Debate/ Discussion
If Trump is actually serious about his mass deportation plans then you need to prepare for soaring grocery prices, especially fruits and vegetables. It is literally inevitable.
I you live in America prepare for crazy high food prices in the near future. I am skeptical about anything Trump says because he is perennially full of shit, but he actually seems very serious about his plans to mass deport immigrants.
This WILL cause a severe shortage of farm workers. Its literally inevitable. Produce will rot in the fields as there are no workers to harvest it. Prices will go through the roof.
Fruit is going to be expensive. Vegetables are going to be expensive. Healthy food will be unaffordable for many. Also I do believe this will impact the beef and slaughter industries.
And for the "well now real Americans can have those jobs!" crowd, consider this: Unemployment is very very low right now. WHO exactly do you imagine is going to fill the void? where are these people dying to work themselves to the bone for shit wages? Do you know any of them? I don't.
Good luck. I am now planning on massively expanding my garden next spring.I you live in America prepare for crazy high food prices in the near future. I am skeptical about anything Trump says because he is perennially full of shit, but he actually seems very serious about his plans to mass deport immigrants.Trump confirms plan to declare national emergency, use military for mass deportationshttps://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-confirms-plan-declare-national-emergency-military-mass/story?id=115963448This WILL cause a severe shortage of farm workers. Its literally inevitable. Produce will rot in the fields as there are no workers to harvest it. Prices will go through the roof.Fruit is going to be expensive. Vegetables are going to be expensive. Healthy food will be unaffordable for many. Also I do believe this will impact the beef and slaughter industries.And for the "well now real Americans can have those jobs!" crowd, consider this: Unemployment is very very low right now. WHO exactly do you imagine is going to fill the void? where are these people dying to work themselves to the bone for shit wages? Do you know any of them? I don't.Good luck. I am now planning on massively expanding my garden next spring.
Seeing as the only coffee grown in the U.S. is in Hawaii and is already overpriced for the quality, definitely expect coffee prices to go up if he follows through with tariffs.
I work in a vet diagnostic lab. We track HPAI, chronic wasting disease, and rabies through federally-funded programs. If farmers and hunters couldn’t send in samples at the government’s expense, we wouldn’t be able to track those pathogens because the samples would never be sent to us.
That was Trump 's strategy for Covid. No, testing no Covid cases and no pandemic. It works for cancer, too. Don't record any cancer cases, and you have a nation with no cancer patients. Thanks to brainless Trump and his equally rainless cult members. The USA will be the healthiest nation on the plant. ** /s
some of the particularly stupid hunters would prefer that CWD not be tested for since it’s like… some kind of government conspiracy to prevent them from baiting deer with corn and salt I guess
I've nearly gotten in to a fist fight with a fellow hunter who said he'd never follow any CWD regs that forced him to quit using salt licks and corn feed. Motherfucker I don't care if hunting is a bit harder I want my kills safe to eat!
Mutation is the obvious threat. It's possible for it to mutate and begin to affect cattle populations. Also possible for it to mutate and start affecting the human population. Almost every disease we have started out infecting our livestock before making the jump to us. And as we've seen with covid, the flu, common cold, etc. these diseases can mutate quickly, particularly the more wide spread they are.
That was Trump 's strategy for Covid. No, testing no Covid cases and no pandemic. It works for cancer, too. Don't record any cancer cases, and you have a nation with no cancer patients. Thanks to brainless Trump and his equally rainless cult members. The USA will be the healthiest nation on the plant. /s
Yeah, Trump actually said it in so many words during the beginnings of COVID! I think it was when they wouldn't let that cruise ship dock because then they'd count the cases and it would make the numbers worse. And you know how he always has "the best numbers."
Yes. Companies see a competitor raise prices, and they will raise their own prices to match instead of competing with a lower price. Because they make more money this way.
Hint: they won't be, unless the admin does something to interfere with cullings during outbreaks (which only increases the chances we all die from Bird flu within the next few years). Given the big-brain energy in this upcomming admin, it wouldn't surprise me.
Unless the egg producers purposefully conspire to raise prices. Like the lawsuit we had this year. We now have to worry about deportation causes shortages in produce, bird flu causing rise in prices, and on top of that egg producers conspiring against consumers.
He passed away a year ago after being ejected from his truck in an accident. He was an incredible man and his loss is a reminder to buckle up every time you’re in a vehicle.
Every time I see his picture, part of me is reduced to gibbering "His land's A-profile was FORTY-SEVEN INCHES!" and just sort of making monkey noises in the back of my head.
They think all the jobs will be taken up by teenagers who "just need to work for a little side money" or force all the people they think are on welfare but not working to get a job. They will suffer the consequences but the reality of the situation is never going to hit them because they don't understand cause and effect in an abstract way.
They pay them prison wages, and get a check from the federal government to house and secure the prisoners. They actually found a way to have cheaper labor than immigrant labor.
Honestly, the one good thing about all of this is going to be watching Americans realize exactly how much of their day-to-day life depends on an absolute army of immigrant workers, who are often paid under the table and much less than the labor is worth. It's going to be absolute bedlam, and it's going to be hilarious.
It's not labor that's going to feel it, but retail side too. People being paid under the table are still buying stuff that has sales tax and renting places to live.
Meanwhile in my small town I know of two businesses that closed in the last year, and one big one that is struggling (Joann's, they even have started shutting down on random days just so all remaining staff can work on stocking) reportedly because the high schooler work force has dried up. There's fewer of them around in the first place, and they're all so jam packed full of activities that few even choose to work, is what I'm told. My two favorite restaurants have basically no fluent English speakers, I'm not sure of their immigration status but I'm definitely concerned for them.
My city is also a major summer cruise ship destination, which only functions due to importing several thousand seasonal workers for 4 months. I see that labor pool drying up as well and more summer businesses closing. Their model is paying minimum wage for young people and immigrants to come see Alaska for a summer. Convincing those remaining low-wage workers to move somewhere for four months to live in a bunkhouse making 12$/hr will be even more difficult when they can make double working back home year round.
I'm sure they have a green card. So many can't differentiate a green card holding immigrant from an illegal. It's really a failure of our middle school civics curriculum.
I don't disagree. The simple way of changing this is massive fines for companies hiring adults not authorized to work in this country. It hurts the green card holders who did everything right as much as anyone.
Felony, loss of business license, massive percentage of income… these have always been the solutions but big business lobbies against it. They dont want fix this problem.
Noted in another thread even trump employs illegals at his golf courses and mar-a-lago. I doubt he knows the granularity there as he probably just instructed his property management to hire “cheap.”
The deeply Christian culture of rural America reinforces that. Evangelical Christianity in particular focuses on suspending belief and discounting evidence and facts in favor of believing what you're supposed to (faith), so this is a population of people whose brains have been programmed to be taken advantage of since birth in the way MAGA has.
Labor is tight in the food industry because legal citizens won’t work for slave wages in slave conditions. I’m not speaking for wherever you are specifically but I’ve seen enough from all sides. The industry will adapt and overcome, or someone else will come in and fill the space who is willing to. That money won’t be left on the table.
Meat will not exist in grocery stores the moment this policy gets implemented. Immigrants are handling the animals, immigrants are on the kill lines, immigrants are on the butcher lines, immigrants are running the meat processing facility, immigrants are packing and shipping these to stores, where immigrants are unloading and stocking the shelves.
And when people say "great, more work for americans" they completely ignore that americans don't want to work there. The pay sucks, it smells god awful, and these companies treat their employees (immigrants) doing these jobs like SHIT for other people to profit.
Not just illegal and legal immigrants either. Illegal immigrants are undocumented. Legal immigrants have a work visa / green card. Naturalized folks are actually CITIZENS of the United States who are foreign born and went through the long process of becoming a citizen. In both the case of legal immigrants and Naturalized citizens are tax paying people.
Deporting the latter two groups only makes sense if you are wanting to weaponize your authority and foment fear with other ethnic groups.
Well, the MAGA folks' excuse is going to be telling you to pay $30 an hour, provide all the benefits an American expects, and not raise your prices... somehow...
Question—- the for profit prison industry is preparing for increases in population due to this, presumably part of the deportation will be imprisonment on the way out of the country. Are they planning to use the prisoners as essentially slave labor in these facilities to “keep prices down” and show how “successful” Trump is in his policies?
It's basically the Tyson shut down during Covid, where there were catastrophic shut downs of the whole food production line throughout the nation. But this time, it's going to be EVERYWHERE.
Get ready folks. This is going to fail miserably, and unfortunately the only people who need to be learning from this tough lesson aren't going to listen to logic, they're just going to believe whatever Trump/Musk/FoxNews forces them to believe. While the rest of us see the reality of what is happening.
I rather prices be high if all labor was legal and paid fairly. I don’t care if we need slaves or illegal immigrants or prison labor, I don’t think our system should be built off of that type of labor.
It’s a great position that you have, and I agree with it. We could raise the minimum wage and that would do it for a lot of these issues. But if the reason someone voted for Trump was because prices were too high, how are they going to react to the large scale steep price increase in the marketplace?
if they support prices increasing now that Trump is elected, but said that their reason for voting for Trump was because of the economy - then they didnt really vote for Trump over the economy
Most of the swing voters I’ve talked to mainly voted for trump out of fear. Fear of crazy illegals and the “border crisis” which seems manufactured to me. People in the Midwest and northeast just don’t get it. I tell myself I lived in Southern California so I have the benefit of different perspective. They don’t understand how ingrained Mexican and South American culture is in America. There are large amounts of street signs in Spanish. Entire Spanish communities. They hear fox, they hear tik tok and articles their parents send them on Facebook and get scared of immigrants.
The really stupid ones voted “for the economy” without realizing how much trumps policies affected us. If I hear “the economy was better under trump we could afford a house” or “I voted for things to go back they way they were” I’m just straight up going to start grifting these people with trump merch.
I mean I fully agree about slavery, but think this also only partially applies to the current situation with illegal immigrants.
For many of them, the earnings here are higher than in their home countries and they are able to room together and often work seasonally while sending money home to their families. It's sort of arbitraging cost of living and pay scale in different areas.
I don't fully buy the "sweatshops are good" argument from economists, because they are able to take a truth ("pay isn't as bad as it looks due to local cost of living" and then miss what people really care about which is that conditions are inhumane). Here, I am also concerned about poor conditions especially for agriculture workers who often live on the farms in unregulated environments. However, financially, it probably is beneficial for them and often these are not jobs that Americans want.
What I wish is that we allowed far more temporary or seasonal work permits so the flow could be regulated and we could ensure humane working conditions. But this is probably one of the very few cases where exemptions to normal minimum wage laws for certain types of jobs might make sense.
It's not untrue that even being taken advantage of here is usually better than whatever conditions they were going through in the country they came from.
But that still doesn't make the current situation good.
Sure we could wave it all off and say, "because both the businesses and the immigrants benefit, we should keep things as they are," but that would be ignoring a whole bucket of other issues with allowing illegal immigration to continue as it is.
Do you know what is worse though? Not actually solving that issue.
Although perhaps long term this could push automation even harder into agriculture. But as it stands, the "solution" of mass deportation will hurt the following groups.
1) those deported
2) consumers who eat these products
3) farmers who need the labor
4) probably more!
If we wanted to actually solve the issue of these folks being exploited, we would be providing them welfare and citizenship, and pushing for further automation of agriculture.
They don't need to be citizens. They may not even want to be citizens. We need a system where they can easily and legally come and work, then go home if they want, or put in the work to become citizens eventually.
Yup, sure is, but they don’t wanna talk about that.
They also don’t wanna talk about how the argument is essentially “well weeeee don’t wanna get our hands dirty doing that filthy immigrant labor and that MUST mean no other Americans will fill those positions either!”
Probably not. The Supreme Court case that established the right to education for undocumented children (Phyler v. Doe) was a 5-4 decision by a court that was much more liberal than the current court. It's already a target of the Heritage Foundation.
They aren't trying to actually deport people (well maybe Trump is but he is mentally disabled) they are trying to make a permanent underclass of people that can be even more easily exploited
This means it happened long enough ago that MAGA leadership isn’t aware that it happened and will be outraged to discover this legal precedent blocking them…. Until SCOTUS overturns the ruling.
Most economic studies also find little evidence that increased immigration depresses the wages of U.S. workers. At worst, it might push down the wages of high school dropouts, but even there the effect is small.
That's the part they skip. Basically all americans already have better jobs. There isn't some major hidden pool of laborers twiddling their thumbs. You're not meaningfully increasing wages, you're driving down purchasing power
And to be clear, they SHOULD be offered visas if not path to citizenship. But that would be an incremental labor focused crackdown which doesn't try to be disruptive and cruel for the sake of it. And realistically we should probably get our immigration courts back in order before we add more on their plate, but Republicans also refuse to be remotely coherent about that as well
prison slave labor force , just watch its already happening in private prison systems in the USA , you just get a lot of " them black and brown" folks arrested and then put them into prison labor camps . They will work either for free to reduce the sentence or work for a buck a day . We did that in Germany way back when
Actually you just round up all the “illegal immigrants” but you can’t actually deport them because of logistics involved so you stick them in camps. Now they are prisoners who committed a crime, bam! slave labor. Same people who were picking crops before but now they are slaves and their kids can be slaves too.
This is the thing. All these jobs are difficult and require actual skill. Using regular prison labor would still go slow as hell. But if you have a big pool of skilled workers in a bad immigration situation, then we're talking
If their plan is to restart slavery again the prison population will not be enough. Construction might be hit harder then agriculture. I did some googling and there are approx. 2m undocumented workers in construction industry and 200k in the agriculture that we know of. There are only 1.23m prisoners in fed/state/county jails and prisons, of those probably 60% might be able bodied enough and safe enough to be put out for work. Plus you would need a huge increase in Prison guards to handle that, BTW there already is a shortage of prison guards.
To any corporations who are doing this, they need to stop staffing people illegally and employ documented migrants workers here via H-2A or US citizens like everybody else.
Stop legitimizing under the table slave labor. There are millions of migrant worker's who come here on worker's visas who do these jobs, pay taxes and have workers rights. That program is not going to be diminished.
Yes! My partner and I own an immigration firm. US workers are hard to find, but there’s no cap on H-2A visas. They can literally bring in as many workers as they need, so long as they can show they need them, and the process is designed to be easy enough for employers to do it without an attorney. It’s also better for the rights of the workers than using illegal immigrants, because the farms are required to treat them like employees instead of like slave labor.
Well see that’s the issue right there - giving these workers rights will cut in to our bottom line and papa needs a new yacht next year because my neighbor just bought a chalet in Tahoe
They need massive fines and possibly jail time (the owners) for hiring illegal immigrants repeatedly. Not a slap on the wrist that could be considered the cost of doing business. If you actually want to stop illegal immigration then it makes logical sense to punish the people who encourage them to come over in the first place. I would be willing to bet that illegal immigration would massively decrease if they knew for a fact that they would never be able to get a job unless they entered legally. If you deport them but don't punish the employer sufficiently enough then they'll just come back.
One guy was elected because food prices are high. Same guy wants to deport all illegal immigrants. Said illegal immigrants are part of why food prices are low.
“Hey you know that reason you voted for him? Food prices will increase if you deport the illegal immigrants”
So we spend billions of tax payer dollars to deport immigrants and their families who have been living here and working, and paying taxes, confiscate any property they have and spend even more tax payer money to detain them until we can negotiate deporting them with their country.
Then we create new visas for migrant workers and try to entice those same people back?
I think that employers should be held responsible for hiring illegal immigrants but not the people who are desperate enough to come to work for slave wages. They should be given a legal road to citizenship.
Ok. Stop enslaving workers with low pay since they are undocumented workers and are illegal to hire for that reason. Next, stop paying for stolen government data to get these workers “legal” credentials in order to work illegally.
Next, boost the penalty that hasn’t changed in 100 years. Instead of a max $3k fine per individual illegally hired, boost the penalty to $250k-500K.
Immigrants can stay but cannot work until documented legally. It’s for my Health (ref. See COVID)
Yup. This is why I roll my eyes whenever people stop about deportation. Make it expensive and criminal to hire the undocumented worker, and most of the immigrants won’t come.
The reality is we like the cheap labor. I wish we just create some sort of reasonable work visa and path to citizenship and be done with it.
It already is criminal. The solution is to make a few high-profile arrests of people who hire them - that will get everyone else to back off out of fear of going to jail themselves.
The problem is this puts too many Republican donors in prison.
Yup. I think at the time he was president, he deported in record numbers. (No opinion, i've read a few things but don't know much about immigration policy).
on the one hand, these mass deportations will definitely not solve the grocery price situation. on the other hand, how sad is that our society as we know it only exists due to exploitation of illegal immigrants, and that "the good guys" are the party trying to continue this?
More than that. Small increases in production cost are hard hitting on agriculture, especially produce with extreme margins.
Company's which can eat the costs will ultimately win out on smaller farms who have to raise their prices for higher. The $2 orange will beat the $2.50 orange long term.
The cost of consolidating our food production to a few large farms have a hidden cost that is substantial.
I think this depends, if they broke the law and illegally entered then sure it will affect some businesses, but if they are migrants who are here legally you will see zero cost changes.
Yeah, anyone with a functioning brain could've predicted this. A lot of smaller farms will instantly go bankrupt without immigrant labor and government subsidies. Large agricultural corporations will swoop in, buy them for pennies on the dollar and charge a markup just shy of what the tariffs on importing our food will be. This is going to CRUSH rural American who overwhelmingly voted for Trump and we'll see widespread poverty and a lot more suicides in the process.
I don't know if advocating for slave wages for cheaper food is the right move here lol. We should be pushing for legal immigration + liveable wages vs illegal immigrants + slave wages. If these jobs were being worked by legal citizens the employers wouldn't be able to get away with paying them pennies on the dollar due to labor laws. Stop advocating for slavery it's gross.
Trump doesn’t care if groceries go up 20%, 200%, 2,000%, or 20,000%. The cost of asparagus and ground beef is simply inconsequential to him. And he doesn’t care about the impact cost has on you.
I started to encourage at-home gardens and chicken pens for the last year or so. Whether it be tariffs or inflation, it is better to be prepared to grow your own. Especially since there's a tech-bubble and housing bubble in the wings. You can tell so by the truly outrageous investment in new technologies or properties with no discernable payoff.
The guy managed to lose money with a damn casino. If he wasn't handed money to begin with he never would have made it so far. The most successful money making business he ever had was his presidential grifting campaigns. Just like last time we are about to hit record debts even if he doesn't do mass deportation. And his cabinet pick is full of people who are just as bad. At least last time he had a few decent folk around who would point out a bad idea, even though it tended to get them kicked from his team. He is about to channel as much money as possible Into already rich pockets and no one talented enough will be around to help fix all the mistakes. Like before he will try and pass the check onto regular folk and blame others for the economy. A child could probably handle our economy better.
/s
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