While some contractors dismiss the plan as political rhetoric, many say they can’t afford to lose more people from an aging, immigrant-dependent workforce still short of nearly 400,000 people.
Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.
Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.
“It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems,” said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor” to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.
The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor”
oh yea, republicans will spend all day whining about “illegals” but not one nanosecond even talking about the CEOs who hire those illegals, giving them a reason to come here in the first place
I’ve made this observation for some time now. Isn’t funny how the industries which hire illegal immigrants are skewed conservative ownership-wise? Construction, roofing, agriculture, trucking, hotels. My belief is that in addition to exploiting division and fear, they want to keep these workers marginalized so they can take advantage of them. Being able to dodge OSHA, medical comp, minimum wage, payroll tax, and so on are all Republican dreams.
sounds a bit like slavery, don’t you think?
Wait until you hear about the prison industrial complex.
I worked with a construction firm that hired undocumented Hispanic laborers. The owner wrapped the semi he used for hauling his offshore race boat in a gaudy Trump themed canvas for the 2016 election.
The dichotomy of man in two sentences.
There have been sections of the border which enacted tough enough policies and technology to actually keep out illegal immigrants. Over time, it cratered the local economies, to the point that politicians got involved and fixed the border patrols back to the insecure way, so that everyone could have a big pool of desperate, vulnerable farm workers again.
Got an article on that? Seems like that would be an interesting read.
This isn’t exactly what the previous comment was talking about, but it’s similar. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers and there’s something similar going on Florida too https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented
These are my go-to articles anytime the subject of undocumented workers comes up. Personally, I think we would go back to the old model. If I remember correctly, the 1930s was when immigration started to be severely restricted; but, before that, temporary workers would come up for a season of employment and then go back home. All of it was done legally. It wasn’t until immigration restrictions were enacted that there was an incentive to stay and move their families into the US.
https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article227483414.html
They’re not exactly the story I was thinking of, but the pattern of actions is generally the same.
Trump. Trump hires illegals too while bitching about them
I seem to remember (but am too lazy to look up) something about Trump using undocumented Polish laborers on a building project, providing no PPE, paid them sub-minimum wage, no overtime. Reported the laborers to INS so they would be deported to avoid getting sued.
Yeah, first year of that sleezey presidency they had position postings for his vineyard looking for migrant workers
Home builders are greasy as shit but I didn’t expect them to say the quiet part out loud.
I used to write project maintenance software for a home builder. Right before I left that gig, the company’s owner got busted banging his son’s wife. Just a little anecdote about a bit of loathsomeness I’ve never encountered anywhere else.
The profit margins on this business were just insane. Like, houses cost between $30 and $40 grand to build (with corners cut in all sorts of ridiculous ways) and sold for $125 to $150 grand.
Man… id love to buy an overpriced house for $100k. Now their like $400k+
Yeah, this was 20 years ago.
Here’s the thing these fucking racist shitbags are not telling you. If the country the illegal immigrants came from won’t take them back then the sending country can do shit all to make them. That teams no deportation. No deportation means indefinite detention. Indefinite detention means free labor. I harbor no illusions that this hasn’t been the plan from the start.
The world is at a tipping point. Do we backslide into slavery and genocide, or do we stand against it? It’s not looking good. I, for one, never thought I would see a time when Americans would so blindly goose-step their way into fascism.
Umm you don’t have to take back your citizens? Are you sure?
I read a great legal comment once about how revoking citizenship sounds cool but is really bad for pretty much exactly this reason. You’re left in this weird legal limbo with no country to go to (in that case to face criminal legal process).
Here in the UK there have been a few cases of people of people who scampered off to join Isis etc who have had their citizenship removed and are unable to return to the country. I’m not a law-knower but I think this is pretty legally iffy, it certainly happens though.
I am 90% sure that was only people with dual citizenship
Most likely. I don’t think you’re allowed to knowingly make a person stateless.
You’re also not allowed to stage a coup after losing an election, but they did that anyway.
Well did they have dual citizenship? That’s different than illegal immigrants who don’t have dual.
It does seem to be debatable in one case - specifically Shamima Begum, at the time she was stripped of citizenship she was apparently entitled to Bangladesh citizenship through her parents (hence why the home secretary felt it was possible) however Bangladesh have said she was never actually a citizen, she’s never been to Bangladesh and they have no intention of giving her Bangladesh citizenship. The courts of appeal in the UK have sided with the former home secretary, however she does appear to be effectively stateless.
In general though, it is understood that a person’s citizenship in the UK cannot be stripped unless they are dual citizens.
From a German perspective you’re almost at the end of your slide.
I’d never thought I’d live (long) after ww2 and experience a similar thing elsewhere during my lifetime. Yet here we are.
Even if Trump doesn’t win (or especially - not meaning he should, though) I assume very bad things coming.
Issues have been ignored for far too long.
That’s because these anti immigrant views aren’t supported by data, or logic, or common sense. It’s not like Americans are lining up to do the jobs immigrants are taking. The US can’t function as a society today without those immigrants. But the right just wants to coddle its racist base with “brown man bad”.
Americans aren’t lining up to do these jobs at low wages, without proper worker protections. Creating a society that depends on a lower tier of people that have fewer rights is seriously fucked up and is not something we should be embracing.
Siding with the rich business owners who are taking advantage of illegal immigrants is extra weird.
Thank you. I’ve always thought it was fucked people used this line of argument. If we can’t build our buildings and clear our own trash? We need an endless stream of low paid poorly treated brown folk to do all those troublesome chores? Seems kinda fucked to me
I’ve always thought it was fucked people used this line of argument.
Nobody is arguing that this is a good arrangement, they’re just saying it’s an arrangement that benefits (typically) conservative business owners who utilize undocumented immigrant labor. Which means mass deportations are probably just Trump pandering to his base and not something he would really do - although there’s no guarantee of that.
Nah, he’d still do it because he’s that much of an evil dumbass.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature
Industrial facilities, particularly in the food processing industry generally have decent wages and worker protections (safety does however vary wildly from plant to plant) but still rely on immigrant labor because those are often the only people willing to work these jobs, so they end up being the only workplaces that cater to hiring immigrants by having the knowledge of how to legally hire a non-citizen or just having Spanish language documentation and translators on hand.
I know this because I currently manage some databases for a contract industrial cleaning company, so I’ve seen the hard data. It’s not a challenge of pay and benefits, but a challenge of “who’s willing to work third shift cleaning cow guts off of a factory floor for $20-25/hr in bumblefuck Kansas?” And the answer is simply people who don’t have better options, and they’re usually either immigrants or felons. The work itself sucks donkeyballs (and would literally if it’s a plant processing donkey meat) so nobody wants to do it
Its also why, if they finish “rounding up” people to deport, they will scapegoat more people to round up to explain why the economy is so broken
Surely we can acknowledge the difference between a person who came to the country legally and someone who illegally crossed the border. It’s not racist to want a functioning border. A huge number of people voting for Trump are immigrants from Latin America themselves, and even they don’t want people illegally entering the country.
Yeah, I think maybe you’re some sleeper account or something : 7mo old account & comments only today with dilute the issue responses. Curious if a human will get assigned extra work to respond to my j’accusal to “refute” it lol
lemm.ee is down, so I’m using one of my many other accounts. But hey, whatever it takes to dismiss the question and throw in an ad hominem instead, right?
This is proof they don’t understand the endgame here. The only (legal) type of slavery left in the United States is prisoner labour. It is not a coincidence that the right wants to make so many things criminal. It’s also not a coincidence they want to keep poor people desperate because it makes them more likely to commit crime. It’s not a coincidence they support minimum sentences.
More crime, more free labour, more for profit prisons selling services…
This is exactly what I’ve been thinking lately. And on top of already existing laws, make new ones that criminalize currently normal things. Hell, the South enacted new laws after slavery ended and only applied them against Black Americans. Why stop there, why not increase penalties for certain crimes from misdemeanors to felonies and make 3 felony convictions mean a life sentence?
The only part I disagree with is the for profit prisons part. 8% of prisoners are in private prisons which is 8% too many, but 92% are in publicly funded and operated prisons. And those publicly operated prisons sell the services of their trapped slave labor for so many more things than stamping license plates or road work. Not only do they fight fires and clean up after natural disasters, they also make kit (armor, helmets) for the armed forces, they pick crops, they manufacture white goods (washing machines, refrigerators)(I can’t find a link specifically mentioning appliances and I’ll update this it I find one), and so much more. Shoot, some cities’ budgets would be blown up if not for the availability of publicly held prison slaves.
8% now. 20 years ago, it was a third of that. If there is profit to be made, profit will be made. It’s also just one small factor in an extremely shitty whole.
The fact prison labour exists at all is an issue. If prisoners truly benefited from it, like a fair wage plus every day reducing their sentence, then I could hold my nose, but as is. Slavery.
Wow, that is pretty dark. If you take that to its logical conclusion, you could even turn parking fines into a slave sentence.
We can and we have for similar crimes. Loitering is a crime only for the poor, and then we send the homeless into camps and jails.
You owned a plant that was previously fine to own? Straight to jail, no questions asked.
It already can.
There are some places where an inability to pay fines, can result in a warrant and imprisonment.
Well if they can keep income inequality growing, there’s a big pool of wage slaves to draw from with much better optics.
And then they turn around and call themselves the party of Lincoln.
They did that in UK. Brexit worked out perfectly, and everyone lived happily ever after. Oh wait… Wrong story. It was a total dumpster fire and now labor shortage is crippling various industries.
It was a bit different. Brexit wasn’t hiring workers for $14/hour because legal residents would be doing the job for $25/hour.
Besides that, we don’t need more houses being built so much as we need a hard cap on any entity owning more than a few rental houses.
Oh we absolutely need more houses being built. That’s not even a question. Sure it would help to also have controls for the amount of properties one entity can hold, but doing that without building more houses would in no way solve the problem
There’s currently 15,000,000 houses in the US that aren’t even being lived in right now. We in no way have to increase the production rate of building more houses in order to house everyone.
And are all those houses in areas where there’s enough jobs to support the people living in them? Are all of those houses in livable condition? Further than that, what makes you think that Society needs one house to one person? If you don’t have a surplus of houses you don’t have the ability to move from one city to the next to pursue new opportunities. You always need a large surplus of houses so that Mobility is possible. So I think you’ll find that when you look a little closer at that number it’s not quite as advantageous as you think.
At the moment, they have trouble filling positions in restaurants and hospitals, because locals aren’t interested in working very hard for hardly any money. Also, all the Polish lorry drivers would need to be replaced by local UK residents, which appears to be harder than expected. (insert pikachu meme here)
So people don’t want to work for a small amount of money, and brexit is being blamed? Because that just sounds like poor people were being taken advantage out out of desperation for a job.
Exactly. Now that easily exploitable people aren’t easily available, the underlying problem becomes more apparent.
The fix to the underlying problem is pay enough money to make people want the job.
You want to be a janitor? “No” You want to be a janitor for $40/hr? “Hell yeah”
The ONY REASON why immigrant labour is needed is because too much of the profits flow to the Parasite Class at the top.
It used to be that America could build affordable family homes for decent-sized families using well-paid American citizens. This was possible because those Americans were actually paid well enough to afford homes of their own; most of the value of their labour actually came back to them. Plus, most building materials weren’t beset by Greedflation and the need to keep obscene amounts of wealth flowing into pockets that were already overstuffed without more wealth than the person could spend in 100 lifetimes.
America could return to that time, where even the lowest-paid workers make enough to be within a stone’s throw of affording their own home. All it takes is a political leader willing to do the politically painful job of taxing the fuck out of the Parasite Class - including treating any loans taken out using stocks as collateral as “income” to be taxed, regardless of the destination of those funds.
That, plus a metric arseload of other things such as making corporate ownership of homes illegal and making “investor ownership” of homes beyond about 3-5 homes similarly illegal. Because not only do these parasites suck up the supply of homes, preventing renters from getting off the rental market, but they are also the primary players jacking up rents to unaffordable levels, seeking to squeeze every possible dollar out of hard-working Americans. Let these parasites find a real job if they want to continue earning money.
That’s a problem across all types of business.
If you are cutting wages or laying off people, there is less overall ability to pay for things. You’re basically cutting your customers ability to pay.
Even if your employees aren’t your target market, they probably buy stuff from the people who are your customers.
This psychotic race to the bottom among business owners is just shooting yourself in the foot with extra steps.
All it takes is a political leader willing to do the politically painful job of taxing the fuck out of the Parasite Class
I don’t think it works that way.
I’m not trying to say that would be a bad thing, it would be great. I think, though, that what really has to happen is strong unions fighting for their fair share.
For as long as people are looking to elect “the leaders” to fix things, things are going to stay unfixed. As soon as they take for themselves the political and economic power, within structures of power that are not political parties, they can have a real seat at the table, instead of finally finding someone else to send on a voyage to the great white father to come back to them with the right caliber of benefits secured.
It’s been happening, the last few years. It’s grand. And obviously, not having political leaders who want to return us to the days of feudalism or Nazi Germany as enforced with terrifying modern technology would be a nice boost to being able to get that done. But I think it has to come from unions and citizen activism in order to really come true in the right way. That’s how it happened back when things really were okay in the country.
I’m not trying to say that would be a bad thing, it would be great. I think, though, that what really has to happen is strong unions fighting for their fair share.
Taxing the fuck out of the parasite class would diminish their ability to crush unions.
Why not pay builders a fair wage then?
It’s certainly not labour costs driving up house prices.
Not always about the wage. You could pay 200k per year and still have trouble finding people willing to climb up on a roof day in and day out.
Especially if they find out that roofer is the fourth-most dangerous job in the U.S.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states
Incidentally, police officer is ranked at 22. Well below garbage collectors (5), delivery drivers (7), or agricultural workers (11).
delivery drivers (7)
I shudder at the thought of driving for work. It’s already so hard to keep up spatial awareness of the crazy drivers for an hour or less. I cannot imagine 8 hours of that.
And on top of all of that, you usually have to provide your own vehicle. Which means you basically drive it to death much earlier than the average lifespan of the car. If we’re talking something like Uber Eats, they don’t even cover your gas.
I cannot imagine it be a worthwhile investment. The only people I know who do Uber are retired and do it out of boredom. Fortunately, I don’t know a single soul who does it for a job (without having another job to do as well).
I don’t know anyone lately, but I know plenty of people who did it when they were younger. Including a trandgender friend who did it for maybe 20 years. I’m guessing she doesn’t have a lot of job opportunities here in Indiana. She’s such an awesome person too.
I know I guy who does Door Dash. He says it let’s him be his own boss where he can work as much or as little as he wants to. And he said he got tired of dealing with the new generation of workers at his old job.
If it works for you, that’s great. But it’s like @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world said, there’s so many cons to work for Uber.
Try 11
There must be a good reason why why family quit 11! I’ll trust their judgement on this one.
Then the wages are still too low…
It really is not that simple.
It really IS that simple. You tell some schmuck off the street “I will pay you $300K a year to climb on roofs and nail down shingles all day.”, you really think they’ll say no? I don’t. Same with retail, same with food service, same with sales, painting, engineering, and more.
Historically underpaying job markets aren’t experiencing a “”““labor shortage””“” from lack of openings or bad press, they’re just finally realizing that paying people like shit then treating them poorly isn’t going to get them more workers.
They’ll say yes. They won’t last long. The churn will be great and then there will be shortage. It really isn’t as simple as pay.
And by that logic no country in the world would have soldiers either.
People have been doing dangerous jobs for pay since the existence of pay. If the pay is right someone will perform your dangerous job. If the payout isn’t worth the risk then they won’t. It’s the free market in action.
The free market currently says that a new home is worth X dollars because of what people are willing to pay vs. the labor going into it. Materials are cheap compared to the work. The rates laborers get paid stem from the free market equilibrium on that. Labor rates go up, house prices go up, home ownership goes down. Builders in the US get about 15% margin on building and selling new homes. You have maybe 10% of wiggle room before the profit in building homes is not worth the effort. So laborers could get paid…10% more at best before home prices go up. That’s not going to attract many more people to offset immigrant labor demand.
I have known enough growers and builders that no matter the pay, people cannot simply will themselves able to do that kind of work. It’s just.Not.That.Simple.
So your solution is an impoverished underclass that cannot escape work no one will do, you are sick.
Not at all.
They will say no especially when they hear his dangerous it is. My uncle fell off the roof and ended up with a hernia. It took forever to do the surgery to fix it. And really, 300k? How expensive do you think that’s going to make a house? As much as I hate the idea there’s only so much that you can charge for something. We’d have to somehow go after the corporation for unprecedented profit in addition to raising wages.
The way I see it, there’s two options:
-
Pay people more. 300k, 400k, 500k, whatever it takes. Surely there’s a number that people would feel is worth the risk. The obvious downside is that increases the cost of construction.
-
Make the process of roofing safer - invent new safety gear or safety practices, automation equipment that can be operated from the ground, introduce legislation that encourages those practices or subsidizes the new equipment. The obvious downside is this requires upfront investment and cooperation between government and industry.
Either way, the current practice of “throw cheap immigrant labor at it until it goes away” is not tenable.
It’s not just “cheap” immigrant labor. Those laborers bring ability that you have a very hard time finding here.
If we ever have a Chernobyl or a Fukushima, it’ll be prisoners and undocumented immigrants cleaning it up.
-
99% of people just don’t want to do the work it’s not a matter of wage and most of the time you get twice the worker when you hire Mexicans just speaking from experience
I guarantee you more people would find themselves wanting to do the work if it paid more.
The great pay exists in some construction sectors. State and Federal work have “wage rates” where laborers, carpenters, operators etc. have a mandatory wage and benefits. On a job I am currently on the laborers are earning $64/hr and our company is having a problem with staffing. Plenty of people want the pay, but as mentioned before, it is really tough work, and the deadlines mean that you can’t fuck the dog. That being said, this work is limited to citizens and monitored closely. I know it is cliche to say “no one wants to work anymore” but as a 30 year old I am one of very few young people I work with. I get it, the work is brutal and you have no energy to have a work life balance at the end of the day.
You see that none of that is a good thing right?
I don’t want to work a job that destroys my work life balance for any pay. Doesn’t matter how much. Nobody should have to give up their life for money.
Young people are more likely to want to take care of themselves and not have the toxic mindset you and I were brought up with. They aren’t just taking it on the chin, or putting in their time, or whatever bullshit platitudes my generation and older like to sling at young workers or those not willing to eat shit for peanuts.
You are just perpetuating that toxic mindset, in servitude of the moneyed class.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing. And it’s easy to say no one should work that hard. I work building emergency bridges on FEMA projects. I assure you it is work worth doing. I personally don’t think I have a toxic mindset about the grind. It’s hard work with good pay, and I find it satisfying. I have spoken to many of my friends who are looking to make more money, and none of them have wanted to give construction a shot. Although I am a woman and therefore most of my friends are women. I understand their aversion to working in a potentially toxic environment. I don’t begrudge them or think they should work as much as I do.
I was responding to the original comment to demonstrate that higher pay exists in construction. It is mostly private construction that does not pay well and keeps the profits solely in the owners pockets.
Thank you for what you do, it’s absolutely necessary and we need people like you. I wouldn’t for a moment say it’s not worth doing.
I don’t blame them for not wanting to do construction. I ran fiber optic cable on poles, underground, into buildings for a long time. Not quite construction, but also not easy work. Pay was terrible, I was young, and they took advantage of me. for almost 10 years. I’ve roofed, I’ve framed, I’ve been a programmer, I’ve been a network engineer. ALL of those jobs were basically the same in that regard, decent pay sure… But the hours required, the recovery I had to go through. Nothing is worth that. I’m sad that I took this long to figure that out, I missed a lot of good times with my kiddo. I can never get that back.
That’s the same thing that’s happening to all of us at this point. There’s NO reason there isn’t enough money in the pipeline to get things built that need to be built, paying people a wage that they can live on, and without eating nearly all of their time ‘off’ work. If you have to take so much time to recover that you feel like it eats into your personal job, your work life balance is way out of wack.
I don’t want to sound like I think your career isn’t valid, or isn’t important. Every single person that’s a part of making our lives work deserves to get paid well. No matter their job. There are so many resources available to the world we could all have better lives, but then a small group of slime would have fewer 0’s in their bank account. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even notice.
To speak to the other side, there are a number of people that thrive in that environment. My dad was one of them. He’s at the end of his life, dying of Parkinson’s and now seeing the relationship I have with my kiddo. I can see the pain in his face. He wants to have had that with me, but decided that money was more important. He’s going to die a multi millionaire, I hope those dollars comfort him.
That took a turn, I’m sorry. But it feels good to get out so I’m leaving it.
The work they do fucking sucks regardless of the pay.
during the 2016 election cycle, the national association of home builders pac gave $361,500 to democrat campaigns and $1,820,000 to republicans (83.4%).
for the current election (reported so far), they are even more unbalanced at 85.9% republican.
[1](https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/national-assn-of-home-builders/C00000901/summary/2024)
remind me again, mr tobin, which political party wants to deport your ‘vital’ workers?
source ↩︎
Pretty much.
I walked by a construction site when I lived in California, I heard everyone speaking Spanish.
I walk by a construction site now that I live in Indiana and I hear… everyone speaking Spanish.
I’m guessing that at least some of them aren’t citizens.
Anytime you come across someone shitting on immigration ask them who built their house.
I’ve been saying this for years, the American dream is subsidized by cheap labor from South of the border. Without them we would be doing far worse
Not to mention illegal immigrants are half as likely to commit crime as American citizens
Not to mention illegal immigrants are half as likely to commit crime as American citizens
It’s like Umberto said in The Ranch: “We live in fear everyday. 5 miles over the speed limit and it could ruin our life”
“We live in fear everyday. 5 miles over the speed limit and it could ruin our life”
Almost every time I was stuck behind a slow person on the L.A. freeway, they were Latino. I guessed that was why back then and I still do.
When you turn people into contraband, those people drive like they have contraband in the car.
Don’t need to be a citizen to pass eVerify. I’m working with six natural born citizens, one naturalized citizen, three green card holders, three work visa holders and a “dreamer”
We also wouldn’t have, you know, food, since agriculture and meat-packing are heavily dependent on undocumented immigrants and almost every kitchen in every restaurant in the country is staffed with undocumented immigrants. I want to think that the importance of food and housing would make Republicans not actually do this, but you never know with these crazy fuckwits. Perhaps they think child and prison labor would make an adequate replacement.
Translation: Builders would rather go broke than pay anyone a living wage.
Almost all trump related policies will drive up costs for the consumer. He’s only worried about lining the pockets of his rich friends, not making daily life for the average family more affordable
it doesnt matter. even if trump get elected and all those predicted bad things happen, republicans have no hesitate to spin those onto some leftist/wokish things.
By saying that, aren’t contractors admitting that they’re doing something illegal, and that undocumented workers are also prone to abuse and lower pay?
A lot of farmers use farm hands from Mexico with permits and a form of green card that allows them to get paid in American dollars during work seasons to bring back home, and get a path towards American citizenship than if they just entered the country with a passport or applied directly for a visa.
I don’t know if a lot of contractors do the same thing, but I wouldn’t be shocked. The labor is cheap and it kinda looks good for the camera. Adam Raguesa, a YouTube chef, has a good video on how farmers in the modern era grow the crops we eat on the table every day.
He knows this. The goal of the billionaires is to completely destabilize the economy, blame it on Biden and take power by force with Trump as the mouth piece. Buy guns, buy ammo, buy bolt cutters.
