I’m not even sure which side you’re on, Biggirl.
IMHO, if a business can’t survive without hiring illegals, then it shouldn’t survive in the first place.
Capitalism, etc…
Americans including legal immigrants have historically worked these kinds of jobs. Employers now take advantage of the availability of illegals to offer substandard pay, benefits and working conditions and then (with their buddies on the Right) sneer that “Americans won’t do these jobs”.
The Left encourages this line of thinking as well, apparently believing that more illegals = more votes for Democrats.
I’m not sure who represents American labor interests anymore, except that it’s neither of the above.
A crying shame. And no doubt if the hotel and motel industry paid workers decent wages some poor American consumer would be sleeping on the sidewalk rather than being able to afford a room for $5 or $10 more a night. :rolleyes:
I guess being in the US illegally and claiming to be legally allowed to work in the US doesn’t count as a ‘crime of dishonesty’?
Hey, I’m just disputing the OP. He says the shortage is a myth. I was showing that there are those who disagree.
And capitalism does not speak to the issue of illegal immigrant workers, except to say that cheap labor is cheap labor.
And that would be the end of the world why? If fair wage and compensation means that products cost more, then so be it. I would say that employees making more reasonable wages and receiving benefits trumps Johnny Consumer’s right to be able to have a ham like everyone else does at Christmas.
I’m another vote for “not convinced that if there were no illegal immigrants in the US then lots of jobs wouldn’t get done.”
Illegal immigrants function like subsudies for various industries, and I don’t necessarially think that that’s a good thing.
Okay, so you can’t add and subtract. No problem, just try to follow along. I’ll use your example, just to make things easy. The hotel industry frequently pays its largest segment of employees (housekeepers) much less per person/hour than its least-populous departments (management, engineering/maintenence/desk staff, usually in that order). Guess where the most undocumented immigrants work? Okay, I’ll wait.
…
…
…
Oh, come on…
There you go.
Hotel prices would therefore be significantly higher, and some Americans (not you, of course – you’re apparently insulated, somehow, from price fluctuations) would be priced out of each tier of the pricing hierarchy, and those at the bottom would fall off entirely. Are you really that contemptuous of your fellow citizens who can’t come up with another ten bucks a day? You either have no clue about how many of them there are, or you’re, well, unattuned to this planet as most people experience it. Good for you, and I’m glad to meet someone so fortunate, but perhaps your experience isn’t strictly relevant to this discussion.
And, hi, ralph124c, I haven’t seen your name since you were busily proclaiming a prominent black politician a crackhead in the complete absence of any evidence that he had ever used, manufactured, distributed, sold, or in any way profited from crack cocaine. So, how ya doin’? Anyhow, the idea that illegal immigrants cost a lot has been brought up before and answered, and, given the bulletproof defense against truth prejudice can construct, is destined to be brought up and answered again and again and again. Of course, illegal immigrants, possibly through an almost-Darwinian process of winnowing, are usually the kind of people who could contribute most to our faltering economy, given half a chance (at least according to that left-wing radical rag, Business Week). But the economics are where the xenophobes start their arguments, never where they end up. Let’s see where this thing goes.
I agree! Paying living wages to American workers means that you have people CONTIBUTING to the tax base, rather than draining the system. Someday Congress will wake up-and wonder why we are sending so many SS checks to third-world countries!
Imagine if we could outsource the washington-government jobs-imagine getting “ted kennedy-like performance” out of an Indian senator-who will do it for 1/10th the cost of ted Kennedy!
What if it is competing against businesses who *do *employ illegal aliens, and therefore benefit from lower labor costs?
I think hiring “illegal” immigrants is wrong, but only because I think following laws is important. I see no problem with letting more LEGAL immigrants come into the country, and no problem with lowering standards slightly for citizenship, etc. (I don’t know much about this area of course)
Personally, if there are more people available for hiring, more Entrepreneurs could possibly get off the ground, and that does help the economy.
Of course, I don’t have much sympathy for those that are so unskilled they complain about legal immigrants taking their job and not having anything else to do. I guess that makes me an asshole, an elitist or whatnot, but if you are American, and have access to education the immigrants don’t have access to, and still can’t climb up the economic ladder a bit beyond minimum wage jobs… I dunno, perhaps you have a reason to bitch or circumstances that are beyond your control, but I personally don’t believe in handicapping what I see as progress (and the majority of Americans) to help the bottom .05% of people.
I’m a bit confused though, from a bipartisan perspective, is it democrats that are against this or Republicans, or is it not even a bipartisan issue?
Please note - we didn’t hire illegals. What I’m saying is the “huge crowd” that “proves” Americans can easily take illegal aliens’ jobs in the OP’s case may not be quite as meaningful as some people think.
While that might be true in some instances, I wonder how prevalent that is. As I mentioned in one of the GD threads, I have a friend who owns a construction company and they pay $10/hour to start– that means the guys who basically just carry stuff from the trucks to the construction site, or load the trucks up at the main depot. All of his workers are Mexican or Central American immigrants, many of them illegal. But he just doesn’t get English speaking American citizens to apply for the jobs, and if they do they don’t last long. It’s hard work and they get rolling at 7AM every day-- not sure if that’s what drives Americans way, but something does. There is nothing “substandard” about the pay/benefits these guys get.
There’s probably a lot of abuse in the agricultural business, but do you really think Hotel chains and restaraunts are paying “substandard” wages to illegal immigrants? I’d love to see some data if anyone has it.
used, see Washington Post : Marion Barry has admitted to illegal drug use, including crack cocaine.
But since you ask, yes, my landscaper has told me that he routinely hires “undocumented” workers. I told him, fine; please stop mowing my lawn-I will not be complicit in this fellow’s crimes. i mow my own lawn now.
You’re being disingenuous. If the workers are American citizens, the ham may cost more, but consumers won’t have to pay the workers’ taxes and healthcare.
I’m all for immigration. My dad was an immigrant. But he did it legally. He became a citizen. He paid taxes and bought insurance.
I’ll happily pay more for my ham to have it come from legal immigrants or U.S. citizens.
It wasn’t Marion Berry that you accused; it was Ray Nagin.
Of course, in the story that initiated this thread, the case was clearly the opposite. (I do not approve of the actions of the illegal workers at Swift.) Let us consider the situation:
1200+ persons making 12+ dolllars an hour X 2,000 hours per year = $28,800,000. ($12/hr figure picked up from various stories run in the last week.)
And, while Swift might be willing to try to run a bluff on the INS (or whatever we’re calling them, these days), no large company fools with the IRS by failing to report taxes. The penalties far outweigh the hoped for benefits. Screwing with W-4s and W-2s is a small shop game.
Now, at $24,000 a year, those workers would be eligible to get a lot of their income tax (but none of their SSA/Medicare) back when they filed their 1040-EZs.
Of course, none of them are actually able to file those tax returns for fear of being raided by the Feds.
So, the Swift workers actually donated money to the Federal government (especially to the SSA) and to the economy that they can never recover. (It was still wrong, especially to the extent that they may get some other citizen in trouble for misreporting income (and I do hope that the Feds will have the decency to record the SSNs that were abused so that they do not go harrassing good citizens on this issue in the future, although I have no real hope that that will be the case), but the illegals, here, did actually contribute more than they took out.)
Provide a cite for that, or shove it right back up your ass.
This goes on amongst the produce farms as well. All the workers have to do is come up with a social security number. The employers don’t check the validity of that number, thus avoiding fines that would have been imposed had they hired blatantly illegal workers. Taxes are withheld and the workers never file (for the reasons you stated). Lots of free money into the system.
Really?
$10 an hour? To start?
I might have to move. If i lived in the notoriously cheap Bay Area and had a whole $400 a week to myself, who knows what sort of mischief i could get up to? 
Wow, am I ever embarrassed! Or, at least, I would be if Marion Barry was the guy I was talking about! Gee, aren’t you the optimist, thinking that your assertion that Marion Barry was the topic would hold any water whatever. Especially since you might be expected to know the subject of your own thread. Perhaps you were on crack, or something. Lord knows, the drugs can make you real stupid.
Oh, thank goodness! The American workers who build lawnmowers (oh, wait: they’re not affected at all) are ever so grateful (not really)! I’m so glad that the issue is so important that you made time for a discussion with your landscaper (I believe you – I really do, despite the odds against it), and have decided that your time is worth less than four dollars per hour – did you take a poll?
Please update your new self-sufficient lifestyle wih stories of how you bus your own tables at restaurants, strangle your own chickens for the soup pot, and stay awake on the bus ride to California so you can pick your own lettuce.
I wonder how many undocumented workers would have passed the screening process. I would guess that employers who hire illegals don’t care if they’re felons or use drugs.
You do realize that you have just embraced the principal argument conservatives have for opposing the minimum wage, right?