DEBATENATE

Topics / Immigration

The challenge

“Illegal immigrants do jobs Americans won't do”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

There's no such thing as a job Americans won't do. There's a wage some employers won't pay. Americans do the large majority of the work in this country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says foreign-born workers are a little under one in five people in the labor force. And the National Academies of Sciences found in twenty seventeen that the workers most likely to feel wage pressure from immigration include Americans without a high school diploma. You'll say prices will go up. Maybe some. But a business model that only works when the worker can't complain isn't a bargain. It's a subsidy paid by the American working class. So no amnesty, and hire Americans first at a real wage. Let me ask you this: if the pay went up, would the job still sit empty? Hard work isn't beneath anyone. Low pay shouldn't be the plan.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Americans do the large majority of the work in this country, tough physical work included.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports foreign-born workers were a little under one in five members of the U.S. labor force in 2023.

  2. A steady supply of off-the-books labor holds down pay for the American workers who can least afford it.

    The National Academies of Sciences report found that negative wage effects of immigration are most likely for prior immigrants and native-born workers without a high school diploma.

  3. When the supply of labor in a skill group goes up, wages in that group tend to go down. Labor is a market like any other.

    George Borjas found, in a study other economists have debated, that immigration-driven increases in labor supply within skill groups lowered wages of competing native workers.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Farms and meatpacking plants say they can't find enough American workers even when they raise pay, and crops rot in the field.

Nate: If an industry truly can't find workers, raise the pay and recruit Americans first. If there's still a gap, fill it through a legal program with real rules. What you don't do is reward an illegal workforce with amnesty. A worker with legal standing can demand fair treatment. One without it can't, and that's exactly why some employers prefer him.

What he grants the other side

Agriculture leans heavily on immigrant labor right now.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics (2023)
  2. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (2017)
  3. George J. Borjas, Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market (2003)

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