These people have found a way to carry ladders into an environment that is far more harsh than the Sonoran Desert, and up an altitude that is 10,000 feet greater than the highest peak in that desert. (That is, where this specific ladder is being used, not the top of the summit obviously.)
Perhaps you aren’t familiar with the latest in ladder-carrying technology, known as “arms and shoulders.”
I despise Donald Trump and I’m a big supporter of immigration, but the notion that you can’t find roofers if you don’t have Mexicans around is unsupported by objective evidence, sounds silly, and to be honest, strikes me as vaguely racist.
I live in Canada, where there are certainly some illegal immigrants but not a large cohort of them from one particular country, and, miracle of miracles, we have people who will put roofs on houses. As a matter of fact I’d have it done twice in the last couple of years (the first group screwed it up) and both contractors successfully found legal, insurable workers who were willing to go up ladders and carry stuff. Maybe a roof here costs a few more bucks than in Tuscon, but c’est la vie. You can find strong young people willing to work outside. And the best roofer when it was done right was older than I am, at least 55, so maybe you don’t need to be that young.
The “there are jobs only Mexicans will do” argument has always struck me as being weird and dumb. Mexicans aren’t space aliens, they’re people. They’re not physically different from Americans, or less motivated by money, or possessed of less dignity.
The addition of immigrants into a population is generally beneficial for the simple reason that people are productive and valuable. The average person is a net contributor to the economy, whether their last name is Green or Gonzalez, and it doesn’t much matter where on the wage spectrum they are. If the U.S. started an advertising campaign to have Mexican doctors, engineers and skilled trades move north, that would be good for the United States, even though those people who be rather uninclined to pick crops or haul shingles.
You appear to be missing the point, which is that there are jobs only immigrants will do at the wages being offered. Double the wages and you’ll have plenty of native workers available for the most part - and even then, as DrDeth cites above, some jobs will fail to attract and retain native workers anyway.
It’s not that illegal immigrants are aliens; it’s that they’re both desperate enough to accept pittance wages and more accustomed to hardship so will take these jobs on those terms.
You are confusing a description of age demographic differences with something “vaguely racist.” Maybe agist but not racist. Even vaguely.
Age demographics you might (or might not) remember was speculated by Pew in 2015 to be part of the reason for the long term decline in border apprehension rate … fewer under 30 in Mexico than previously. Making the crossing is mostly a young person’s game.
The claim is that hard physical labor also veers to a younger and physically fit demographic. (Or to those who have been doing that job since they were young and have great experience at it.)
You can argue that there are plenty of the younger age demographic in America and that enough of them are unemployed that they’d take jobs as roofers gladly (and likely they would, the pay aint too bad, median about $18/hour). Hired farm worker averages only a bit more than $12/hr in America, in addition to be seasonal and usually requiring some in-country migration and tough conditions. And just sayin’ but Canada ships in foreign workers for farm work and pays 'em $10.25 if they are doing what they are supposed to do.
That wasnt his point, I think. It isnt that you need Mexicans to be roofers, it’s just that quite a bit of the unemployed labor pool is not Fit and able to do that sort of labor.
Yes, true. But if you grow up doing farm labor you are far more used to it and better able to do it.
That’s not the argument I’m trying to make, though. I’m arguing that there is a fundamental mismatch between the jobs currently filled largely by illegal-immigrant labor (agriculture, meat-packing, roofing and some other fields of construction, etc.) and the long-term unemployed in the U.S., the people who would be most likely to consider switching careers or moving in search of work. (If you’ve only been out of work a few weeks, you’re likely still optimistic about finding a job familiar and local; when you’ve been searching fruitlessly for months or years, that’s when new horizons become more appealing.)
I’m not arguing you can’t find American-citizen roofers–you can. There are plenty of them. However, these are (mostly) people who already have jobs. If you are trying to fill the jobs vacated by illegal aliens, then you need to be looking at the American workers who AREN’T currently employed. There have been multiple studies (here’s one from the St. Louis Fed) showing that the long-term unemployed are skewing older: the average age is now over 40. When you’re 22 and desperate for work, roofing may be a viable option, but when you’re 50, well, it’s not so viable. The brownfields of Ohio and West Virginia have lots and lots of 50-something ex-miners and ex-factory hands looking for work, but I really don’t see hauling shingles up ladders and picking crops in their futures–do you?
I suppose also we might be getting to the point where everyone who wants, needs, and has the ability to come to the US might already be here.
Maybe so many have left that between the money they send back and the availability of jobs and opportunities, their just isnt the need?
I think that the recent drug wars caused immigration. Also there was some earthquakes that drove some out.
I’d like to trade a fat spoiled American, better known as President Clown Shoes.
I’ll trade you your huddled masses for my racist nitwits–Mike Luckovich
Would everyone PLEASE STOP using “illegal” as a noun? Decent people don’t.
I disagree.
Nice to know TimeWinder, but I highly doubt you voice that in public. I guess you don’t think boarders or nations are really necessary.
I would estimate 70% or greater of people on the record, which includes politicians are against it.
Our legal immigration policy is more than fair and less rigid than many other nations.
No, I am not! It sounds like special type of gear that would be un-unattainable by poor illegals seeking to cross into the USA.
How much do they weigh? How much do they cost?
Can 1-2 people carry one in desert like environments for miles?
Can you go over a 30 foot wall and safety get down the other side? Or would that require two ladders?
That crevasse was spanned by three ten-foot aluminum ladders lashed together. A ten-foot ladder of that type weighs maybe 15 pounds, and can be had brand-new at your local DIY for ~$75 or so. Yes, they are easy to carry, even in the desert. No, once you’re up top, you don’t need another ladder–did you not ever have to climb down ropes in gym class?
(Heck, you don’t even need ONE ladder, if you can get the rope anchored topside via a grappling hook or similar.)
Unless you’ve conducted some kind of scientific study, your “estimate” is useless. Especially in light of the crime statistics you’ve posted in this thread, which have been debunked with no further comment from you.
Personally I also have little problem with illegal immigration. I think if someone is so desperate that they will risk life and limb to live here and they want to be contributing members of the community, let them stay. Anti-immigrant rhetoric portrays illegal immigration as some kind of grave offense. There is little to back up that view other than poorly thought out popular opinion. I say treat it with leniency. And I am happy to say that in public. And I have.
Also, it’s “borders.” When you say you’re in favor of “boarders,” it almost makes you sound pro-immigrant.
If that was the case, legal immigration would be down. One indicator, H-1B visas, are already full, so apparently high skilled workers still want to come here.
Did it fill sooner or later than last year when it took just a week to receive 236K applications and stop accepting new ones for the cap of 85K spots?
Ignoring of course that H-1B is for temporary workers, not , really a marker of immigration.
I’ve no idea if legal immigration or desire to live here is in net up or down, I think it will take a year or more of data to know, assuming we can ever have adequate data to answer the question, but your out of context factoid informs the question not at all. (Meanwhile border apprehensions have dropped lower, just like they have done the vast majority of the last 17 years.)
I’m a decent person, and I regularly use it as a noun.
When Trump gets all those factories back to US, there will be a lots of unemployed Mexicans who need to get a job somewhere.
They know that across the border will be a factory that needs workers, and who the bosses are going to hire? Locals that need to be trained or people who know the job already and won’t make a fuss is the conditions aren’t perfect.
No, you move all factories to China and the Mexicans go there. So no more illegals in the U.S. of A., problem solved without a wall.
Also the weight of the wall would throw the Earth from its orbit. Trust me, it’s science, man 
Why not? It’s what they are.
Or do you prefer “undocumented migrant”?
Look, I have sympathy for someone living in a bad place too. Doesnt mean we have to take them all in. We are crowded enough as it is. And as soon as they are here they will need a job, housing, education, if they use the toilet sooner or later a larger sewage system, if they turn on a light that means more power plants, and what about new rods and other infrastructure?
Because a person cannot be illegal. Only their actions can be illegal.
And because it’s the word used by people who paint them out to be everything wrong with our country.
I’m not a fan of “undocumented workers” because it’s too euphemistic, as if not being documented is the issue. But there’s no reason to call them “illegals” either. (I think something like “unlicensed immigrants” would be better.)