Small Businesses Lament There Are Too Few Mexicans in U.S
The US attitude towards immigration is completely asinine and driven by ignorance.  Immigrants are a huge sector in the economy.<p>This WSJ article, like so many others, is part of that ignorance in that it isn&#x27;t about low skill or low pay workers.  It is about filling jobs, regardless of pay rate, that US citizens are not willing to fill.  A prime example is software developers.<p>In the US software developers make 2x to 3x the national average pay rate for full time labor.  Despite the high pay rate and comfortable work environment there is a massive demand for skills that is not being filled domestically.  From 1995-2005 there was a massive off-shoring to find low cost software developers.  Since 2010 the off-shoring is entirely about finding competent employees to fill labor shortages opposed to reducing expenses.  Americans are not willing to step up and take these available software development jobs at a level of competence demanded by employers regardless of pay rate.<p>A popular bitch-fest on reddit is that software developers are paid too low and if they were paid more this problem would be magically solved.  First of all there is absolutely no evidence to suggest such.  Secondly, software developers are already paid well and still there are massive shortages with high attrition.  These problems are not related to pay rates, but are deeper rooted issues more related to outdated skills, low confidence, missing initiative, and poor education.  These deeper problems are a hard pill to swallow considering they require some amount of time and investment and still result in an substandard result.