety net" than minimum wage. Immigrants often come to the U.S. knowing other immigrants who are already here. This network of friends and family help them get on their feet. They have a community of people to help them when funds are tight. A couch to sleep to on if you can't make rent, an extra plate at dinner if you don't have enough for groceries this week. Many Americans, particularly those who wind up homeless, don't have any sort of safety net beyond what the government provides. Which is to say, almost nothing.

There are already a lot of homeless people working minimum wage jobs. Check any construction site. What's the point of a job if it can't even put a roof over your head?

The problem is a lack of social safety nets and a minimum wage not indexed for inflation, not government regulation against squalor.

It could be both/and instead of either/or. The other angle is we as a society have given up on personal responsibility for each other (i.e. lack of social safety net), and instead look for help from big government, which is notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable.

Government is the framework through which we help each other. My tax money goes in, social services should come out. I will not comment on the unfounded generalization ("notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable"). Government is not perfect, but it is not what you describe.

I would like to ask the parent comment if he thinks there is a more efficient way of managing society and all it's people.

Actually, lets start with defining what "efficient" actually means in this context? That the goverment spends little money? That it is able to do it's duties effectively?

When you write immigrants do you mean undocumented immigrants? It's confusing because your next clause is about undocumented workers so we the reader are left unclear.

My personal experience just from San Jose is there are a lot of immigrant homeless from southeast Asia, Mexico, and central America, it just depends on what neighborhood one visits.

Also, people who actually interviewed homeless, found something different from your speculation (I am assuming you didn't actually talk to a lot of homeless people), this story is just Los Angeles but there were a lot of other news stories and it's obviously an issue because the federal government made undocumented immigrants not eligible for federal aid in 1996.

https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/07/14/62582/immigrants-a-larg...

But they usually don't. They work harder, longer, and more efficiently than most americans and there's just as many people paying them fair wages as not. Also, when you have 6 working people in a house, it's a lot easier to justify the costs. How many roommates do you have working full time jobs and contributing to everything in the house?

They're not more efficient. It's a combination of willingness to work for less, longer hours to make up for it, and pooling resources with extended families that enables them to get by

If you've ever worked in the trades, you'd know this is untrue. In America, $$$ is everything and jobs go to the lowest bidders.

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