A) are happy to put up with what is a luxurious salary for back home, but barely liveable locally
Or B) don't have a choice once they're in, since they practically become indentured servants
In the Netherlands, no dutchie wants to work construction for example, because immigrants from Eastern Europe often take under-the-table deals where they get paid drastically less than what a Dutchie would command, though still much higher than any job they'd get back home. The same happens everywhere.
The answer is NOT to bring the country down by mass-importing low skilled workers, but by forcing these hugely profitable companies to actually invest in the country and its citizens by paying all employees as it should.
In theory, yes, but I know a decent number of my own countrymen (Serbians) that most definitely aren't legally employed in NL, but they're still working construction. It's vile, but it is what it is. (Not them, the companies are vile for what they're doing, the workers are simply surviving however they can)
And these jobs are usually picking strawberries out in the rural sections or working for Amazon at some industrial estate that doesn't have public transit late at night.
My great grandparents came to this country as low skilled workers. I work with a second generation computer programmer whose parents came as unskilled workers. I know a guy from Guatemala who cleans houses and put his three kids through college. He just about explodes with pride when he talks about his kids.
Not everyone shares your views.
Yup. A lot the cheap fruit + veg in the EU is thanks to back-breaking work by immigrants and the farm owners breaching their human and labour rights..
Who do you think is picking the fruit in the massive green house of southern spain? Not well-paid Spaniards I'll tell you - https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/agricultura...
There are plenty of immigrants working under the table. And there are plenty of employers willing to hire them.
We do have it both ways.
Meanwhile the laborer was probably told all their life they don’t have what it takes, either explicitly or not, and that thinking held them back their entire life. Why try hard in school if I am “not smart”? Why try and go to college if I can’t pay for it? Why not just do what my neighbor or my uncle does that I know is possible? Many people need to be reminded that everything is possible if they aren’t dissuaded by unhelpful ideas or people.
Anyone can do anything if they believe enough..
It is a nice sentiment and I cling to it myself more often than not, because there is something soothing about it. The unfortunate reality, however, is that being forced onto thing for which I have no predisposition, is, uhh, counterproductive at best.
In short, I disagree with pre-supposition that your position requires ( we are all amorphous blobs that can be molded into whatever with sufficient amount of force ). And that is before we get to the question of whether it is even worthwhile to teach a kid with down syndrome calculus? Not possible. Worthwhile.
<< Many people need to be reminded that everything is possible if they aren’t dissuaded by unhelpful ideas or people.
No. People need to understand themselves. They need to experience their limits and then cater to their strengths and weaknesses accordingly. It is unhelpful to think that billions people on this planet are interchangeable cogs. We are not.
I am extremely unlikely to ever be like Georgi Gerganov. I simply do not believe I have the brain capacity needed.
It is fine to aspire, but I am not changing the world tomorrow.
Inappropriate dissuasion surely exists, but you don't help your case by making such claims.
It's the exact opposite. The slavery is being trapped in Cuba which the person decided to leave by their own free will to make it to America, where working a terrible factory job is going to make them ten times richer than they would have been otherwise.
Is you being uncomfortable with this idea actually more important than giving that person a shot to work himself to a normal American life within two decades and certainly for their kids?
It’s insane that the supposedly progressive faction of American politics is arguing in favor of a system that amounts to a modern version of indentured servitude and systemic violation of labor rights, all for the sake of cheaper fruit and meat.
And does "broadly unproductive" have a specific meaning, too?
If supply for labor goes a bit down, wages will increase a bit, and then companies will be incentivized to replace these bad jobs with automation.
Those jobs going away, and wages going up, is a good thing not a bad thing.
As few people should be doing those bad jobs as possible, and for the ones that do them, they should be paid more.
This elitist attitude that low-paid workers are "unskilled" workers is bullshit and needs to go.
Now, let's take the average farmer, orchard worker, construction worker, and then chuck them into a software job. They wouldn't know where to start and wouldn't get anywhere without the same educational basics that 99% of developers have gone through. That's not elitist, it's just reality.
So, there's a clear distinction to be made and it's not necessary to water down every word in the English language because we're afraid of hurting someone's feelings.
I wouldn't call "low-skilled" workers _unproductive_ per se, and personally think they're incredibly valuable, but economically, the cost/difficulty of replacing a "low-skilled" worker is relatively low: it's a lot easier to find a replacement farmhand than it is a replacement farmer that manages the farm itself.