• csm10495@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Actually both happen: low paying jobs lead to being below the poverty line and therefore eligible for welfare.

    It’s not great; especially when companies like Walmart cash in on this by paying less and telling employees to apply for welfare.

      • bluewing@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        While that’s a nice sentiment that I agree with, you need to remember that those low paying jobs illegal immigrants often take, still pay far more than they could ever hope to make back home. Add to the low to nonexistent job skills and language issues, they start from far, far behind the eightball.

        Having worked with large number of illegals back in the day, I found the vast majority to be quite genuinely nice people and co-workers. And they were some of the hardest workin’ sumbitches you would ever be around.

        What I found interesting was the friction between the second and younger generations of Tex/Mex families and the newly arrived Mexicans, (I use Mexican to denote the actual country of origin here - sad that I need to do so). The first generation immigrants were very religious and conservative. While the second generations often adopted the more liberal attitudes of the locals. It caused a lot of ill undercurrents between the two groups.

        • orrk@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          ok, but we can’t just let people be underpaid because it’s more than people make in, and excuse me for using this term, third world shithole that barely has water infrastructure (I’m looking at you Serbia).

          • bluewing@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Sadly, it’s a chicken and egg situation. You can’t get a better job because you have no skills employers will pay more for. And you can’t very easily find a way to get those skills because you would get deported because you are somewhere illegally.

            It makes for a complicated problem to solve. And I don’t have an answer other than to say that it’s on the first generation to make it so the following generations climb the ladder upwards.

            • orrk@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              you somehow managed to make national wealth inequality into a strictly personal issue.

              so the solution is: you stop pretending like these people are all evil, let them work in America, but also force employers to pay a proper wage.

              it’s also hilarious to pretend like Guatemalans coming to the US to work farms and construction are learning skills to get better pay back home.