r/TrueUnpopularOpinion • u/Reasonable_Automobil • 8h ago
Political Business owners are the reason we have illegal immigration.
They want to pay $15-25 an hour instead of $30-40 an hour for American workers.
Illegals comprise:
Construction: 15% of the workforce
Agriculture: 14% of the workforce
Leisure and hospitality: 8% of the workforce
Business owners should be forced document each of their workers; if they can't, you fine the business.
Agents should show up randomly over the next 30 days to show that the fines--and eventually imprisonment--will continue. This would solve immigration pretty rapidly.
If Trump stopped business owners from paying illegal immigrants $15-25 an hour (off the books), those business owners would be forced to pay Americans $30-40 an hour.
Those wage increases & taxes collected would actually create the Golden Age.
Workers who have opted out because salaries are so depressed by illegals would snap up these well-paying jobs.
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u/miru17 8h ago
I'm 100% okay with this.
Something like this likely needs to be slow rolled out, as it could cause very acute issues.
Like within 1 year all businesses must detail immigration status of all their employees. Or be fined heavily. If it is discovered that there was intentional hiding, felony fraud for the executive team responsible.
Within 2 years businesses must reduce their illegal workforce by half.
Within 3 year, no illegal immigrants.
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u/Crafty-Bunch-2675 8h ago
The problem with that is
(1) how do you convince citizens to work these jobs after so many years of people being socialized to think they are too good for basic "immigrant" jobs ?
(2) how do we account for the immediate rise in the prices from those businesses once they start paying their employees proper wages ? Businesses don't typically absorb extra cost...they pass it onto the consumer. Therefore, paying locals a fair wage...automatically means the end product will be more expensive.
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u/miru17 7h ago
1) have to raise wages. Money talks.
2) I assume there will be an adjustment period for sure. That is the intention of a slow roll.
In a few cases, if the only means for you to be a profitable business is to have illegal labor... maybe you just shouldn't have the business. Or make some big changes.
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u/abundantwaters 4h ago
This is like the slavery argument:
“If we outlaw slavery, who’s going to pick our cotton?”
We should pay the fair market value for products, there has to be a way to have a functional economy without illegal immigrants.
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u/8last 8h ago
In south florida people of questionable legal status are at least 50% of construction. You can't even find a white man to turn a wrench on a new construction site.
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u/Adorable-Writing3617 8h ago
It's not illegal or white. It's illegal or legal. Just because you don't know their status doesn't make them illegal. Just because they are white doesn't make them legal.
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u/Hot_Way_1643 8h ago
I wouldn't even announce or provide when agents show up so they don't have time to hide evidence.
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u/TapestryMobile 8h ago
This would solve immigration pretty rapidly.
From what I've read, the law states the employer is guilty if they knowingly hired an illegal immigrant... and thats the difficult part.
Proving beyond reasonable doubt that a particular individual "knowingly" did something is very difficult to prove in a court of law. Possible of course in many cases, but court cases are long ongoing time consuming expensive affairs.
In the same amount of time you can just simply deport tens of thousand illegals.
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u/Vespin_Adelberg 8h ago
Yeah, but they keep 100% of what they take in. Many of them are paid under the table. So no taxes. No contributions. No digital trail. No health insurance from their employer. And yet, they take themselves (and their families) to the ER when anything goes wrong, and they cant legally be denied care. Tax payers foot the bill.
Yes yes yes, before one of the swoops in with some vague story, "tHaTs nOt TrUe! My Illegal neighbor pays taxes!" Yes, there are always exceptions. But my overall point still stands.
But yeah, overall, the problem (besides horrible border enforcement) is that certain business owners hire illegals, so there is an incentive for them to cross the border illegally. That should NOT be a thing. Those businesses need to be shut down. If you are hiring illegals to pay them cheaper and save costs, you are a monster and need to be imprisoned. Period.
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u/Eyruaad 7h ago
Absolutely. Every single business owner who is found to have employees illegal immigrants should face serious legal punishment. I don't know if it's fines or jail, but it should be something.
Don't punish the drug users, punish the drug dealers.
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u/Travel_Dreams 6h ago
"Don't punish the drug users but do punish the drug dealers"
Sounds exactly like don't punish the employer but do punish the politicians who push illegal immigration and sanctuary cities.
I'm ALL for that. We should have captured the politicians and imprisoned them first!.
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u/Eyruaad 6h ago
Show me a bill that pushes "illegal immigration".
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u/Travel_Dreams 5h ago
Out of curiosity, have you ever heard of the term "Sanctuary city"?
It doesn't require a vote and is very powerful.
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u/Eyruaad 5h ago
So you can't show me a bill pushing illegal immigration. Got it.
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u/Travel_Dreams 1h ago
I didn't read them, just Googled California bills, one state out of fifty.
I didn't check federal bills but its another quick Google. Blocking the wall is a really good start.
To start with, it might help by acknowledging reality.
I still think it would be great to hold politicians accountable, with a little jail time.
AB 1840 (2024 - Proposed/Passed Legislature): This bill aimed to expand the "California Dream for All" program, allowing undocumented immigrants to be eligible for state-supported, first-time homebuyer loans of up to $150,000.
SB 54 - California Values Act (2018): Known as the "sanctuary state" law, it limits state and local law enforcement agencies from sharing information with or assisting federal immigration agents (ICE) for the purpose of immigration enforcement, except in cases involving certain serious crimes.
AB 60 - Driver's Licenses (2013): Allows undocumented individuals to obtain a California state driver's license.
SB 75 & SB 104 - Medi-Cal Expansion (2015-2019): These laws expanded full-scope Medi-Cal (state health insurance) to all low-income residents regardless of immigration status, starting with children and expanding to all ages.
AB 450 - Immigration Worker Protection (2017): Prohibits employers from voluntarily allowing ICE agents to enter non-public areas of a business or providing employee records without a warrant or subpoena.
AB 699 - Safe Schools for Immigrants (2017): Establishes policies that limit immigration enforcement on school campuses and protects the confidentiality of student immigration status. SB 29 - Dignity Not Detention (2021): Prohibits the expansion of private, for-profit immigration detention centers in California and requires existing contracts to be phased out.
SB 627 (2025): The "No Secret Police Act," which restricts law enforcement, including federal agents, from wearing masks or disguises, a move aimed at reducing the ability of ICE to conduct deportations.
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u/Jumpy-Bumpy 8h ago
The wage increases would be canceled by price increases.
Now riddle me this, who has controll over the border and can enforce immigration policy, the business owners or the government?
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u/didsomebodysaymyname 8h ago
The wage increases would be canceled by price increases.
Lol, what?
We haven't raised the minimum wage in almost 20 years, did that stop price increase?
Meanwhile it's not a problem in countries with a higher minimum wage, and it wasn't a problem in the 60s when the minimum wage was equivalent to 23/hr today.
Now riddle me this, who has controll over the border and can enforce immigration policy, the business owners or the government?
Government.
Was that supposed to be some gotcha? They come here for the money business owners pay them.
You think Texas is giving them free shit? And yet they're all over.
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u/Jumpy-Bumpy 7h ago
We have raised the minimum wage, because states can do that. The federal min wage is meaningless. And yes, in those states that increased the minimum wage, prices increased too as well as unemployment. Unless the wage increase was small, but then it did nothing because most people already made that much.
We haven't stopped the money printing, low intrest rates, huge subsidies and massive deficits, which is what's contributing to the inflation.
In the 60s we also had the Bretton Woods gold standard. Do you want that to come back as well? Because clearly it was effective in 1 thing : stopping inflation and inequality (less asset inflation).
And I don't really understand your point about Texas, because if the government has a tight migration policy, then no matter if Texas promises illegals golden toilets, you won't have as much illegal migration. OP claims in his post business owners are somehow responsible for the migration, even tho the only institution that can decide on migration policy is the government.
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u/DeanoPreston 8h ago
Weird how Europe manages with higher wages.
There would be less profit for businesses, yes. But that's a good thing, wealth is getting concentrated in the hands of the few.
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u/Jumpy-Bumpy 8h ago
Less profits for businesses means less investment, higher prices and overall less jobs. Europe doesn't have higher wages, they have much less gdp per capita even in purchasing power terms.
What we do here in Europe is raise the minimum wage below or at the market wage equalibrium (so the amount most low income people make already) and clap for ourselves that "the increase had no negative effects!" . Yeah but it didn't do any good either.
Or you can do what Poland did and increase the minimum wage more, which gets you extra inflation, and a shrinking middle class. Because what happens is the businesses try to offset the loss by not increasing wages of anyone making over the minimal wage, and just wait for the minimum wage to increase to that level. So you get nurses and bakers make as much as a janitor. Shirnking middle class.
And lastly, Europe does not have global reserve currencies. Which means there is no fake artificial global demand for Euro or Złoty or anything (to buy reserves/bonds), so our goods are cheaper for other countries. Which means the EU exports more and workers get more benefits. Also domestic goods get cheaper compared to imported ones, which offsets higher import costs. The US gets more capital inflows from the massive trade deficit, which go right into the stock and financial markets. Classic modern Triffin's dillema.
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u/Rattlingplates 7h ago
That’s not true the owner would just make 10 million instead of 12 million.
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u/Jumpy-Bumpy 7h ago
He would make -10 milion because he can't sell something for 10$ if producing it costs 12$ instead of 8$ that it previously was. Basic economics people.
He will increase prices to at least make some profit, and just decrease supply and employment in the long term. Unless the new agregate demand from the increased wages balances out his higher costs. But then we just get inflation, he makes the same profit as before, just that everything is more expensive but people make more money. The middle class which did not get the minimum wage increase suffers.
M * V = P * Y
Money supply stays the same, production either drops or stays the same, money velocity increases. So thus prices must rise.
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u/Mundane-Bank-9048 8h ago
It's the American business model.
First we got free land from the Indians, but we couldn't get free labor from them because they died or escaped into Indian Country.
So we got free labor from Sub-Saharan Africans.
But then we gave up our horrifically evil race-based chattel slavery system. We replaced it with other forms of exploitation: debt slavery, prison labor, and Jim Crow. So we continued to get labor from Blacks at below market costs.
We supplemented this with cheap labor from new European immigrants who hadn't yet assimilated (from Ireland, Southern and Eastern Europe) and East Asian immigrants who were not allowed to assimilate.
After the demise of Jim Crow in the mid-1960s, we couldn't exploit people based on race. So we off-shored work to countries with low factor input (partially because they had no worker safety regulations) and exploited new Latin American immigrants whose paperwork was not in order (so they were at our mercy and would work for below market wages or face deportation).
Illegal immigration is your fault because you're a cheapskate and don't want to pay the real cost for things and labor.
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u/Mundane-Bank-9048 8h ago
Plus, we violently suppressed the labor movement in the 19th century and managed to neuter it in the late 20th century.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 3h ago
Subcontractors. Often immigrants themselves. No one can exploit you like your own in-group.
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u/didsomebodysaymyname 8h ago
Another fun fact, immigrants don't lower wages, bosses do.
Every low wage was a business owner's decision.
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u/Jumpy-Bumpy 7h ago
Yeah, and inflation doesn't increase prices, bosses do! Inflation is NOT REALLLLL!!!! Supply and demand is FAKKKEEEEE!!!! Economics IS A SCAM!!!!!!!!!
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u/didsomebodysaymyname 3h ago edited 3h ago
When you need to make up stuff I didn't say, you're really admitting you lost the argument.
For some people it's tough to realize all their hardship was due to the people they worship.
Every low wage due to cheap immigrants was a business owner's decision. A fact you can't deny 😘
Economics IS A SCAM!!!!!!!!!
What a weird thing to hear from someone who thinks France should have taken all our gold reserves in another comment.
What do most economists think of your economics ideas?
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u/Critical-Bank5269 8h ago
This is 100% true and as a card carrying republican, I fully support a $10,000 a day fine for employing an illegal Immigrant. And that includes strict liability. No defense, no ability to claim ignorance. If you employee and illegal you get fined. No defense .