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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

>undocumented workers [are responsible for the productivity drop]

I am confused by this assertion. If they are undocumented, wouldn't they be excluded in the stats? And if they aren't included in the stats, shouldn't we expect an artificial increase in worker productivity? If there is a 4:1 undocumented to documented ratio, then that 1 documented person will get "credit" for the work of 5 people! Even if 4 of those people are relatively unskilled, that's still a big boost.

My initial thought about this is that productivity declines because workers wait around a lot, and they wait around because of ballooning administrative overhead. This would also be consistent with what we know about state of the medical industry and academia during the same time period.

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"Undocumented" means they lack citizenship or a valid visa. It doesn't mean they aren't calculated in productivity statistics. Many undocumented workers even pay taxes to the IRS, are counted in censuses, and more.

Undocumented workers show up in many statistics. "Undocumented" doesn't literally mean that there is nothing recorded about this person, it means they do not have permission to work in the US.

I'm inclined to take your side on this. By virtue of being undocumented, they should be boosting the perceived productivity, not dampening it.

If I was to steelman the idea, though; I would guess that removing incentives in the form of higher pay will lower the contributions of everyone involved?

If your labor hours are billable why on Earth should undocumented in this context mean unaccounted for?

I think I understand the question. The disagreement seems to be what "undocumented worker" here means.

If you think it means the worker is on the books, but is not a citizen, then you get to your question. It should be roughly the same.

If you think it means that the worker was off the books, regardless of citizenship, then you arrive at the other.

My consideration is if I am a cleaner and get my child to help out on a few jobs, my child will not be a documented worker and it will be a transparent boost to my productivity. Indeed, many subcontractors and migrant workers will use family as a cheap way to boost productivity so that they can take more jobs.

I grant that construction may land on the other interpretation. There are usually more rules for that kind of work. (Though, in rural areas? Not sure.)

Not necessarily. Undocumented doesn’t mean “excluded from the stats”, it means “doesn’t have a valid work visa or social security number”.

I’m not sure if something similar happens in construction, but I’ve heard that in the landscaping business a supervisor will just pull up to a Home Depot with a pickup truck, and there’ll be a bunch of people waiting around, and they’ll go “Who wants $X for Y hours?” And then 4 or 5 guys get in the back of the truck and they head to the work site.

In a situation like that, you’re probably keeping track of how many people you employ each day so you can figure out how many you need for future projects, but you’re not gonna be able to produce a list of social security numbers if someone asked.

Just speculating, but the number of people who are here legally but do not have a work permit is probably not significant in the construction business. Getting a long term visa requires so much effort and money, that it’s likely not feasible for this group of workers.

"Undocumented" is the current preferred euphemism for "illegal immigrant".

"Illegal immigrant" is a dysphemism for "cheap labor".

Or, "illegal immigrant" is a sometimes-used dysphemism for "undocumented immigrant". I'm not aware of any other class of people who break a law who are called "illegal" as a result; it's a rather dehumanizing impulse.

What part of "illegal" or "immigrant" implies a person is not a human?

It's just shorthand for "person who has immigrated illegally" anyway, arguing over these words is a distraction. You have any solutions?

Yes, fix legal immigration:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...

The current legal immigration levels are way too low, hence people breaking the law trying to establish roots in the country (or fleeing persecution elsewhere). We used to call people foreign-born instead of illegal, and not care about their immigration status at all. Oh, wait - that's when the Europeans were immigrating: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...

If many many people are breaking a law (i.e. jaywalking), one should consider whether the law is actually reasonable in the first place.

People refer to other people who break the law by the law they broke all the time.

Thieves, murders, fraudsters, etc

Illegal immigrant doesn't seem especially derogatory for someone who illegally immigrated.

I think it would be better to focus on the fact their felony crime rate is far below the native population than arguing over a pretty tame word used to describe them.

It's interesting to see how the language changed over time from "foreign born" to illegal immigrant depending on who was doing the immigrating:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=illegal+immigr...

Look at the amount of legal immigration:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...

There have been plenty of people who have been in this country without appropriate paperwork historically - they were never called illegals (see above). In fact even now people make differentiations between "visa overstayers" and people who snuck across the border, even though both are technically illegal aliens.

I think you don't have to go far to see the implications.

> It's interesting to see how the language changed over time from "foreign born" to illegal immigrant depending on who was doing the immigrating:

1. you seem to be implying that during periods of "white" immigration, americans were fine but the public changed their tune when it became south american/asian. However, irish/italian immigrants also received pushback. Specifically, irish were hated because they were catholic, and itlians weren't considered white back then.

2. You can also flip this around to say that as a society, we've gotten more accurate with our wording. Rather than lumping all immigrants (legal and illegal) into one bucket, we take care to point out that we're only against the illegal type of immigration. That seems like a win to me.

Interestingly enough many (with no claims to majority/minority numbers) "illegal"/migrant workers do have "documents" from what I've seen working in agriculture. The documents are sufficient if you don't look too closely or are not the business owner - speaking from my own experience. These may be cases where the workers are paying taxes etc.

Not sure what kind of documents you are referring to. The I-9 form is very clear about what documents are acceptable. It is not difficult to understand if someone is legally able to work or not.

People may present forged or stolen docs for I-9 purposes.

“Illegal immigrant” is a euphemism for “Illegal alien”. In law these people are called aliens not immigrants. Illegal immigrant is actually an oxymoron

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