> White rural America has every right to be angry, but that doesn't excuse embracing a racist con artist like Trump.
1. Blaming outsourcing and illegal immigration is not racist. If American citizens need to compete against people who are willing to work very hard for less than minimum wage, that hurts the wages and quality of life of Americans. Our labor laws exist for a reason.
2. Many people were aware of how non-political Trump sounded during the election. People didn't vote for him because of his eloquence, but because he was the only major contender that acknowledged many issues that our country had. Like you said, rural America has every right to be angry, and Trump was the only Republican that tried to tap into that.
1. There is no clear evidence that illegal immigration has a meaningful influence on wages. Undocumented people mostly do jobs Americans refuse to do. For the past 30 years wages haven't kept up with productivity growth, I'm sure you've seen the charts. Meanwhile expenses for housing, education and healthcare have exploded. Framing immigration as the primary cause of economic stagnation is wrong, because it is a minor influence at most. The way Trump talked about immigration was transparently racist, and it's the same Southern Strategy rhetoric we've seen time and time again.
1. If H1Bs are shown to have depressed wages of computer programmers etc., why would it not be logical to expect illegals to depress wages?
If there were 12 million fewer people in the USA (the laughably low "official" number of illegals in the country), would demand for housing be less? Demand for doctors and related health care?
Even former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, in TV interviews, admitted that "Undoubtedly access to lower-wage foreign workers has a depressing effect [on wages]".
2. Quoting 1 article from a progressive magazine (which incidentally, endorsed Hillary Clinton) to "prove" the voting behavior of over 100 million people is kind of ridiculous.
1. How would you separate that effect from the well-documented and systemic collusion to depress.wages and reduce employee turnover that already affects our industry?
As for the count, do you have some reasources that aren't secretly written by daily stormer folks?
re 1: so only the computer-related companies are smart enough to understand and then take advantage of such effects?
The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ...
> The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ...
I'm not sure what you're referring to here or if you're suggesting I disagree with the amount of "illegal" immigration being on an uptick. I think it is, but data I've seen suggests an impression that it's a function of the country's total population, not a trend that rises out-of-proportion. Further, the rules for immigration (and the various visa quotas) have not fixed ("remained unchanged") since 1990. It's eye-rolling, incandescently hot cow pies ripped right off of a poorly sourced Breitbart article comment section to suggest they are.
Our economy has grown substantially as a result of business owners exploiting labor that has no legal recourse for mistreatment, cannot easily push back on unlivable wages, and does not receive health insurance. And it's outrageous.
I think, you don't know anything about the H2A labor program, which is for ag workers. It's as much a wage fixing cartel as anything else. News article that can server as a quick backgrounder: http://www.southeastfarmpress.com/tobacco/north-carolina-gro...
Not really sure how to respond to the rest of your comment. I am stating that I do not believe the "there are 12 million illegals in the USA" statistic, because it has been repeated for about 15 years at this point, with no change. Yet areas that did not have illegals 15 years ago, now do; thus it seems the number of illegals has increased.
1. I didn't say illegal immigration was a major cause of low wages, but it definitely does have an effect, especially among lower class workers. You say "Undocumented people mostly do jobs Americans refuse to do," but the issue is that Americans refuse to do it for minimum wage. Why would someone do backbreaking labor for near minimum wage and no benefits when they can work at a gas station making more? For Americans to do those jobs, wages would have to go up. Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down.
2. That site that you linked to is ridiculous. They measure racism by peoples' beliefs in self-determination and whether or not illegal immigrants take jobs. Which they do. If there are 10 million illegal immigrants in a country of 300 million doing lower class work, and those people aren't equally distributed across the country, you can bet there will be pockets of land where lower class wages are suppressed. And you can bet that, within those areas impacted, views towards illegal immigrants will be more negative.
> Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down.
But no one is forcing corporations to hire undocumented immigrants over people authorized to work here; in fact, they're pressured not to. It's illegal!
That's why "illegal immigration" is cast as a racist issue: it's often a hand-wavey dog whistle blaming people of color for economic issues while absolving (generally white-owned) businesses of any responsibility.
1. Yes. It is. It's not brown people from another country making decisions shaping American employment markets or legislation. That's squarely local business owners who could act in compliance with the law, but since they're (often white and) wealthy we shrug and mumble about invisible hands. Folks would rather lash out at vulnerable aliens near them than the lawmakers and business owners who continue to exploit them. Mostly because the alternative is punishment from those who hold power and a mighty sum of congnitive dissonance. ("Wait, if I voted for you then you did this to me... and then I voted for you again...")
What's more, the intersection between the jobs that illegal immigration fills and what locals can legally work is low and has been shown to be low over and over.
2. Trump awknowledged and embraced fears the American religious extremists have been trying to seed w.r.t Muslims, a process conservatives are complicit in since it's such an easy fear to appeal to. Beyond that... He panned a health care law the Republicans have been sabotaging to tank it so they can say it would surely tank. And... What else?
Again, look at the data. A majority of Trump supporters don't vote around nationalist economics. Separate data had people pro-ACA (where it wasn't sabotaged, for example in Pence's watch) but anti-"Obamacare." You tell me what that suggests.
I'm sorry, but I have to agree to Gizmo on this one.
While outsourcing and illegal immigration are policy issues worth discussing, there were plenty of overtly racist issues that Donald Trump touched upon. There's nothing racist about "Lets shore up our border policy". Maybe even the wall isn't racist... at least, some aspects of the wall... as far as infrastructure spending, hampering the drug trade, etc. etc. We all can agree that MS-13 is crossing the border and trying to sell drugs in our country... right? That's just a fact. I don't think a lone wall helps, because MS-13 has catapults, drones, and submarines to bring the drugs over. But I'm perfectly willing to talk about the benefits of physical boarder security. A wall is just a part of the picture
However, there's something racist about calling a US Judge an unfair Mexican Hombre. Donald Trump is racist. Period. His supporters may or may not be, and his policy decisions aren't all racist. But without a doubt, Donald Trump himself is a racist who sees the world in black and white.
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As far as "not touching on rural America", there's a point about honesty. Trump HONESTLY can't do jack diddly crap about the situation. He just talked a big talk and is going to fail to deliver. He's blamed say... the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has eradicated it.
The TPP: Designed to encourage say, US Cotton Exports to Vietnam (Vietnam actually buys US Cotton to make T-Shirts and other textiles. So they were rewarded under TPP) would have improved the marketability of Rural US workers. Period.
Donald Trump destroyed the TPP however, and now China's RCEP has received major support in the region. The USA could have been the leader in Asian trade, but Donald Trump gave it up to appease his right-wind supporters. And without any US trade influence in the Asian region, our (current) Asian partners will inevitably join China's RCEP and the USA will LOSE.
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Rural America would have benefited from TPP, and China would have lost. Case in point: China wasn't even ON the TPP. A huge portion of the TPP was about securing exports for the USA (especially enticing our Asian partners to buy US material instead of Chinese material)
So yes, why don't we talk about trade and outsourcing. I am perfectly willing to have that discussion with you without resorting to calling people racist. There are plenty of actual issues to discuss here that would benefit Rural America if people figured them out.
But Donald Trump's racist talks drowns out the truth. That's a fact. He isn't helping.
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The worst part is how Donald Trump is selectively racist. He constantly beats the drum on "Radical Islam Terror", then visits Saudi Arabia FIRST. The home of Wahhabi Islam, the specific sect that raised Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attackers. Case in point: around 15 of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi Arabian.
Of course, Donald Trump gotta take care of his Saudi Arabian Hotels, so maybe that's not a surprise. Its clear Trump is in it for the money.
Guess what words Donald Trump forgot about during his trip to Saudi Arabia? He never once uttered the words "Radical Islamic Terrorism".
That's the worst part of it all. I think the conservatives maybe have a point about "Radical Islamic Terror". There are certain sects of Muslims that seem to be more violent and aligned to Al Quadea, AQAP, and ISIS. They're all Wahhabism / Salifi Jihadists... a minor sect that only constitutes 0.5% of all Muslims.
But it doesn't help if the President is a opportunistic coward, who is unable to say those words when its most necessary.
1. Blaming outsourcing and illegal immigration is not racist. If American citizens need to compete against people who are willing to work very hard for less than minimum wage, that hurts the wages and quality of life of Americans. Our labor laws exist for a reason.
2. Many people were aware of how non-political Trump sounded during the election. People didn't vote for him because of his eloquence, but because he was the only major contender that acknowledged many issues that our country had. Like you said, rural America has every right to be angry, and Trump was the only Republican that tried to tap into that.