US Oil Industry Can't Find Enough Workers Due To Trump Immigration Policies

[babylonsister]

Everything he touches turns to shit.
Posted on Sun, Oct 13th, 2019 by Reuters
US Oil Industry Can’t Find Enough Workers Due To Trump Immigration Policies
By Andrew Hay


HOBBS, N.M. (Reuters) – New Mexico oil man Johnny Vega laid out his predicament as his crew hoisted pipes from a well during the biggest oil boom in U.S. history.

The son of a Mexican guestworker, Vega cannot find enough legal workers to meet demand for his oil well service rigs.

There is no shortage of Hispanic and Latino immigrant workers without work permits he could hire in Lea County, New Mexico – the No.2 oil-producing county in the United States.

But Vega says he wants to play by the rules, not least because of a heightened risk of company audits by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Donald Trump. As a result, he has equipment that could be generating $700,000 a month standing idle in his yard.

“They’re demanding more rigs, more swabbing units, but you don’t have enough employees,” said Vega, who runs Mico Services with around $17 million in annual revenues. “It’s a lack of a system to get legal workers, to have more of a workforce to pull from.”

Employers like Vega in the Permian Basin oilfields of New Mexico and Texas say they feel caught between Trump’s support for their industry and his policies focused on tougher immigration enforcement.

It’s a dilemma faced in other sectors of the U.S. economy that depend on foreign workers after ICE reported surges of between 300% to 750% in worksite investigations, audits and arrests in fiscal year 2018.

more...

https://www.politicususa.com/2019/10/13/us-oil-industry-cant-find-enough-workers-due-to-trump-immigration-policies.html

[MagickMuffin]

1. Just following orders

Trumpery is just following orders. Putin is the man behind the curtain pulling gop strings.

[Newest Reality]

2. This problem

This problem vexed me when the scapegoat du jour game started ala D. Tramp.

Since Republicans appear to actually represent corporations and capitalism first and foremost under the sheep's clothing, it did not make sense that they would do anything other than pay lip service to any undocumented worker problem. The benefits to their real constituents are many fold: a large pool of hard workers, low pay, vulnerability to manipulation and abuses of all kinds, and more. It is like a dream come true in that respect.

While Tramp's goal is a Fascist move that, if he is able, would expand over time to more scapegoats, (they are essential to dictators as a part of the package deal) it does not really make sense in respect to the shady Republican values of exploitation and profit.

[ronnie624]

4. Competing elements of their intellectually and morally bereft ideology.

Greed vs racism.

[Newest Reality]

5. Could we say,

we are seeing one of the many, inherent contradictions in there grotesque ideology?

[Initech]

3. Well this is shocking (not).