Replies

Just out of curiosity, what happens when the illegals become legal? Will that segment of the labor force function as before?

No. First of all, once you legalize existing illegals, this only opens the floodgates for the next batch of illegals. Second, this segment of labor force is already saturated.

Let me focus on that issue. Every society has jobs at different levels. For example: one king, one hundred courtiers, 10,000 aristocrats, and 1,000,000 peasants. This ratio is defined by the demand for those services. In today's society you may need 20% of engineers, 20% of medical workers, 10% of soldiers, 20% of manufacturing workers, and so on. Each of these layers is fixed in size, and the size is slowly changing over time. The country had slots for steel mill workers many years ago. Today those slots are gone. Instead we have slots for microwave RF engineers who are experienced in hybrid IC design, for example. There is a huge chasm between these occupations.

However the teens, and the majority of immigrants (except those who come with foreign diplomas and experience) are unable to work in high-tech areas. Not only they are unable to work there today; they cannot be even taught that at the workplace. You have to study this stuff in a university, and you'd better be good at it. Modern industry, modern technology requires knowledge of very complex stuff - advanced math, analog RF, quantum physics, cryptography, chemistry, materials science, computer science, and much more. This is what IBM Research and the like are doing; and they always could use more geniuses, if you happen to find them.

At the same time the number of low end jobs is shrinking. They are either obsoleted entirely (like those steel workers,) or they are replaced by machines (CNC mills and lathes,) or efficiency of their labor is so high that fewer workers are needed. In ten years from how we will have self-driving cars. Imagine what will that do to the professional drivers. What remains more or less stable is pure manual jobs, like roofing and weed-whacking. But they do not grow - there is a finite number of houses in the country, and a finite number of consumers of those services. Furthermore, growing unemployment creates positive feedback: if you cannot go to the factory and mill a part to earn a dollar, you cannot spend this dollar later on to buy a grass mowing service. You'd do it yourself; so it's not one job that is gone now, but something like 1.05 jobs. You stopped eating at a restaurant? It's 1.10 jobs now. Stopped going to theaters? 1.15 jobs gone. Unemployment trickles down.

One can come to a simple conclusion here. There are too few low end jobs in the country, because there are only so many lawns to mow. If a teen wants to get a job, he'd better be a very smart guy... right out of the school. He'd better be able to do a very complex work, like designing modern products that can compete with Chinese devices. There is a hope that at that level he will find a job. But if he can't work a 3D CAD... what can I use him for, were I a manufacturer of such devices? I could use a tech, as an example, who is intimately familiar with 0201 and 0402 SMD and can install and remove them all day long. How many teens can do this and want to do this? How many of them are even psychologically prepared for working from 9 to 5 without listening to their iPods?

From the point of view of the market, the illegals are simply competing for the same jobs that teens need to get started. Illegals are winning because they are better in most aspects. The market is a mindless force; it does not care that it's not ethical to give the job to an illegal; all it cares that your business would be better off with an adult. A business owner will always have this pressure; some will resist, others will not; some even cannot resist, otherwise they won't survive.

One solution to that would be to provide the able teens with university-grade education, for low cost or for free, as they did in USSR. Note that USSR did not really educate them for free; the graduates had to work for some years at select factories before they were able to quit and move on. High cost of education may be the Achilles' heel of the USA because it artificially limits the number of workers that are in highest demand today. The country does not need another ten millions of ditch diggers; however a million of brain surgeons, or 10,000 rocket scientists, or 10 million good programmers would be able to create products and services that the entire world would want to pay for. Nobody wants to buy labor of a US ditch digger or lawn mower. Only those jobs will grow that are valuable on the international market. Unfortunately, education is extremely - and, perhaps, unreasonably - expensive. A country without a large number of highly educated citizens is usually called a 3rd world country.