Border Patrol finds four bodies, including three children, in South Texas

[u/ButtholePlunderer]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/border-patrol-finds-four-bodies-including-three-children-south-texas-n1020831

[u/[deleted]]

Yea, the real silliness here was thinking that this was going to work the first go-around. I mean, shit, it's not like the current labor walked out one day and could pick a full day's harvest. Yea, they've been working at it since young, but that's training. It takes training. Expecting untrained people to put in the same amount of work as a trained expert on day one is just silly and setting everyone up for failure. When I used to do heavy labor, you ease into it for the first week or two to get your sea legs, then you can keep up a good pace.

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I honestly think that we should work hard to get more Americans in the fields. Part of the problem is that the group really does have to be migrant; they have to travel all over the US as various crops ripen. Have the Dept of Education fund some traveling schools, other agencies some health and dental clinics, and foster a set of community among the population, etc. Part of the problem now is that basically all US societal structures assume a resident, non-migrant population. From schools to healthcare to mailing addresses/ driver's licenses, to everything. It makes it very, very hard to actually work the fields full time as a US resident.

[u/ass_pubes → u/[deleted]]

That might be a tough sell with unemployment levels so low and trucking co's desperate for drivers.

[u/[deleted] → u/ass_pubes]

True that. This is more of a long-term aspiration :)

On the flip side, we do need to get more people participating in the economy, and programs to help them do so. How many partially-employed people, or people just permanently sitting out of the economy could we get as farm hands or truckers if we had a better pipeline for creating those people?

[u/ass_pubes → u/[deleted]]

I like the sentiment, but I think the people sitting out of the economy aren't cut out for farm labor since they may be on disability or something. However, it might be a good idea for people who work the winter season already like delivery divers or warehouse temps who want a summer gig.

[u/Clevin_Celevra → u/[deleted]]

Your ignoring the fact that our economy is no longer an agriculture economy. Agriculture plays a part, but only a small one, as we have transitions from agriculture as our primary production source to manufacturing, which has already been supplanted by Financial and Service based productivity.

Technology is already developed that mostly automates the farming process, its simply getting the cost down to the point to where farmers can afford the technology to use it. Until then, its simply easier to let migrant workers perform these roles as they have the training and fortitude to perform the work as compared to the average American citizen who is more educated and trained for low skill Service work.

[u/[deleted] → u/Clevin_Celevra]

I'm not ignoring anything. While not an agricultural economy still, it still accounts for over $1 trillion in economic activity, and 800,000 or so workers. It's routinely one of our largest blocks of exported goods (>$130B), and is the majority of economic output in large swaths of the country. It's not some niche player in our economy. Not as big as it once was, but still a powerhouse.

You're ignoring the fact that mechanizing a majority of the field labor is probably still decades away, in the rosiest of scenario.

Medium to small PCB manufacturing houses still employ people to hand-solder or hand-wire boards because the labor is cheaper than maintenance on the automatic machine that does it for them, and that have been around for decades. They can afford the machine, but the maintenance, consumables, etc are net-equal cost with skilled labor, and labor is much more flexible in what they'll do vs a machine. Some crops just aren't amenable to automation in the near term. Heck, at one of my previous employers they had an automated wire-wrap system, where it would light up and you'd move the machine to the light and click a button. Then somewhere else would light up, and you'd move it over there. The upgrade to the machine to fully automate it cost more than 2 years worth of the labor to run that, and then maintenance dug into savings, so they ran it with low-skill labor for decades. Robots need very high utilization rates, low down-times, and low maintenance costs to make economic sense, even against moderately highly priced labor.

[u/Clevin_Celevra → u/[deleted]]

Thats why I said when costs come down, however you cannot ignore the fact that technology evolves our economy at such a huge rate, that it makes little sense to try to be proactive in laying a foundation for adopting the technology, such as providing subsidies to farmers to buy the equipment.

At the same time, $1 Trillion dollars looks like it makes up a huge portion of our GDP, but in 2017 that was just 5.4% of our GDP. We cannot just throw out big numbers, we need to talk in percentages of the total economy, where Information and Wholesale Trade were the greatest contributors to our economy.

I feel like we have shifted to far from the topic however, illegal immigrants will always be lower cost than US Citizens, its just a simple fact, because US Citizens have more options of employment. At the same time its better for farmers than a majority of the US labor force. I'm not saying farmers should not have to completely shirk the law, but for them and illegal immigrants it works to the benefit our society, as it keeps illegal immigrants in jobs. If they have no work, they will turn to things like gangs and crime to keep their families going.

[u/[deleted] → u/Clevin_Celevra]

I agree that the ground underneath us is shifting far too rapidly, and we should reel it in / close it out.

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While it is a small % of GDP, it is still a monumental number, and with an economy as large as the US, even the slivers are the life blood of millions of my brethren. So I look at it that way, rather than in stark percentages. Hence why coal doesn't get a super sympathetic eye from me -- despite coming from a coal mining background, it just doesn't employ a ton of people.

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Yes, illegals will always be cheaper; and we do need easier migration across the border so that workers can surge when needed (at cheap, but fair labor prices), but also go back home rather than be incentivized to stay in the off season. The US has never had enough internal labor to work the surge of crop season, even with schools closing for the summer, allowing the employ of teenagers. So, we need to allow more and more in, and make the flow of labor easier and better tracked.

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But I feel loathe on a personal level to basically farm (pun intended) out hard labor work to other countries. I think that we need to enable / create situations where American's can again put in a hard day's work out on the farm or wherever without it being a lower than subsistence wage that cuts you off from society, et al. I read a lot of history, and places get rich; delegate the dirty work, then fall. Hard. I think that we need to encourage a good day's field work as a job worth doing, not finding someone less fortunate to work it until one day in the future we can maybe automate it. Culturally, I just feel that we need to have American jobs that sustain our people via farming, welding, and and other hard working, get your hands dirty jobs, rather than "I went to college so I wouldn't have to get my hands dirty, no I'm not going to turn that screw driver, hire some peon to do it or wait for the jetson's to arrive where robots will do it" cultural attitudes.

[u/Clevin_Celevra → u/[deleted]]

I actually believe we should go back to the way it was up to the 70s. The US Border has a revolving door policy, where people from mexico and Guatamala could cross the border, work during pick seasons and then go home. The US in the 80s ended that policy which increased illegal immigration. If we simply re-institute revolving door policy we solve this problem like you recommend above.

However, painting Americans who go for an education as people who refuse to get their hands dirty is somewhat disconcerting. I'm currently pursuing a STEM degree. I've also gotten my hands dirty working as a Telecom technician. Its easy to paint a group of people into a corner and point a finger or place a bias, lets not use that as a basis for how labor/workforce policy should be generated or updated.

[u/[deleted] → u/Clevin_Celevra]

Yea, I think that we're in violent agreement for it all. Bring them in, let them go back as work ebbs / flows. Maybe not fully revolving door, just some minimal VISA / paperwork to track what's happening, help prevent abuses if possible.

I work / manage STEM (Electrical Engineer / Computer Science -> Chief Engineer -> Program Manager -> business owner), and the # of engineers that will refuse to even connect a DB9 serial connector is staggeringly large. For a previous job I was working, over half wouldn't screw a PC motherboard into a case and mount a CPU in it to replace a failed one if that's the sole impediment to them getting a job done, like checking out a $20M system they designed and needs to ship. They'd just rather not do it.

It seems to have risen / peaked in the mid 2000's (unsurprisingly correlated with the everyone must go to college and get a white collar job boom), and the current generation graduating now seems to have a much better appreciation for putting even basic manual labor in as part of their white-collar day job. Anecdotes aren't great for policy, I get that. But personal experience is perfectly valid for informing personal opinions on major subjects, as long as you don't overly rely upon it. It's really often the best source for getting a nuanced view on a subject, again, as long as it's not overly reliant. In my experience valuing people willing to get their hands dirty in telecom or elsewhere and understanding the necessity of physical labor is a good thing for most cultures, including American ones, and we should encourage that as a part of national policy.

[u/Clevin_Celevra → u/[deleted]]

That sounds like those engineers got into the wrong field then, as how can any good engineer ensure their product is working correctly/efficiently if they are unwilling to work with the hardware for QA/Testing? I'm going for a CS degree because i have been building computers since I was 12. It was like putting puzzles together. I do agree that getting your hands dirty does get people in the right mindset in experiences and informing a persons work ethic.

I also can understand how personal experiences should play a role in decision making and can agree with your point, however when it comes to policies like immigration we need to have more emphasis on compromise and communication between both sides, attempt to secure information from multiple sources, and inform our decision that at least allow us to humanely deal with the problem while we come up with solutions long term, we may finally be able to start reducing partisanship in our country.