The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield
Welcome to "The Greenfield Reportwith Henry R. Greenfield," where 50+ years of world travels across 10 countries shape insightful takes on current geopolitical events. Join Robert for eye-opening global reports with practical local solutions, and enjoy guest appearances offering fresh perspectives. Embark on a journey of understanding and lively discussion.
The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield
Episode 15- America's Labor Dilemma: Guest Workers vs Trump's Plan
Trump's recent proposal to remove illegal immigrants only to bring them back with stipends exposes a critical realization: America needs immigrant labor for jobs its citizens no longer want. Reporting from Monte Carlo, Henry Greenfield observes a microcosm of this reality – wealthy residents completely dependent on imported labor for essential services, mirroring America's reliance on immigrant workers for agriculture, construction, and other sectors abandoned during the Great Migration.
The historical context proves illuminating. Nearly a century ago, Americans began abandoning agricultural labor as they migrated from Southern poverty to Northern factory jobs. This massive demographic shift created labor vacuums gradually filled by immigrants. Now, with former manufacturing hubs like Detroit reduced to a third of their former population, the remaining residents face challenges that make them unlikely candidates for field labor. Trump's belated acknowledgment of this reality signals a significant shift from his previous rhetoric about removing all undocumented workers.
Global examples offer clear solutions. Countries including Canada, Australia, Hungary, and Israel maintain successful guest worker programs that balance economic needs with immigration control. Even nations with strict immigration policies and physical barriers implement these programs because they recognize economic necessity. A properly structured American guest worker program would offer multiple benefits: contributing $150-200 billion annually to Social Security and Medicare, reducing pressure on housing as workers would come without families, eliminating birthright citizenship concerns, and providing fair wages and conditions for essential workers.
Ready to move beyond political theatrics and implement real solutions? Contact your representatives and demand a comprehensive guest worker program with proper enforcement mechanisms. The time has come for America to acknowledge both its labor requirements and sovereignty concerns with a practical approach that benefits the economy, American workers, and immigrants alike. What other issue could simultaneously shore up Social Security, end housing pressures, and create fair labor practices while solving our immigration challenges?
Welcome to the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield, your gateway to understanding today's geopolitical landscape. With 50 years of experience across 10 countries, henry shares expert insights on world affairs, offering practical solutions and engaging guest perspectives. Dive into the Greenfield Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter report for lively discussions on the issues that matter.
Speaker 2:This is Donald Trump's plan to incentivize illegal immigrants to leave and then come back. Today we are reporting for the Greenfield report from Monte Carlo, home of the rich and famous who gamble away fortunes, but who also have fortunes to not only gamble but enough, or when they do, they seem to be immune to the pressures of the world. As I look around, it is clear that there are three types of people in this rich enclave those who have and I mean have a lot a few tourists and visitors like me, and thousands and thousands of workers none of whom actually live in Monte Carlo who do the hundreds of jobs that are necessary to keep Monte Carlo looking perfect for their rich patrons. Which brings us to Donald Trump and his plan, which he has been speaking about in the last week or so, on how to have stipends for workers, moving them out, then trying to move them back in. And well, does that really make any sense for the United States? Taking them out and making them leave, or deporting them, and then checking them out and bringing them back and then giving them this so-called stipend? Well, is that like Monte Carlo is trying to do or has done very successfully, and is Trump going to actually find those kind of ways forward and fill those jobs in agriculture and other jobs that Americans like the rich people of Monte Carlo, surely do not want to do? Which means he needs to come up with an actual plan and a system to keep or retain some of them, perhaps millions, in order to do what the rich of Monte Carlo do, which is to have these workers stay as guest workers to meet the needs of their patrons and those patrons are, in the United States, the American people. Is it such a bad thing that Trump is proposing to move them out and then re-enter the country after vetting them and then bringing them back?
Speaker 2:Let's think about this for a moment. Wasn't it Trump who was against having any undocumented workers? You know the so-called 23 million that he said were overrunning the country and eating the dogs and eating the cats. You know his pet issue of the last 40 years to get rid of them, round them up and let Americans do all those wonderful jobs like veggie picking and gardening and low level construction jobs, like you have here in Monte Carlo in so many other places. Well, it looks like Trump is realizing that's not going to work. Trump is finding the stark reality that Americans haven't wanted those jobs for well, maybe 90 years, almost a century since John Steinbeck wrote the Grapes of Wrath about Americans being displaced and roaming the country with little more than the shirts on their backs. But life has changed. America has gotten rich and its population doesn't want to do that kind of work anymore. Surprised Donald, perhaps we should take a look at where we have come from in order to understand why.
Speaker 2:Well, back in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, people were on the move, and by the 40s, with World War II and afterward, a period is known as the Great Migration took place where millions, literally millions, moved from agrarian poverty, especially in the South, to the factories in the North. Almost 100 years of what's now known as Jim Crow had oppressed black Americans, along with lynching and all sorts of depravities, as at that famous 40 acres and a mule. The promise of the Civil War to be given to the freed slaves was canceled and the North abandoned the South to the former slavers, who simply put black men and women, and sometimes children, to work in the fields. Similarly, poor whites were stuck in the South with no way out, as the same folks who owned the plantations still owned those plantations after the Civil War, and those poor white people had no way forward either. Well, all that changed with the Great Migration, as the world returned to normalcy after World War II, and those factories in Detroit, cleveland, chicago and countless other supply chain places in the Midwest boomed. This time, though, they were no longer the arsenal of democracy, they were making cars, they were making appliances, and Pittsburgh pumped out the steel, and the East Coast had factories up and down, as they needed workers. They were union jobs, by the way, by and large union jobs, and the fields were left fallow and cotton picking dried up.
Speaker 2:And guess what? The first migrants began to trickle in, and then they came in more and more behind them to fill those other jobs, especially in California, in places like the Central Valley. Tom Jode and his family from the Grapes of Rav may have become middle class, but those veggies needed picking, and Cesar Chavez represented the workers. And in the 1960s it meant a whole new world of migrants coming in but that's right again by the millions coming into America and transforming the places they left behind. Up to 40% of the new jobs in the North and beyond became union jobs and transformed the United States and the world and moved on from that arsenal democracy to making all of those wonderful cars, appliances, shoes and the textile capital of the world right here in the USA.
Speaker 2:Well, does that sound a bit like China today? Well, that's true, and they moved on and they created that middle class in the United States, as well as going to college. Remember all those discussions about and stories about the first person in the family ever to go to college, especially in black colleges and also into other colleges, to where there are now a growing black and upper middle class segment in the United States in the millions? Well, but those that were left behind? Well, do you think that they are going to do those labor jobs vacated by Trump, kicking out the illegal migrants who have filled the coffers of American employers and provided cheap labor for now generations? Well, think again. Detroit, for instance, dropped from 2 million people when I was born to 600,000. And those that have been left behind have real problems, a lot of problems, and they are not ready to work, especially not in menial field labor position. They have issues like drugs, alcohol, disabilities, unfortunately, and if you visit those hollowed out places, you will see exactly what I'm talking about. So where are those workers going to come from? Not from the blacks or the poor whites or minorities of any kind. Trump, finally, has somehow managed to come into the 20th century, one quarter of way into the 21st century, and realize that, like here in Monte Carlo, you actually need to have workers or things are not going to get done, and employers are not happy about that and they want a solution now, not later, or the US economy will literally grind to a halt. I mean, where do you think all those construction workers are going to come from? They're not there anymore. The gap has been there a long time and everybody knows it.
Speaker 2:So let's ask an honest question here about Biden. Did Biden handle this well? Well, at first, no, he did not. Biden, though, eventually got his program through and he had a good plan. It was ready and done with Senator Lankford of Oklahoma, and then, as we all know, trump blocked it so that he could try to solve it when he got here. Well, biden, in the end, actually used all know. Trump blocked it so that he could try to solve it when he got here. Well, biden, in the end, actually used executive orders, like Trump did, and Biden actually did solve it and cut down from a very massive number literally one or two million a year, totaling up to eight million down to 15,000 per month when he left.
Speaker 2:Now, trump as always, trump does something expensive and out of control. What has Trump done? Trump has actually sent down the military, making a great show of force, and I think he has something like 15,000 US military personnel on the southern border to go along with what? Another? 10 or 20,000 Border Patrol people? They outnumber actually the people trying to get into the United States by two to one. So, yeah, sure, the number has dropped to zero, but does that actually solve the problem of labor shortages in the United States?
Speaker 2:Well, I thought that Trump would put them into camps when he wanted to move them out and pay them, yes, a stipend. In fact, I actually thought he would work them 10 to 12 hours a day, pay them up to $1,000 a month while they were waiting for their disposition. But Trump now seems to want to kick them out of the United States, then vet them, give them a stipend and bring them back in. But so far, all we've seen here is the so-called criminals being sent to El Salvador. But this is impossible. For the real numbers, perhaps up to, as I said, 8 million, and not what we have noted before, which is Trump's idea of 23 million, but regardless, it's a massive number. And also let's also be honest camps cost money. This, it's a massive number. And also let's also be honest camps cost money and people need labor. So we thought Trump would put them in camps and not that we actually are advocating that at all but it looked like that would be the Trumpian system and again use that stipend idea. But let's go back to Trump and the removal and then let's come back to what a real program would look like and what would we call a guest worker program. Well, first of all, does anybody else have one like that? Canada has one and it's been working for years. Australia, which I have advocated for years to have a guest worker program getting people from as far away as India. Well, they have tried to use backpackers. Well, that fell apart during COVID and their agricultural sector has been really hurting, as fruit and vegetable pickers are simply not around.
Speaker 2:Some countries, however ironically the most closed and infamous, which is Hungary, which put up what else? A massive wall, just like Israel. Remember those walls you saw. Well, both of those countries which will never offer foreign workers a path to citizenship, have yes, you got it huge guest worker programs. Remember the attack by Hamas and the resulting hostages from the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel? Almost one quarter of those were Thai guest workers.
Speaker 2:Well, what about Hungary, which has some of the lowest wages in Europe? Do you think that the Hungarians want to do those jobs? Well, it turns out Hungarians don't want to do those low-level, labor-intensive jobs either. Hungary may not want to have Arabs or people from the Middle East, but they are happy to take people from all the way from yes, once again, thailand in the hundreds of thousands, along with other guest workers for exactly the job that Trump needs to have filled in the United States. Well, is Trump going to borrow that Victor Orban playbook again? Or maybe Bibi Netanyahu, who seems to love guest workers but hates to even think about them becoming Israelis?
Speaker 2:Well, how does that actually work in Europe? Because people are always saying, well, europe's being overrun. Actually, they have this what's called the Schengen Zone, and the Schengen Zone modulates this movement of people quite well, as people can move throughout the zone freely. Almost all of the 27 countries in the European Union take part in this Schengen zone, which has helped again to make that work quite well for Europe, of course, not well enough. Italy has a shortage, france has a shortage, the UK, which is no longer in the EU, has a shortage. So they all have various forms now of guest worker programs, but the US does not have that. The US has one big 50-state economy and there is no way that Mexico is going to solve this, or Canada, for that matter.
Speaker 2:So what would that guest worker program look like? Well, first of all, if we do have such a program, they need to get paid an hourly wage up to $10 to $12 an hour Not what a typical American would want, and let's say that too, that the Americans must have a new national minimum wage. Let's end this craziness, blocked by the Republicans for the last almost 20 years, of $7.25 an hour. I mean, come on, progressives, you want to protest something? How about getting out in the streets and protesting for $15 or $20 per hour? The US can afford it and don't believe the lies that it cannot.
Speaker 2:The keys to a guest worker program is that guest workers must also pay into Social Security and Medicare A, or what is now known as the FICA system. Remember the five ways we put down to fix Social Security from a previous Greenfield report and how to solve that budget crisis and also end the deficit and pay down on the national debt. One of the keys is getting those illegal migrants to become legally paid workers contributing to Social Security, shoring it up by $150 to $200 billion a year, which would be the same for Medicare A. Will this cost some money for employers? Yes, of course it will, but actually it's to the benefit of the honest employers. But if Trump wants to get it done, obviously you need to pay people and put money into the system, including actually some infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Yes, there will be camps, but just like the oil fields that we see in some of those TV shows, like Landman in Texas. Well, people get paid money and they seem to do quite well. Do they become green card holders automatically and citizens? Well, of course not. But if Trump says he likes them and they're honest and not criminals, can they move up in the queue? Well, I think so, don't you? So why not vet them now and why wait to throw them out? The example could be in this, actually that good old Central Valley in California. They could be vetted right there on the job today Would they have to leave at, of course, at the end of their one, two or three year contract for guest workers?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, they would, but there are a lot of other advantages here to having a guest worker program. So, first of all, we've now solved the Social Security crisis with another 150 billion put in Ditto for the Medicare A, but there's another really big benefit here that nobody talks about you do not have to bring your family if you have a guest worker program. It would instantly end all the lies surrounding crime, but it would also mean less pressure on the schools, less pressure on the medical system, as it would mean the strongest and yet best workers would be in the US, but not their families. Those families would stay back at home, which is what Kamala Harris was supposed to work on and actually did nothing. Every person who has ever worked in developments such as I have would tell you that those regions are now devastated by the out-migration, leaving only the poor, the elderly and yes, they look somewhat like Detroit to some extent, as in northern Mexico in particular, villages, cities, whole regions have been denuded of their population as they move north to the United States. But this is not a Mexican issue now, but is much farther beyond that Central America, all the way down to Venezuela.
Speaker 2:Now there are other places that have done this quite well in the world. It's not just in Europe. In the Philippines, they call it the Balikbayan system. The Balikbayan are people who actually are Philippine citizens, who go abroad, make a lot of money and send it back to their families. Dubai, singapore, hong Kong they all work there in the hundreds of thousands, and actually it's now documented that up to one quarter of the cash coming into the Philippines comes from these overseas workers.
Speaker 2:Why did Kamala Harris do nothing when she had that clear briefing? Who knows? And a lot of excuses have been made for her. But it has to be done to keep people in their countries. That means the families, and you keep them there by sending them money back via a guest worker program. Are there any other benefits? Well, how about birthright citizenship, instead of throwing out the US Constitution? What if these workers were not figuring out ways to get their family in and instead were making money and sending it back? No more young moms trying to have kids to game the system to stay in the US. And what about those hundreds of thousands of youths. You know the ones we heard about going through the Darien Gap and making their way up through Mexico to present themselves at the border and all of a sudden, voila, they were inside the US and then getting their families to follow. All of this would instantly end with the guest worker program. No more arguments about voting fraud. There would be no one to vote. No more criminal gang discussion. There would be none of them here, it would be over.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, what has happened in the US? And you know that great migration. Well, those millions have now left the Rust Belt. And where have they gone? They've moved south. And for what? Well, high-paying jobs, but not union, as the southern states, the so-called right-to-work states, invited in auto companies, and from where? Japan and Germany and Korea, which now rival and surpass in many cases the union workers in Michigan and other places.
Speaker 2:So once again, let's recap when are we? Well, we are not going to go back to that pre-Great Migration. We do not have all the issues now by solving that with the guest worker program I'm talking about, as we won't have that problem now. Learning English and housing for families will also go away. That means less pressure on housing in the United States, all that discussion we have about people trying to get their first home. Well, that would be instantly solved, because we would not have millions of family members of those illegal migrants trying to get in and stay in the United States and putting pressure on social systems.
Speaker 2:Of course, the progressives will not be happy, but they are losing it too, as it remains the same, always and forever, that immigrants are conservative in any event and are increasingly voting for Trump and Republicans as the number one issue for them seems to be stopping the flow of illegal immigrants, even though they have been actually won quite earlier, and now they call this now pulling up the ladder. It makes you wonder what is AOC and other progressives thinking, or are they actually getting it at all? The number in the voting patterns show that they are not. You could say why hasn't this happened in the past? Well, obviously, the two sides cannot agree on anything, and both sides took advantage of this. Will prices go up? Yes, slightly, but nothing like what Trump is doing with tariffs, and these will be productive employees.
Speaker 2:Trump, however, is not going to do this. He is not going to be fair, but it is about the corporates who, sorry to say, we're back to that same old idea of corporate corruption no money into Social Security, nothing into Medicare A, for instance. Why is Trump going to do this and what can Americans do to end this madness? Well, you want something to protest about? Well, get out there and ask for a guest worker program. I know it sounds boring, but it's really, really important. It will move up wages for everyone, it will help bring the middle class back to the United States, it will put money into Social Security and it will go a long ways to solve that crisis. It will mean no more ripoffs of workers by greedy employers. It will level the playing field so honest employers are rewarded. There will be, in my program, absolute penalties for employers, criminal penalties, and if you are an illegal immigrant and you are working without actually being a guest worker, it will mean immediate deportation and you will not be allowed back in ever again.
Speaker 2:This is extremely important. A guest worker program will only work if there are significant penalties, and that can be done, and it's being done everywhere else, and it will solve the immigration crisis once and for all. Now you could also sit back and protest and show up for those great rallies that Bernie and AOC are having and you could let Trump do whatever he wants, which is not good for anyone other than himself and the same old rip-off employers who have done nothing to solve these problems over the last 50, 60, 70 years. As we have noted on the Greenfield Report, the problem with the US is corporate corruption. Sorry, bernie, it's beyond greed and sorry, aoc. You don't have a plan. We have a plan and it will work because it is working all over the world.
Speaker 2:Trump's program will solve nothing. The Greenfield Plan for guest workers will solve everything for millions and millions, and keep America competitive and get rid of the fiction that Americans are ever going to do menial jobs while boosting their employment power and the US economy in general. Now isn't that something worth fighting for? And in my view, it is not that hard to understand. So tell your representative you want a guest worker program. You want it now. You want them to be legal, paying into the system, just like they are here in Monte Carlo, on the beautiful Mediterranean known as Mare Nostrum or Our Sea. America can do it too, just like everyone else, and don't you think it is about time? This is Henry R Greenfield reporting from Monte Carlo, where the guest worker programs appears to be working very well and which we should also be looking at immediately in the United States, before Donald Trump goes off in another direction and creates yet another disaster for the American economy and the American workers. Are you listening, bernie? Are you listening? Aoc Again signing off for the Greenfield Report.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield. We hope today's insights into the ever-shifting geopolitical landscape have sparked your curiosity and broadened your perspective. Stay connected with us for more in-depth discussions and expert solutions. Until next time, keep exploring the world beyond the headlines.