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The financial implications of an immigrant crackdown on Boston
By adamg on Thu, 01/26/2017 - 8:37pm
His vow to open City Hall as a shelter to Trump-fleeing immigrants got the headlines, but Mayor Walsh says a crackdown would have dire financial effects on Boston aside from blocked federal aid.
The Boston Business Journal reports on a talk he gave today on the impact on everything from tourism (kiss foreign tourists goodbye) to the region's colleges, hospitals and biotech companies (all the foreign students and researchers).
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to Walsh, immigrants=cheap labor to undercut US workers
Of all the establishment Democratic positions, immigration is the one they are most hypocritical about. Non-profit hospitals and universities contract with services to get cheap labor for menial jobs in cleaning and landscaping. They contract with the services so they can maintain deniability as these jobs go to people with falsified documents for substandard wages.
As for researchers and legal immigration, the salaries for post-doc science researchers are tiny for the amount of preparation they put in. On the one hand Walsh's friends bemoan that young professionals can't afford to live in Boston. On the other they lobby to import more replacement workers from abroad.
The consumers of these services, baby-boom age hospital-goers and their millennial children at the universities, pat themselves on the back for their tolerance and open-mindedness. Really they are just happy to get cheap services.
If they really wanted to change things they could address the lousy conditions in the immigrants home countries. The USA works hard to foist bad tax, monetary and trade policies on poor countries throughout the world. But humanitarian feelings end conveniently at the water's edge.
Read what he had to say
It isn't just about guest workers. This is also going to affect people LEGALLY here who don't want to be harassed by the brownshirts.
Oh stop it
The 'brownshirts' aren't going to harass anyone here legally. i agree 100% with others who say the real reason businesses and the politicians they own love the CHEAP labor, this includes white collar not just unskilled. They should be ashamed of themselves, especially Mayor Walsh.
See Below
Another anon says that Trump doesn't want to deport anyone.
You know, since you seem to be a reasonable and thoughtful sort, I'll let you in on this little special offer. There is some kind of wet land in Florida I can get for you reeeal cheap ... or how about an old bridge in NYC?
Ocean Front
wait.. I have some BEAUTIFUL ocean front property in Holyoke I'm trying to sell. Cute 2 bedroom house on the water with a private beach and dock.
Disastrous effects right down
Disastrous effects right down the chain, no non immigrant will work for $8 an hour washing dishes or prepping food at any restaurant in Boston . So the resturaunt owners who is getting wealthy by hiring cheap labor especially in the north end will get hammered!!
Immigrants have been cooking meals at various resturaunts in Boston for years, saves the owner money, pays the immigrant cook $35k a year oppose to someone who has an extensive cooking background .
Owners are going to pay their workers a higher wage, which will mean higher prices on menus, which will mean no one will go out and eat at these resturaunt s all because it will be much too expensive.
'' the 1996 welfare reform
'' the 1996 welfare reform law included a separate rule encouraging able-bodied adults without dependents to work by limiting the amount of time they could receive food stamps. President Obama suspended that rule when he signed his economic stimulus legislation into law, and the number of these adults on food stamps doubled, from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010 ''
$11.00 per hour MA Minimum wage
went into effect January 1, 2017. Not trying to start a discussion on living wage, just wanted to correct the number cited above.
Trump same enforcement as Clinton
Trump hasn't proposed any different enforcement from W Bush or Bill Clinton. It's a red herring
Republicans, Trump in
Republicans, Trump in particular, are the ones trying to make things lousy for people in Mexico and points further south. Where do you think all their guns come from? Thanks NRA. Where do you think all their drug customers come from? Thanks Republicans and your failed war on drugs and your resistance on legalizing weed.
If Americans aren't buying products from Mexico then that means there are no jobs in Mexico and that means more of them wanting to come here for work. A wall isn't going to stop them. We have these things called planes and boats now.
And are you really blaming democrats for hospitals and colleges hiring contractors who then might hire immigrants and not pay them well? LOL. Didn't realize that republicans don't go to college or visit the hospital. Their hands are clean. You blame democrats for wanting cheap labor yet republicans are the ones who want to get rid of minimum wage and give huge tax breaks to billionaires instead.
As I recall
Mittens had illegals mowing his lawn, and Republican lizard people just shrugged that off at the time and lined up to vote for him against the black guy. Now democrats want to protect immigrants so they can continue providing their GOP "job-creator" overlords flush with cash and all their heads are exploding.
On the flip side most liberals I know are into getting guns now, because at some point we are gonna have to march on Washington with more that colorful signs if they keep this BS up.
The world is going topsy turvey, with each side using the policies of the other side for their own advantage. For instance, Democrats really painted themselves into a corner when they streamlined the cabinet appointment process for Obama. Now we have the most unqualified group of cartoon villains running the country, probably ever.
The moral is: all politicians are garbage.
Not all undocumented immigrants come from "poor countries"
There are an estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants in this country, nearly 10,000 in Boston alone. How many are you ok sending home? Or is it only the immigrants from countries with "lousy conditions"? I'm sure the great country of Ireland would disapprove of you calling their country "lousy" and "poor".
It's incredible how humanitarian-minded Trumpers become once the immigration debate starts up. All of sudden, these Mother Teresa wannabees instantly care about "lousy conditions" in poor countries, the homeless, veterans, sad puppies and orphans, you name it, anything to distract from hatred of immigrants. Every other day of the year and your life, you could give 2 craps.
Get out of the immigration dead end
So we are doing these people such a big favor by letting them mow the lawn? So self righteous.
Makes it clear: immigration has become another weapon to beat your enemies with. Another way to smoke out the racists and scream at them withou really doing anything.
If Guatemala wasn't a failed state Then nobody would care about the undocs from there, don't you get it? This is the way out of this dead end debate.
So you are against Irish
So you are against Irish immigrants,? Any others that jar your preserves?
Boston's restaurant industry is facing a severe labor crunch.
Local indies in particular struggle to keep good line cooks, servers and bartenders. To quote Bourdain, "[immigrants are] the backbone of the industry, meaning most of the people, in my experience, cooking."
Ask any local restaurateur how many white citizens get hired for a dishwashing job, endure one Friday night shift, and disappear forever by Saturday.
One thing you can be sure of: if this crackdown goes as far as Trump has promised on the campaign trail, you'll be paying a lot more for restaurant meals, and a lot of your favorites indies are going to go out of business.
Don't care about restaurants? Watch Trump's trade war -- notably with Mexico -- sharply drive up the cost of your favorite meats and seafood and produce at the supermarket. Like your tequila and mezcal and Mexican lager? Bad news for you there, too, bro. Also gasoline, cars and trucks (especially delivery trucks, so watch your Amazon Prime and FedEx and UPS and USPS rates go up), automobile parts, computers, big-screen TVs, et cetera, et cetera. That glorious wall? Despite the big promises that got the Trump rally crowds roaring, you're paying for it, you gullible chump.
Be careful what you wish for, nativists.
I only eat at McDonald's.
Will this impact McDonald's?
Yeah, about McDonald's.
Your Big Mac has lettuce on it. Half the staff speaks in accented English. Got some bad news for you there.
Less than 10 percent of the
Less than 10 percent of the price of lettuce is the farm labor.
Yes, and the moon is not made of green cheese, either.
Which is to say, your assertion is a non sequitur.
The issue is not rising US agricultural labor costs -- we're not suddenly going to start growing all the produce that we currently import -- but Trump's proposed 20% tariff on imported goods, including a giant chunk of the produce in your supermarket and restaurant meals, including lettuce. Guess who's picking up the tab on that one, bunky? That's right: it's you.
Nice try, but majority we grow here
Way over 90% over lettuce consumed is grown here. You can find the data yourself. You brought up lettuce, but guess who's assertion isn't backed up by reality on this food item, bunky?
That's right: it's your's.
All right, you got me: most of our lettuce is grown here.
But a big chunk of our other fresh vegetables and fruits are imported: we're running a $12B trade deficit with our foreign agricultural trading partners.
Maybe you only eat at McDonald's (where my point about the amount of immigrant labor staffing it still stands), and you don't care about higher prices in supermarkets and restaurants that use other ingredients besides lettuce. (For one thing, hope you don't love guacamole, friend. Or bananas.)
Granted, you won't pay much more for lettuce. Are you still happy about paying for the wall with all the other imported goods like gasoline that will get significantly more expensive with Trump's proposed trade war? And all the other services that depend on non-native labor that will get much pricier with an immigration crackdown?
You may thank your lucky stars that a few produce items we mostly grow here won't be affected, but I think you might be missing the forest for the lettuce leaves there.
Zandi
Read what Marc Zandi has to say about a growing shortage of workers. This is going to be a HUGE problem going forward. Very big topic of conversation about the future productivity of the economy. Too few workers and even fewer that have the right training. No immigration = trumponomics runs into a wall and it'll be nowhere near Mexico.
also less produce
Farmers depend on immigrants for seasonal labor. They can't get citizens to do the back-breaking work for those wages.
Don't disagree, but...
The labor market participation rate in the US is at historic lows. There's a lot of slack in the labor market, which could absorb some of the (admittedly unwise) loss of immigrant (including illegal immigrant) labor. It would probably require higher wages to get these people off the sidelines, and thus higher consumer prices and greater inflation... but the economy isn't going to collapse altogether.
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
There's a reason for that
These people are getting old. More and more of them CAN'T work. The participation rate may be bottoming around 60%, but it's not likely to rise.
These people aren't on the sidelines, they are off the team and out of the game. The so-called "slack" measuring people "marginally attached to the workforce" are not unemployed- they are unemployable - health, drug issues and more plus people whose geography and or skills don't fit the employment needs in their area. This seems to be far more secular than cyclical.
There's something to this...
Or, to be more precise, would struggle mightily with the pace and physicality of working as a line cook, a seasonal agricultural worker, or even as a hotel maid.
Many of them are employable, but not for full-standing-shift kinds of jobs.
Agri Jobs
And agricultural jobs, in addition to being back-breaking, are usually far away from population centers. You can't go home to your family every night and you can't take time off to deal with problems. (And we won't even talk about the social isolation of co-workers who only speak Spanish).
People with work authorization have choices and you just can't expect them to go far away to make a marginal living.
Who is going to replace all
Who is going to replace all the Mexicans who put food on our table? They are the ones who pick produce. They are the ones cutting up cows in slaughterhouses. They are the ones in every restaurant kitchen. The lazy, uneducated, obese people in red states aren't willing to do those jobs and they aren't in good enough shape to do them even if they wanted to. Food prices will skyrocket under Trump.
There is a massive surplus of
There is a massive surplus of labor, particularly unskilled, back-breaking manual labor. And it's only going to get worse as more stuff is automated. There may be too few workers within the city limits, due to them being priced out, but that's a very different problem, and is also solved with automation.
oh f*ck!
You mean I will no longer be able to go to a pretentious, over-priced restaurant because the owners will have trouble finding their usual *slave (excuse me, low cost) kitchen help?
*these folks aren't really low maintenance; the gubmint picks up with 'free shit' where their employer drops the ball.
So, you're in the "Don't care about fancy restaurants" camp.
Let's look at the rest of the cherries, not just the one you picked.
How do you feel about having to pay significantly more for meals at unpretentious, not-overpriced restaurants? Are you okay with sharp increases in the price of your groceries, imported beer and wine and spirits, gasoline, cars, trucks, automobile parts, delivery-service rates, computers, big-screen TVs?
That's what Trump's proposed trade war means. You're going to pay and pay and pay, whether you ever set foot in The Gilded Truffle or not.
Walsh
Just drop the sanctuary city policy so Boston could get the federal funds. Immigration reform looks to be happening.
criminals
Quickly deporting criminal illegal immigrants should be the first order of business. I don't want Boston to lose any federal funding!
All this paranoia about Trump
All this paranoia about Trump ending all immigration, based on nothing, amplified by local politicians looking to leverage it..
Straw man alert: Nobody's said he's going to end all immigration
It's the mass deportation of 11 million people who are already here that has people up in arms.
OK, that and the anti-Muslim bias of the immigration he does want to stop.
Muslim, Adam, Muslim
:-)
Yep
Fixed.
The strawman is on the other
The strawman is on the other side of the argument - the "vision" given out is to deport 11 million not authorized to be here, while creating visas and work permits to bring another x million to work here legally.
How it'll actually work, or if it will work at all, I have no idea, but boiling it down to "anti immigrant" (which is not a strawman, that's how Walsh is portraying it) is like a pro-lifer calling a pro-choicer "anti baby".
Nice gaslights you got there
Maybe you can do repairs over in Beacon Hill or the South End?
Perhaps pay attention to the news while you work.
Back with ad-hominem
Back with ad-hominem responses already? At least this site got to see 48 hours of civility.
There is paranoia being
There is paranoia being leveraged by politicians. You just have it switched. Its race based paranoia being leveraged by republicans. Their whole platform is based on keeping brown people out of the country. The uneducated poor white people just want someone to blame for their lives being miserable so they blame minorities when they should be blaming themselves and the terrible politicians they keep electing.
Actually they did blame the politicians
For right or wrong, that's why they voted for Trump.
And a lot of things have happened to good people in the middle of the country that is not their fault.
Trump is president because a lot of minorities that voted Obama weren't motivated to vote (with those two, who can blame them). Low turnout by people reasonably likely to vote Dem in a few key states is what cost her the presidency.
One point I see go unmentioned
in all this immigrant talk around Walsh and Boston, is that Boston's illegal immigrant problem comes in a significant part from the Irish. Yes folks, WHITE, English-speaking, illegal immigrants. Even if they do not vote Boston's Irish do, and they are employing these folks in their construction companies, painters, landscapers, etc etc.
And we all know how Marty loves coddling the contractors and construction magnates.
It is very clearly a re-election tactic and if you think the BPD is gonna surround City Hall while Marty stands at the door with a building full of illegals in there when the Feds come, I have a bridge to sell you. HE WILL ROLL RIGHT THE F%#K OVER.
Right
And there's nothing wrong with those folks, just like there's nothing wrong with other illegals who work for a living, don't commit any crimes and don't (illegally) get on the dole. And, contrary to what limo lizzie & co is trying to tell you, it's not those folks that Trump wants to boot out, it's the dope-peddling gangbangers and grifters sucking the system dry that he's after.
Actually they are worse
As others have commented - it is hard to get your average American to do a lot of jobs in agriculture etc. But if you are employing illegal Irish immigrants in the trades, or as front of house restaurant etc - you are taking a lot of jobs that Americans CERTAINLY will do - and many need.
I'm the grandson of immigrants who gave my father a college education who in turn saw almost all of his kids go on to some level of grad school - we need immigration, no question. But I fail to see the logic of all these people who say that if you sneak in the side door and crash a private party, drink the beer, eat the food etc. etc that you should be welcome if you can just avoid detection long enough. Once the bouncer finds you - and figures out you're not supposed to be here - you're out no matter how nice a guest you are (one exception I can see is if you have kids that are US citizens by birth - loopholes exist).
I think you might be surprised
at the legal status of all the dope-peddlers and gang-bangers around Boston. I am sure there are some here illegally, but you should come to my hood in Mattapan and ask some of those guys for their papers. See how that turns out for you.
I also love how you are so quick to say nothing's wrong with those people regarding those who are here working, then in the same breath vilify Liz Warren and say how Trump is only trying to boot out the criminals. You are clearly not paying very good attention. Please look up the executive orders Trump has signed this week. Please check out what his supporters have to say about illegal immigrants on these and other forums. Regardless of whether they are working or selling drugs (which to be fair is also "work"), the consensus seems to be to get rid of everyone without a social security number.
MS 13 Gang
Just checking in here.
Does anyone have a problem with the MS13 gang (An El Salvadoran organization) members being deported? Should they seek sanctuary in City Hall?
No, nobody has a problem with MS-13 members getting the boot
Next bogus argument?
Does anyone have a problem
Does anyone have a problem with an undocumented heroin dealer being deported?
Does anyone have a problem with an undocumented car thief being deported?
How about an undocumented welfare cheat?
Drunk driver?
Serial shoplifter?
At what point does the level if of illegality become socially acceptable?
Thoughts?
Bogus?
So, cops picking up gun-toting gangbangers and judges letting them out the next day on a $100 bail instead of handing them over to ICE is a bogus argument?
Bogus indeed
I'm far from an expert in the local criminal justice system, so I'd be most grateful if you could point me to specific examples of alleged gun-toting gang members being released on $100 bail.
I won't, however, insult your intelligence to explain the purpose of bail or the application of the presumption of innocence in Massachusetts criminal cases.
As long as they're not really from Newton
And trying to sneak their kids into BPS, I'm cool.
This is just another step in
This is just another step in the drive to discriminate against anyone that looks and sounds different than an "American" should. So unless you happen to be look exactly like a character out of a 1950s TV sitcom they are coming for you next and it's important to speak out against this type of action. I called my representative and senators to ask them to condemn this type of blanket discrimination. Because after the Mexicans and the
Muslimsbrown people (although they may be shocked there are non brown Muslims) they'll be coming for the Chinese (because those are easier to pick out of a crowd than Russians) and then rotate back to whatever looks and sounds different than Trump and his Cabinet.I guess you didn't see the other posts
....about thousands of the illegals in Boston being white people from Ireland.
There goes your theory.
Mexico has extremely restrictive immigration
Are they racists too?
For anyone who is vouching
For anyone who is vouching for the illegal aliens and saying they are hard working inexpensive labor I have a message for you... legitimate business do not hire undocumented workers. Period.
More Democratic hypocrisy on immigration
If immigration is so great where are the calls for open borders? Where are the calls to loosen licensing for foreign professionals ? Why not have the undocumented teach in schools, be university professors and serve as doctors, nurses, lawyers realtors and financial /insurance professionals? The 1%ers?
Nowhere because the calls are coming from exploiters of immigrants who are protected from competition in their own professions.
I consider myself
a pinko commie leftist but I have to agree here. Personally I have worked with a guy doing service work (field technician) who, in Belarus, was an engineer at a power plant. We hired him away from a full time gig at Home Depot. Now, if anyone has any idea about the shit-storm that has been Belarus' economy over the last couple of decades you would know why him and his wife (basically a doctor in Belarus) came to the US to work at Home Depot and a pizza shop, respectively. Even with those low-wage jobs they knew their dollar would still buy them a candy bar next week. In their home country the currency bounced around so badly that most people bought things in dollars, or were paid in dollars, since it was more stable. What you could buy a car with one week couldn't buy you a night out the next.
Now, these two were HIGHLY qualified (and both spoke pretty good English too) but their advanced degrees do not "transfer" in the US. There is actually a glut of this happening in the US, and I have been hearing advertisements on the radio lately for programs that help certify people in these positions so they can get better jobs. Basically an institute has to recruit someone who is foreign and get them their documentation. If you are a brilliant scientist in Syria running away from war, you come here and they tell you that all your suited for is washing dishes, unless someone "vouches" for you. It's terribly unfair.
Oh yeah
You mean "template for what Drumpf and his Drumpfards want to do to the US"?
Sure.
No, swirl, just no
Marco's right. A cursory google (something you might be good at) will show that Belarus is a government driven train wreck. The economy is rather rigidly controlled and so it swings like a tire swing.
No need to divulge your mental health status
And, hey, what part of a 20% tax on stuff from one of our largest trading partners is not part of a delicious breakfast of excessive economic control?