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Comment by bruceb | Hacker News Reader

From the paper: new arrivals created winners and losers in the native population and among existing immigrant workers, reducing the wages of low-skilled natives to some degree

What the MSM buries, immigration is a mixed bag, immigrants are not a magical people that always benefit citizens in the US. Of course on the negative side, Americans in the most vulnerable position take the hit.

One can be pro immigration but acknowledge this, and advocate for policies that encourage high skilled immigration.

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labor doesn't exist in vacuum either, low skill immigration lowers wages up the chain. In the past people could earn a good living right out of high school. Now more people have to take out loans, go to college, and then there's more people competing for those "high-skill" jobs, plus a mountain of debt on their backs

I know older people who made $30/hr out of high school at local factories with full benefits thanks to unions in the 70s and 80s. Illegal immigration was used to break those unions and today those jobs pay $10-15/hr with no benefits

Except that you don't need illegal immigration to reduce labour costs since you can just outsource work overseas or have legal immigrants do the work.

The biggest reason why wages have gone down has been the decline in union membership since it is only through collective bargaining that you can force wage rises.

So what was it that made unions in these now low-paying jobs vanish? What enabled companies to say "we're going to drastically drop wages" and made unions unviable? How did America, seemingly within the span of years, end up with a tremendous number of jobs that "no American wanted to do"--jobs that Americans did and earned living wages for, for many, many years?

>it is only through collective bargaining that you can force wage rises.

Or when demand for labor outstrips supply, as in tech (for the moment).

You can’t force wage rises across an economy. There’s only so much productivity to go round, only 100% of the pie. Higher wages for unionised industries come at the price of higher prices for those who consume the products of those industries.

On a less theoretical point the US and Switzerland both have much lower unionisation than comparable countries and are much richer. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, none look good compared to their richer, more unionised neighbour.

>decline in union membership since it is only through collective bargaining

because illegal immigration destroys any negotiating power of unions. You can't go on strike when there are millions of illegals that will take that job

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