Maybe it's different in TX, but in CA, nursing jobs go begging. I have a couple of relatives in the field getting tons of overtime they'd rather not have.
Anyway, I don't want to start a whole big thing, but I guess I'm a little confused that on a forum where most of the members are all capitalist and Ayn Rand, that we're mad at private businesses hiring whoever the hell they want, and private citizens, whether born here or here legally, accepting whatever wage they want.
Ayn Rand is a great read in your late teens or early twenties, but the validity of her writing is vulnerable to assaults by subsequent experience.
Also, you mistake many self-described lower-case "L" libertarians (SDLCL) for Randians, an-caps, "privatize the sidewalks" types, and the like. Many of the SDLCL are nothing more than conservatives who believe in the founding documents of our country. Period, full-stop. (They need a new label, since Big Conservatism no longer represents such quaint notions as found in those documents.) They have not delved into the guts of philosophical libertarianism and seen how incompatible the underlying assumptions are with our founding documents and America as a nation-state. Others are conservatives with no or little faith in lower-case "O" orthodox Christianity and could not care less about moral issues, but still care about America as a nation-state. Then there are the libertarian conservatives in college who want to leave open the option of getting laid. A full-up conservative front can be detrimental to that cause. Best be "libertarian" and do as one pleases without being called out as a hypocrite.
Those who do not kneel at the libertarian altar feel obligations and values other than the libertine. One might be love of country and its preservation. Replacing Americans with surly and unassimilable helot-class minorities is detrimental to this end, as demography is destiny. The magic of translocation is not considered a foregone conclusion by such folk. Another is simple justice and moral indignation at the privatization of profit and socialization of costs that occurs with illegal immigration and many of the work visa programs. To those who think it wrong to snatch the profits while leaving their fellow taxpayers to shoulder the burden of immigrant (illegal or work-visa) impact on our gov't & social systems, such private business owners are no better than a welfare queen or crony capitalist.
There are several threads here about the stupidity of college degrees as prerequisites for so many jobs, especially in IT. So who cares if the person with a comp sci degree from a crappy state college can't get a job, but the self-taught kid from Kansas (or Poland) with hands-on mad skillz can? Or that they may decide that they're fine with $25/hr, while a degreed individual with no experience thinks they're worth $50/hr, and dammit, it's the fault of big business that they can't find a job in their field?
I agree that credentialism is an asinine, but expected, result of our anti-discrimination laws.
Don't give a damn about the kiddo from Poland. The millions of folk who are already Americans are more than enough for me to work up concern over. Let Poland take care of the Poles.
It is the fault of big business if they collude to:
1. Keep wages down by mutual non-poaching agreements, where they will not hire someone from their competitor. (So much for the free market in labor you were writing about.)
2. Lobby gov't to bring in foreigners to undercut American wages. (Again, crony capitalism.)
I am just not all that keen on welfare for billionaires taken out of the backs of American workers, blue collar or tech industry.
I also don't see much difference between this and 'Right to Work" states. I think most here are in favor of them. Isn't a primary design of that system to allow businesses to hire who they want, and if a person is happy working at a non-union $25/hr job, vs a union $50/hr job, that they have a right to work at that lower wage if both they and their employer are happy with the deal?
Again, some folk place a value on America, fellow Americans, and maintaining a decent place for their children to grow up. We are not interested in transforming America into a third-world oligarchy with a huge underclass, a thick upper crust, and a slim middle class. America began as a country with a large middle class and relatively expensive labor costs. Those high labor costs drove capital investment and innovation. Bring third world labor to America willy-nilly and pretty soon you have a third world society.
I simply see individuals here legally via visa as no different than anyone else who may take a job at whatever wage. If the market approves, then maybe that's the correct wage. If the market, and consumers, see crappy service at that wage, or workers stop accepting it, or demand for the job goes up so much relative to supply, then the wage increases.
Again, as I mentioned above, I only have my one data point, but what I saw was individuals not only getting equally compensated, but individuals who worked hard and were eager to work because they went to a lot of trouble and were driven to get those visas. Certainly they worked harder with a better attitude than many of my US born coworkers, who had a "This is what I'm owed" mentality (though I also had very hard working and conscientious coworkers).
Take a gander at STEM compensation over the last few decades. Were there a shortage, their compensation would be increasing. But, it has not. It has remained flat or tanked since 1973 or so. That there is the multitude of data points beyond your Canadian buddies. And the trend is downward for blue collar jobs. The supply/demand curve is not suspended when the supply is labor instead of widgets.
I simply see this as market forces at work.
Open your eyes. Lobbying for illegal immigrant labor and H1B visas is
politics, not markets at work.
