This is the article I posted for William. The US and Canada are suffering from a lack of labourers - skilled and unskilled - due to falling birthrates, as well as a cohort of young people who don't wish to work in the trades. As the article explains, a large portion of the undocumented migrants in the US work in construction. Without them, home construction will slow to a trickle. Up here, we have a Catch-22 situation - a shortfall of people in the construction trades, but a shortfall in affordable housing for new arrivals. So, no housing for the people we need to build housing.
The Border Crisis Won't Be Solved, No Matter Who Wins the Election (texasmonthly.com)
Falling birth rate is part of it, schools that stopped offering classes in skilled trades and industrial arts is another. The high school I attended had a great shop program- skilled woodworking, metalworking/machinist, drafting, and other classes (I wasn't interested in electrical and don't remember if they offered that or Electronics) and the facility was excellent before the department closed in the early-'80s. Other high schools in this part of the state did the same. The local vocational college is run by the state and exists so people can gain the skills as a way to get a job, often after dropping out of high school, getting their lives back on track or for changing career direction but we have a big problem finding skilled laborers. Many stopped doing this kind of work because of COVID, some builders continued to work and had people take time off after they caught it and that caused projects to take much more time if they even continued, depending on how many took time off to recover.
Skilled trade work is physically demanding and some decide to stop doing it soon after starting, others slog through and don't advance. One of the guys on a morning radio show has said "A lot of people are one or two bad decisions from hanging drywall or working as a roofer" and the low end companies have plenty of them but the good companies that perform these jobs often hire immigrants. My garage was built by a crew of Polish immigrants- they went from bare slab to (almost) finished garage in one day. Many of the roofing jobs I have seen lately had Mexican crews and most landscaping here has more Hispanic crew members than other ethnicities- they work harder and longer than White workers IME and that comes from me working on many jobs that included all of these trades.
Materials are much more expensive, too- oil price, shipping delays/lost shipments are hurting construction/home building and they're hard to predict.
Anyone who says they want to block all immigrants has no clue about what they do but we need to know who's coming in- the ones who want to stop all likely have some level of racist or knee-jerk reactionary reasons, but I doubt most actually know who's coming in and from where.
It's not racist to say that some illegals are causing problems but it is racist if specific groups are targeted in hateful comments, without specifying what the bad ones are doing. Most just want a job, some came here specifically to cause problems, like Tren de Aragua. Check those turds out- they make MS13 seem tame. We also have more from mainland China than before and others from all parts of the world- FBI and other agencies are arresting for terrorist plots, drug cartel activity, human trafficking, gun theft rings/black market and many other serious crimes.
I don't know about Canada, but the US needs to kick kids in the ass to make them turn their lives around and do something constructive (no pun intended) because the number of auto thefts/crashes during police chases, shootings and other crimes are still high, regardless of any politicians saying that crime has been reduced. Kids want to stare at their phones, be 'influencers' on the web and play, rather than work. Young adults have decided that 'quiet quitting' and gig work are what they want to do, but I wonder if they have thought about the future- if they're paid in cash or for gigs like Lyft/Uber, etc, are they saving anything for tax time? If they're not doing that, they surely won't have a retirement fund and with Politicians not doing much/anything to keep Social Security going past the expected insolvency year that's about ten years out, they're not gonna have a good life.
The housing shortage blade has many edges- low income housing is the #1 need, yet the education system is sending kids into the world with a diploma (if they don't drop out), yet they can't do Math and they're functionally illiterate. They need a place to live, yet the US is allowing unkown numbers into the country and they need a place to live, too. Fortunately for many immigrant groups, they know how to get by until they can find a place of their own- they move in with others who may be family/friends/similar background and pool some of their money, save what they can and learn English if they'll be working/living among English speakers. I think we have all seen the ethnic groups that do well but I have a problem with people who were born in the US who decide "I can't", quit school "because there's nothing for me" and end up homeless, addicted, with no chance of gainful employment and often end up in criminal activities. Where I live they have closed County-owned parking lots where homeless are camping and living in RVs. These are supposed to be used by commuters who take a bus from areas that aren't close to downtown, where parking is a royal PITA and becoming worse because the City likes to build luxury apartments & condos that eliminate the former parking lots. The people who had been parking there stopped or changed the location because the homeless were assaulting them and the conditions are pretty disgusting.
Politicians in the US need to accept that they're not seeing the problems accurately, aren't addressing them properly and that they need to stop spending money foolishly and excessively.
