/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>12079438
>>12079428
This is a non-sequitor, all I was saying was that immigrants are being mistreated by the government.

I'm against importing workers from undeveloped countries to developed ones to provide cheap labor to capital. However, it should be noted, the reason immigrants drive down wages is not because they increase the supply of labor. Domestically born workers largely don't compete for jobs below the minimum, no matter how much you increase the supply of domestic labor, the fact that there is already a reserve army of unemployed people's means that low skilled jobs are already at their natural minimum wage for those people.

Rather, the natural minimum for workers from underdeveloped countries is simply lower for those of developed countries because that limit is determined by the bare minimum of value in commodities required to reproduce that labor. This is something that is largely determined by habit and custom. Workers in underdeveloped countries actually consume less, due to the habits they have that are informed by the development of their class. these habits don't immediately change when they shift countries, and so capitalists can import them and pay them less. In many ways it's the worst of both worlds as it means 3rd world countries are receiving less development and workers in the first world are being subverted.

The solution to this is to document the workers already here to prevent capitalists from circumventing international law, and have a more even level of international development, so foreign workers no longer undercut domestic ones.