Comment by Auracle

That’s how it should work, and that’s why wages have remained suppressed in our country for so long. In my area is a large turkey processing plant - if you ever eat turkey there’s a good chance you’ve eaten something from there. I’m in Minnesota. Inside the plant is cold, wet, incredibly loud even with earmuffs, and the workers are doing repetitive tasks all day. In the 80s, it was a crappy job that paid well. Local people (including my mom) worked there as a sacrifice to get more money and get ahead. After that, they discovered they could keep the pay low if they hired on people that didn’t have a better option - illegal immigrants. There was literally a sign advertising for people to come to that town of 20,000 at the Mexican border. But then they had to stop doing that, both for presumably legal reasons and because Mexicans have integrated and have better options. It just so worked out that our state started importing “refugees” from Somalia at the same time. I’ve been in the plant a couple of times myself. There are literally no base-level workers that aren’t immigrants. None. In rural Minnesota. This has suppressed wages for our area as a whole for decades. It’s a huge plant - if they already had to pay people $20 or $25 instead of what they do now just imagine the ripple effect that would have on the local economy.