The minimum wage for NYC is $15 an hour and ultimately if you pay the minimum you get your pick of the worst employees.
One doesn't acquire the services of mexican's to pick your fruit merely because they work hard. You do so because they will work hard for less.
Literally the only reason to bring in someone from out of country which is implicitly a larger effort is because you have implicit leverage over that person and can use that leverage to extract more work for less money.
Further the broader context was meeting budgetary constraints.
In brief he said that in order to save money you ought to bring someone in from out of country so that you can use your leverage over them to get more work for less money while ignoring your fellow Americans looking for work because they expect things like benefits and fair pay which cost money.
> ignoring your fellow Americans looking for work because they expect things like benefits and fair pay which cost money.
Almost a quarter are from Germany. Most European countries do not consider America to be somewhere with many employee benefits.
Is $24,000 after room and board an unfair wage? What's the cost of a room in NYC?
It's awkward phrasing, but you don't know that they meant to compare people to commodities. Lots of people on this site do not speak English as their native language.
> Literally the only reason to bring in someone from out of country which is implicitly a larger effort is because you have implicit leverage over that person and can use that leverage to extract more work for less money.
They don't work for less because you have leverage over them. They work for less because they are not permanent residents of the U.S. and their cost of living is calibrated to their own country, which is typically less developed than the U.S.
But that's if they work for less. The price OP quoted was $2k/month. If you add on $500 in free housing, it works out to the same annual compensation as the $15/hour you cited (assuming 2000 hours/year @ $15/hour). And, FWIW, when I've looked into an au pair in the past, $2k seemed like the lower end of what they cost.
