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Comment by goodbyesf | Hacker News Reader

> In the meantime, we have labor shortages that could certainly be addressed by more legal immigration

In a country of 330 million people, it's hard to envision us having labor shortages. Do we really have labor shortages or a low wage problem? Also, both legal and illegal immigration addresses labor shortages, if indeed such a thing exists.

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A country of 330 million people involves an economy scaled to support that many people. You either do or do not have the labor force able to deliver necessary services in that economy at a given price point. The number of people we have has very little to do with the underlying problem. If you want to pay $10 for a loaf of sandwich bread and 50% more for elder care, by all means, transition the economy entirely away from immigrant labor. You will have managed to immiserate millions of economic migrants and hundreds of millions of Americans, which is a neat trick for a single intervention.

That’s saying the quiet part out loud—i.e. that the point of mass immigration is to keep wages and thus prices low.

It's not zero-sum. Everyone gets richer in the process, including the immigrants.

Immigration is fuel for growth - it’s America’s secret power

See all those other posts about countries not having enough babies ? The US just imports full grown adults for free

That's dystopian. It's like an industrial farm where the soil has broken down, and you need to buy new seeds and fertilizer every year to keep things going.

It's not at all like that, and it's not at all dystopian. What's dystopian, ironically, is the logic required to see immigration as "dystopian".

Depends on the job.

There are physically demanding low paying work in agriculture for instance that would be challenging to fill at any wage that wouldn't result in sticker shock down the line.

Americans don't want to destroy their back 12 hours a day for a short term job that will need a only a fraction of the labor after harvest is done.

Many other jobs could profitably be automated away or filled by Americans.

I would prefer we accept immigrants because it's the right thing to do and because long term those people and their children will enrich and add value to our society rather than hoping it will do something about the help wanted signs in the service industry.

The United States needs a million electricians

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/20/us-elect...

We have the discussion on HN about how we need skilled workers. It does make the news

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1142817339/america-needs-carp...

Is US willing to pay cushy salaries and provide education to those electricians? Supply and demand and all that jazz.

What ethical framework supports accepting immigration as the "right thing to do"?

“ Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

We have a shortage of people willing to work for terrible wages and no benefits.

But unemployment is at an all time low!!! /s

We've got people purposefully kept at hours less than the amount of hours a company is legally required to provide benefits.

It isn't just that: we have a shortage of well paid people in the trades, which exacerbates our housing shortage as, even if the land and materials were free, it now still costs $2-300k to put up a modern home.

The solution is probably just prefab from a factory in Mexico, but I don't see that as better than just letting in more immigrants.

> even if the land and materials were free, it now still costs $2-300k to put up a modern home

Where do you live that the legal labor costs that much and how big or bespoke of a house are we talking? You can build a new home for 300k in a lot of places with the land included.

Median price in the US as of 2019 was $281,700: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/how-much-does-i...

That's probably for something around 2,000 sq ft (~185 sq m).

Forbes has a handy breakdown by state: https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/contractor/cost-to-b...

That's a good link. If you try to build anything these days, you are paying a lot more than that. $150k in Seattle might barely be enough for a kitchen renovation, renovating a whole house is going to go for $300-400k or so. A new build...here @ $500k (and a lot of that is labor). I bet it is significantly cheaper in the USA south/southwest (due to immigration).

Lowest cost:

   South Dakota - 204.4k
   Kansas - 207.1
   Nebraska - 210.9
   North Dakota - 212.5
   Iowa - 214.0
   Michigan - 216.7
   Indiana - 219.3

Looking at that and the list, I'd hazard ranking is a consequence of the type of housing being predominantly built in the state.

Even build cost per sq ft wouldn't normalize for fixtures and customization.

Labor costs are a huge part of that, and Seattle housing is pretty cheap quality considering that our weather is mellow (townhomes they put up now to sell for $1m would have been fairly affordable 20 years ago, but these developers are barely breaking even because of a labor shortage). Seriously, nothing in them would be considered luxury except maybe the bathroom with a full size shower.

I'm suspicious that the numbers might be still out of date.

> I bet it is significantly cheaper in the USA south/southwest (due to immigration).

If you want to do it illegally, sure. Legal labor (immigrant or not) is most assuredly more expensive almost anywhere in the Southwest, compared to Seattle; and a requirement for anything beyond the most trivial of projects.

There’s a lot of room below the median

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