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Immigration opponents just make up things so they can claim immigration caused it. The biggest tell is that they mention wage suppression, because they think it'll make them sound sympathetic - but there is absolutely zero evidence that immigration lowers any native wages, and theoretically you should expect it to increase them because of increased demand. (Conversely, when people move away this reduces demand and lowers your wages.)

That and employment for prime aged (i.e. not retirement age) Americans is as high as it's ever been.

Fortunately, we don't need to listen to any "academic economists" (who need to toe the party line) or even internet "experts", we can simply observe reality.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-5210935...

During COVID lockdowns, UK farmers complained that they can't get cheap foreigners to pick their strawberries. Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough". Open borders directly reduces wages.

A single article with no counterfactual isn't as good as the existing literature, which has plenty of empirical studies (https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...). Academics love disagreeing with each other and economists are pretty bipartisan relative to other fields.

> Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough"

Looks to me like this needs a specialized skilled workforce, otherwise they won't be able to pick the fruit in time for it to stay ripe.

Paying a smaller population of workers more will not necessarily encourage them to develop enough skills to do this job. It might just be left undone and then no fruit. If you have a larger population of potential workers, then there's more room for people to specialize in this because you have a larger economy.

> James Porter said 200 workers normally travelled to his farm in Scryne, Angus, from eastern Europe.

I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. If it was Ukraine they were bad then and worse now, but if it's Poland they have incredible economic growth right now and are on track to pass the UK before too long.

There is a current discussing in Sweden about the issue of human trafficking in picking fruits. Historically we have had a fairly large source of Asians being tricked to travel to northern Europe to pick forest fruits, with passports being taken, payments being withheld, and living standards beyond reasons. Last year a fairly large case was brought to bring down the human slavery and disgusting practices, and as a result the practice has been significantly reduced.

As a result the prices of forest fruit has increase multiple times and food companies are reporting a significant increase in costs thus needing to reduce the number of employees. Every industry above in the chain is feeling the economical impact of losing the human slavery. Local government is also concerned since the created void, in combination with increase wages, may encourage new independent illegal workers which then the state must handle.

Even leaving aside the human trafficking component, a lot of berry picking looks like a scam in Sweden. The costs to travel and live in Sweden rarely cover their earned wages. Their per hour earnings are surely far below Swedish minimum wage laws. Why do the Swedes allow it to continue?

I highly recommend this DW documentary if others are interested to learn more about this very specific issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW1QWG3xSNg

The reason why Swedes allow it to continue is of similar reasons why people allow human trafficking in construction. It occurs in the background where it is not seen, it reduces costs, and makes people money.

If human slavery was a net-loss for countries then it wouldn't be historical popular. Be it building roads, railways, bridges, buildings, harvesting or picking fruits, those are not things people in general want to see prices increase. People who talk about illegal immigrants being a net-positive on the economy never talk about that aspect, in the same way that those being against illegal immigrants do not want to talk about increased costs. Even people who talk about human trafficking do not want to talk about human trafficking in construction or food production.

At one point the police even announced (as part of a political move in order to get more budget) that they would stop investigating construction places for human trafficking since just going to a single construction place would fill their work quota for that year, and thus everything else would had to be put at hold. Everyone who work in construction are fully aware of the open secret that a large part of all work is done by illegal workers that do not pay taxes (or minimum wages), do not get safety equipment, and is not limited by regulations that exist to protect workers. Sweden is far from unique in this aspect.

<< I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means.

Not OP, but I can absolutely vouch for local negative sentiment in Eastern Europe. Granted, some of it is a direct result of war in Ukraine ( and a lot of those refugees getting benefits and priority for government services in host countries ).

It is hard for the population in general to get that they are getting a deal, when they don't. Maybe some individual billionaire does, but if anything, it only exacerbates the issue further by focusing anger on that one person.

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It's depressing that you discard research in favor of "observing reality". Like, what do you think researchers do?
Someone pointed out online, I forgot who, that the problem with job reports is two fold

It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one.

It also reports all jobs, not the quality of the jobs. Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones

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> The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones

Yes it does, and it shows that the fastest growing wages are in the bottom 10%.

It breaks by sector and averages wave growth but doesn’t disaggregate actual by the numbers for each sector and their loss / gross as far I can tell.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

We can make assumptions though and yes I agree it shows that trend.

Even if I’m misinterpreting this my general assertion about people’s feeling about the job reports that I’m telegraphing I think still remains valid

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