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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Landscaping is actually one of the easier things to replace illegal labor in; the American elite reticence towards mass deportations goes much farther down the social ladder than people who have estates landscaped precisely because everyone middle class and higher understands that there aren't enough parolees(yes, parolees. No Americans will do those jobs without being required to by law) to replace the illegals picking fruit and killing chickens and digging ditches.

Might they prefer Hondurans to be flown into their meatpacking plant in the midwest or rural south, and then flown right back out when their contract ends, UAE-style? Yes. But American income inequality being what it is, their children don't compete with each other economically, so it's not that big a deal.

I do realise that agricultural work is the huge soak-pit of illegal immigrant labour, and the farm owners who have the supply cut off are now looking to mechanisation, rather than raising wages to attract native workers, because they claim they will go under if they have to pay going rates.

But my view of "why don't the rich care?" is because the truly rich don't interact with the illegals competing for jobs with native working-class, and if they do encounter them it's in the aspect of 'working on the landscaping crew' or 'contract cleaners who arrive to clean the house every week' - that is, their staff hire them to do the jobs so the rich only glimpse them as figures toiling in their peripheral view but never around for a long time. So it's easy to be compassionate in the abstract, about "no human is illegal", like the Martha's Vineyarders with their signs - until those same immigrants and refugees start physically turning up in the community, and then it's a different question.