The media seems to be calling for more immigrants to plug the worker shortages. But right now there are also shortages of available housing and sky high rent price levels. Adding more people is not going to help that issue. Does the country really need more immigration at a time like now? Remember, a lot of these immigrants are poor and can't afford to pay for new housing. So they will be instead taking up the already existing housing, especially at the lower end, and that's going to exacerbate the shortage of affordable housing that already exists. The housing shortages affects the poor and the young adult generation the most. This population is also the least likely to buy a newly constructed house. Land costs also make up a significant percentage of the cost of a house in some areas. In San Francisco, for example, the land underneath the house costs several times more than it would cost to construct a new house. That means that even if immigration might decrease construction costs a little bit, it would be unlikely to have much effect on lowering new home prices, when the main issue is availability of space to build on, not the cost of building.
Nope. The "shortage" has to do with employers not finding workers at the price they want to pay. It's simple supply and demand; raise the wages and the workers will show up. We've been filling "worker shortages" with immigrants for two generations, and then some people seem so surprised that income inequality has skyrocketed and you can't raise a family on a typical workers wage-shocker!
I'm not sure how much of simply not willing to work as a factor since I can't understand how that pays, unless everyone is in on some scam that I'm totally oblivious to.
As Henry George explained in "Progress and Poverty" more than 140 years ago, the Law of Rent implies that cet. par., any increase in the workforce, whether through immigration, natural population increase, increased workforce participation by women, or any other cause, will increase land rents and reduce wages. The inverse -- a smaller workforce -- will reduce land rents and increase wages. Natural population increase is at an end in most advanced countries. Female workforce participation has been pretty much maximized. So immigration is needed to suppress wages and increase the welfare subsidy to landowners.
While there are a few people who don't want to work -- a low single-digit percent -- there are many more who can't really do anything productive enough to justify employing them. Immigrants are rarely in either of those categories.
