Is there an unintelligible cite to go along with the unintelligible argument? Or is there just the willful blindness to the fact that Americans start landscaping companies and then compete for the available customers and the available labor (legal and not), as they compete for other resources, on an equal basis? As for crime? Try to keep up with the research. Or just keep spouting. ralph124c, you toss off unfacts in the manner of someone who hopes s/he will be mistaken for an expert. We’re not fooled, so far. Certainty ain’t knowledge any more than fear is patriotism – and ain’t nobody mistaking you for Nathan Hale, kid.
You’ve been beaten to the punch.
For those who claim that, if we get rid of illegal immigrants we won’t be able to buy ham or stay in hotels anymore, I’m just curious: what exactly are you proposing?
That we change the laws to allow anyone who wants to, to come over the border and get a job legally, instantly, without going through the current legal immigration procedure?
Or keep the laws as they are, and tell government officials to turn a blind eye?
What exactly are you proposing so that we can keep buying cheap ham?
Well?
No specific proposals beyond “If we crack down on illegal immigrant workers Bad Things Will Happen”?
Did anyone watch the show on NBC last night with Tom Brokaw profiling illegal immigration in Colorado? The situation was exactly as I described it earlier in this thread, but the wages are much higher. A construction contractor was paying $14/hr plus full benefits to start, and could pretty much only get illegal immigrants to work for him. This guy was a major contractor in the area, and was begging for job applicants. Some of his foremen were Americans who had worked their way up from unskilled laborers, but he wasn’t getting any more Ameicans applying for the entry level jobs.
Are there no Americans in CO or nearby states who can move there? $14/ hr plus benefits is a damn good wage for unskilled workers just starting out. Some of the illegal immigrants he was hiring were barely 16 years old. But, just like the jobs my buddy’s company offers, these are hard work-- lots of ditch digging and they get started at the crack of dawn. Most of the Americans who do sign on don’t last more than a week or so.
How much does an unskilled guy in the US who is 18 or 20 years old think he deserves to get for a starting wage? And we’re talking in a fairly rural area in a state that isn’t known for being expensive to live in. Now, I wouldn’t aspire to this type of job, nor would I want my kids to. But if I or one of my kids were in dire straights at a young age, and was healthy, I’d say go for it-- it’s better than some comfortable, low paying job at McDonalds or living off the dole.
That’s because there is no happy joy answer that will make everything OK. If we start deporting people en masse, we wind up spending enormous sums to put a big hole in our labor force. If we let things continue as they are, we maintain an underclass with no rights.
There’s nothing more affecting than a capitalist suddenly discovering the disadvantages of capitalism. You often see them huddled together, commiserating, because fourteen dollars an hour is a fair wage, in fact it’s a damn good wage, and they should be able to get prime American labor for that. Of course if someone should suggest that fourteen bucks an hour should be able to buy decent housing and transportation and food and medical/dental care for a small family, they get all red and puffy and make strangled squawking noises of which “Socialism!” is the only intelligible word.
The Colorado Contractor (CC to me) Brokaw found was offering a price that would not buy American labor in the current market. If the guy’s a minimally competent businessman not divorced from reality, he knew that going in, or at least has learned it since. That his offer won’t attract American labor is, therefore, purposeful on CC’s part.
So, question #1: why didn’t the offer go up? I’m just guessing, but might it not be because CC was satisfied with the undocumented labor he was buying? And I know it’s horribly cynical of me, but I’d have to be shown before I believed that the illegal portion of his workforce is averaging anything close to $14 + benefits. If they are, I’ll send CC a really nice card. But honestly, wringing his hands for the cameras because his largesse isn’t appreciated by the American job applicant? There’s your cheap ham, Polerius.
So, question #2: why aren’t Americans rushing to fill these jobs? We’ll assume for the moment that it’s a bona fide offer and that CC really isn’t getting American applicants. Well, perhaps there just aren’t many Americans experiencing the “dire straits” John Mace and his kids would need to be in before they would table their aspirations and take the job. Unemployment has been low, particularly in Colorado. Another reason might be that the difficulty and dangerousness of the work causes some applicants to value it higher than CC was bidding. Another might be that $14/hr + “full benefits”(which is a pig in a poke without further information) isn’t nearly enough to compensate for the fact that it’s an industry in which frequent layoffs are a given, and even in a strong economy a low-level job is only as secure as the employer’s next bid. And of course it takes a while for these NBC reports to make it to the screen: the last quarter of this year has been brutal for construction workers, even in CC’s(same as the first link, fourth paragraph) neck of the woods. But if you’re laid off, you’re free to pursue other opportunities. There might be apples to pick(in New York), wildfires to extinguish (Oregon), sugar to harvest (Florida), meat to pack (anywhere but Colorado), or even other construction jobs (somewhere the ground isn’t frozen). This makes mobility an asset, and it’s one of the few that undocumented laborers have.
Not necessarily.
I’ve worked in the US twice. The first time I went there to do a job that no American wanted. Well, one American did: out of more than 100 applications to be a Graduate Student in Chemistry at that University for that year, only one was from an American.
I got my SSN. Legally. I worked with it and paid taxes with it for 3 years at the Uni, followed by 1 year at a regular company.
Then the company said they would not give me the letter I needed in order to renew my work permit. They still wanted me to work for them… just not without a permit. In Miami this is sadly very common; many of the immigrants there do not have the option of going back home, like I did. If you let your work permit expire without submitting the paperwork for the next one and keep on working, then you’re illegal. Even if it’s not your fault but your employer’s fault. Then the have you by the short hairs: if you say you’re leaving (this company was bleeding people left and right, between firings and leavers), they say “oh, I have INS’s number right here!” I would still have paid taxes and the SSN would have been mine, legally acquired. Just not legally used any more.
Second time, I worked illegally for the first five months. I did have a SSN, from before. And a Visa-cum-work-permit (one of those obtained by a company to bring in an employer with specialized knowledge).
But I needed to renew my SS card, since the old one had that “restricted employement” stamp on it. If you’re not a US citizen, you can only renew your US-SS card from within the US; I could not renew it before entering the country. I got off the plane, got my luggage, dropped it off at the hotel and headed straight for the nearest SS office.
And they told me it would take at least two months and not to worry until three. Whaaaaaat? The first card had taken less than 10 days! Ah. but the first one was obtained before the CIA had to check SS-card applications by foreign nationals :smack: It was the CIA check that took five months. For a document that I was supposed to show to my employer’s HR during the first two weeks of employment… So, again, I was breaking the law. Only, maybe the US government could take some consideration to crafting laws that can actually be complied with*? Just sayin’ - both me and INS, whose employees have complained quite a few times about similar problems.
- Yes, I realize that in theory I could have gone to the US five months before, applied for a new SS card, given the address of some US coworker (since you must provide a US address and phone number) and not entered the country “for real” until I had it. But that’s quite a theory.
PS: nice username, Viridiana.
…now without… (I think my brain got mixed up with “not with” and “now without”, sorry)
I didn’t say there had to be a happy joy solution to make everything OK.
But sitting around and complaining that “doing this is bad and doing that is bad”, without proposing what can actually be done, is counter-productive.
There have to be some steps that can be taken which, while not “making everything OK”, will provide the least painful solution.
Let’s face it, there are jobs that Americans CANNOT afford to take-like seasonal work (such as picking apples). The reason of course, is that you are expected to pay taxes to the state-and the state won’t give you a break on your property taxes, just because you are unemployed. So that is why the apple growers in NE have to import labor for the picking season. Similarly, we now have child labor laws, that prohibit children from working jobs that once fell to them 9like picking potatoes (Maine) or tobacco (Virginia)).
However, I can see the market for alien labor staring to close-in California, they now have grape-picking machines, which no manual labor can compete with.
There are 45 million American citizens without health insurace, and you pay for them. You going to deport them too?
Only in your cartoon version of the world.
Look, the discussion about the $14 wage in that program comes in the context of al the things we’ve been discussing in this thread. There are people in CO (and the rest of the country) choosing jobs that pay much less than $14/hour (or no job at all) and complaining about how they can’t make ends meet. And they have their defenders on this MB. Now, some of those people could not stand up to the physical rigors of hard construction work and some those people have constraints that don’t allow them to move. But is that true of all of those people? Surely a large segment could do this work if they chose to.
Look at the excuses that have been given in this thread about why illegal aliens “take jobs away from Americans”, and you don’t hear anyone saying it’s because an American needs to earn $20/hour in order to make a job worth his while. No, all we hear is that jobs are low paying, maybe even sub-MW. And yet this $14/hour is better than the best Living Wage you’re going to find anywhere in the US where LW laws exist.
You are simply picking a number—$14 per hour—and assuming that is a fair wage for the job. Yes, $14 is well above minimum wage, but what makes it any fairer then $12, $16, $24, $45? You have to look at the wage offered on the one side, and what is being asked of the worker on the other. The latter half of the equation takes into account the work itself, the hours, the distance needed to be traveled every day or the amount of time someone will be away from their family, the danger, the monotony, the benefits, the opportunity for advancement, other opportunities available, etc. And the only people who can accurately weigh all these factors is the actual workforce. The people decide. If a job is not viewed to be worth thew effort for $14 per hour, well then the job is worth more than $14 per hour. The people who built the Alaskan pipeline understood this. They had some tough work in truly horrible conditions, yet they had plenty of workers. Why, because they bumped up the pay side of the equation to make it attractive. Ditto for companies that need people to work on oil rigs at sea.
If someone offers a wage of $14 per hour (and people are aware of it) yet there are very few interested workers, it’s obvious that the job doesn’t pay enough. The Colorado example is instructive. The guy should simply offer more money. There is a point where he will have lines around the block. If he can’t make a profit while paying those wages he shouldn’t be in business. A business plan that depends on having illegals do the work—even at a seemingly generous $14 per hour—deserves to wind up in the toilet.
I know I’m gonna get reamed (or is it reemed? they both sound right) for this, but I don’t have anything else to do tonight anyway.
So, may I and my trusty steed Naivete, join the discussion? Why thanks. And all that gotten out of the way now, I must ask what seems to be the most obvious question to me: What difference does it matter who a certain job benefits? Is this an “only in your own backyard” situation? That because something other than what most would hope to expect (Americans filling these jobs) are, for whatever reason, being done so by foreigners? Yes, I understand they are illegal, but I often feel that there is a reason for such things, like the process is so freakin’ long or complicated, that it would be difficult for even some of us Americans to do. Plus, shouldn’t this be about helping out mankind rather than who had their lucky stars blessed wherever they were, or weren’t, born.
Gah. I just don’t get this attitude, sorry. If I wanted to give something away (let alone have someone earn it through labor, especially), I can’t imagine giving a shit in an outhouse about who it would go to or on what continent they live. All luck of the draw anyway. Just as long as it helps someone, that’s all that matters to me.
I’ll now ride away while donning my rose-colored shades, I’m sure, and await the onslaught of the various versions of pragmatism that I’m missing.
John Mace, are you awake? That was a rare, for you, content-free post.
Whether or not some nameless Coloradan could pour concrete for $14/hour carries as much economic weight as the proposition that various consumer goods could be sold for a lower price than they are – none. The market determines the price of goods and services and labor too. Your whining that some people earn less in other jobs is fatuous: you might as well complain that bars of gold don’t cost a dollar, like chocolate bars do. Labor comes in different flavors, and they are not all valued the same. As your NBC viewing experience attests, Americans are not willing to sell their labor in that job for the price offered. Even those earning less choose not to accept it, because they do not see it as an improvement in their lot. As for why, that’s in the part of my previous post that you apparently didn’t read, if you can type
with a straight face. If that’s all you’re hearing, you’re an awfully selective listener. In my first post in this thread, when we were still talking about Swift, I noted that it was “…either ignorant or dishonest to present low wages as the only or even the worst of the bad conditions meat industry employees face.” In my most recent, I listed several possible explanations for why a construction job might be unattractive even at a wage above the minimum (fourth paragraph). Hell, your own self-reported attitude is that you or your children would take it only under the pressure of escaping “dire straits.” But ordinary Coloradans should be happy to take the offer because you’ve decided it should be plenty for them? Wow, and they call liberals elitist.
The obverse side of the coin is that undocumented labor has attractions for employers besides cheapness: they’re not going to unionize, they’re not going to become whistleblowers, and they’re not going to complain if abused a little bit. In fact, let’s think about what would happen if the workers of Colorado called CC’s bluff and started accepting his offer. CC then could either replace his cheaper, more pliable, undocumented labor with Americans getting $14/hr + “full benefits,” or the influx of applicants might have an effect and the offer might go down. It might go down until it stops attracting the more expensive and difficult American workers. Since the latter describes exactly what’s happening now, what magic do you suggest we use to stop it from happening again? No fair using the same spell that made the Colorado labor force apply for the jobs in the first place.
The ghost of Milton Friedman hates it when you call the free market a cartoon. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m trying to describe reality here and you’re the one arguing that $14/hour is enough of a wage to make the Colorado labor market do exactly what it isn’t doing. The workers of Colorado seem to agree with me, Doc.
Chocolate bars cost a dollar?
I always thought they were supposed to be a nickel.
Can I get a link to where I can find these sweet $14/hr jobs? Seriously, I have a bachelor’s degree from a public university, and all I can find here in Michigan is $9 tops. All these laid off GM workers are stealing us young people’s jobs! You can’t compete with 30 years experience!
They must be made using only American citizen labor.
Well, I’m sure most of the participants in this thread can come up with their own ‘solution’. But very few of us have the working knowlege of current immigration policy to come up with something that not only covers all bases but also has a chance in hell of being implemented, so sure, these arguments are all pretty moot. I wish things were otherwise.
For myself I was proposing a change in immigration policy, and I feel strongly about it, but I don’t think I can say specifically and definitively what is feasible to change on paper. I don’t mind doing research but that doesn’t guarantee I’m going to get anywhere. Surely you’re not saying that only experts can have an opinion on any given subject? This board might just go out of business!
Or I could state my ideas in a more general manner, and have people step in to refute me or to agree on this or that issue, or offer this or that insight. So I did that, and most others here are doing it too.
That said, did you have an idea for a solution? I’d love to hear it from all sides, because there’s an “us vs. them” mentality from some on this issue (not necessarily from you) that just doesn’t make sense to me, so I could be missing something.
And thank you **Nava **
You’re also right, I was taking from my own experience with people but there are all kinds of circumstances of flubbed policy working here, most of them weird and sad.