Well sure, if the Colorado watermelon growers’ association paid me 200k a year to work their fields, I’d be happy to give up my current profession. But since the prevailing wage for such work is well below that, I won’t. And most Americans seemingly won’t, hence the need to truck in well-behaved convicts. The argument I’ve seen in these forums isn’t that businesses should increase their wages to attract workers, it’s that these menial jobs would be filled by eager Americans if not for the presence of illegals.
Or, failing that, import produce from overseas on the world market, allowing developing countries to compete.
American will pick pumpkins for far less than 200k per year. Trust me, I have worked in the salmon canneries of Alaska, there are no jobs Americans won’t do. American business just doesn’t like the free market when it comes to wages.
Produce isn’t the only issue here; there’s plenty of unskilled labor that, by definition, can only be performed onsite. Right now I’m working on a bunch of immigration petitions for a series of unskilled seasonal jobs. These jobs, by their very nature, need to be performed in the United States; the raw materials for the product being produced involves species which are native only to U.S. territory.
The jobs are located in several different economically depressed areas. The employer is paying above the prevailing wage (as determined by multiple State Labor Departments and regional offices of the Federal Department of Labor). My firm placed multiple employment ads on their behalf in several local newspapers where the jobs are located, as well as on a website recommended by one of the state labor departments.
How many responses were there to these ads? A grand total of one, for several hundred job openings. If they can’t fill these positions, plants will be shut down and the employer will lose a LOT of money.
Not all jobs can be outsourced or replaced by imported goods. How do you propose that a busboy in Latin America serve customers in the U.S.? Or a Filipina nurse treat patients in the U.S.?
Then the “prevailing wage” is not high enough. That’s the way the free market works. Do you believe you would never get any Americans to apply for these jobs, no matter what you paid?
Tell that to the several offices of the Dept. of Labor, then, the organization in charge of determining what the prevailing wage is. We’re talking about unskilled jobs, that don’t even require a H.S. diploma, and the offered salary is well above the minimum wage. And we’re talking about geographic regions that are economically depressed, with high unemployment rates.
Fear Itself, while I agree that most unskilled jobs are underpaid, I don’t believe that it’s related a labor glut caused by the presence of an illegal labor pool. And as we’re seeing, at least in this one case, industry would rather hire prison labor than bring wages to a fair level.
Well you will not find these people overnight. If you took all of Walmart’s employees and deported them, it would take a while for them to find new ones. This is true for almost any business. It’s exacerbated by the fact that Americans have bought the notion that that type of work is not for them. Certainly, jobs like these were filled before immigration was as high as it is now. All you need to do is watch that show “Dirty Jobs” to rid yourself of the believe that Americans won’t do disgusting jobs. The difference is that most of those jobs are well paid.
But that’s not a worker shortage. There is no worker shortage in Colorado, I’d say.
That’s a pay shortage.
What they’re finding in Colorado is that people aren’t willing to do that work for so little money unless they’re virtually indentured servants with no other options. The prices we’re used to paying for these crops have been held artificially low by coercion – government-subsidized coercion – of the nearly powerless.
You can see it in the fact that the first solution they reach for is chain gangs. Coercion.
It would be a labor shortage if they dramatically raised pay and benefits and still no one showed up for the jobs. But you can bet your booty they haven’t offered large sums of money. Instead they’re holding on to their slice of the pie and looking for a way to force someone else to do it cheaply.
Sailboat
Edit: after posting, I see other thought the same way. Sorry if I repeated things.
Brickbacon and Sailboat, I have no doubt that Americans as a nationality/people/etc. are not adverse to unglamorous work and that pay scales are unfair to workers, especially in manual labor.
It’s precisely the fruit picking, janitorial labor, etc. that are such badly underpaid trades. That’s the problem being faced in Colorado–as the pool of willing labor is chased out of town, so to speak, they are resorting to prison lines. I’m not arguing that that’s the best solution for the U.S. economy or for any particular party involved, but that the “Day Without Mexicans” scenario is not too far fetched in that if the labor reserve evaporates, industry stands still.
Now assume that the Colorado melon growers find that they can’t rely on chain gangs to pick their fields. Here (pdf) it says that mean state wages in the farming, fisheries and forestry sector is $11.03 an hour, which on quick view is the third lowest in the survey, bettering only grounds/maintenance and food prep, which are also typically populated by immigrants–and apparently the least staffed.
As has been stated in this thread, to attract capable hands away from other trades, growers would have to offer higher wages. I’m unfamiliar with the intricacies of agro economics, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but if farmers suddenly are paying around $18.00 an hour (corresponding to other physically intensive tasks such as repair work and construction sectors in the table), would that not set off a hyperinflationary chain of events (even without adding to the mix the apparent national apiary crisis that might set off massive price shifts)?
I think this means that instead of sentencing people to prison or death as “deterrents” we should be sentencing them to life as a poor Mexican migrant worker.
The decline in the quality of law enforcement personnel was seen by a 32-year veteran police officer 32 years ago, my late father, told me that, “If you think us old farts were pricks, the ones of your generation are gonna be worse. They look at the Dirty Harrys and the TV cops who get in the suspects’ faces, call them dirt-bags, slam them up against walls, and do a fast mumble of the Miranda at them followed by warnings that if they wait 'til they’ve ‘lawyered up’ to talk ‘things’ll just go harder for them’ and they think that’s the way a real cop acts.” He also admitted that the department wasn’t looking for the best and brightest but for people who were “a bit dumb” because the smart ones turn over fast, leaving to become FBI agents or lawyers if they can’t advance fast enough at the local level.
Fast forward to 1998 and Career Night at my youngest son’s high school where the local police recruiter admits to my son that the department wants recruits whose ACTs are no higher than mid-20s(perfect ACT score being 36) because low scorers tend to stay and high scorers tend to go to night school and become lawyers and that this fast turnover is expensive.
So, we have stupid people who grew up watching suspects roughed up by fake cops, and by real ones on Cops and other shows of its ilk ,as the majority of local cops in this country. And local police rejects end up as security guards / TSA agents.
You’re right to be afraid. Remember that the National Guard unit implicated in the Abu Ghraib attrocities was made up of cops from Maryland.
Uh, its relevant because one of the major assertions of the anti-immigration side is that immigrants bring lots and lots of more crime into the country and are disproportionately more criminal. Republicans in Virginia, for instance, have gone as far as to assert that immigrant Mexican gangs were working with Al Qaeda(on what evidence, no one was ever sure)
I would hope that a study like this would NOT include in its incarceration measures those people who are in jail for immigration-status related crimes (i.e. in jail for being caught working without papers, awaiting deportation, etc.)
It sounds like two things are being conflated, purposefully to aid an agenda. What is the “immigration debate” and is it separate from the illegal immigration debate? If so, what does the fact that legal immigrants are usually a law-abiding populace have to do with illegal immigration?
EDIT: And if not - then what debate? Is there a big debate going on now about whether we should be allowing immigrants at all?
Wow, I almost forgot that for a half-second. Can’t figure out how that helps your point, though.
So what? Then this study can be used to refute that particular claim. The “criminal aspect” is not relevant. What is relevant are the sheer numbers involved. You asked the question whether or not this study matters and the answer is no, it doesn’t.
A quick google search uncovered several articles that disagree with you. Like here for example.
Again, so what? Let’s debate the real issues here.
I believe I was looking towards relevancy. Put another way, you can carve up those figures however which way your like. My point was, just because immigrants may commit less crimes than lets say blacks does not mean that, therefore, immigration is a good thing.
Tortured but I hope you see where I was going with it.
Another anecdote. Come back with a nationwide statistical study that contradicts what I’ve posted, and we’ll talk.
So they should be grateful that they are offered jobs at all, is that it? Look, goverment statistics are irrelevant if we are operating in a free market. If nobody wants to do the work for the pay you are offering, you are not paying enough.
Either you’re missing my point entirely onpurpose or I’m simply not conveying it particularly well. Moreover, this is not how you staged your OP. The crime statistics are not relevant to the overall debate. I have no interest in going into the details of this study. I would imagine that there are probably criticisims already out there or that there soon will be. That’s generally the case with these sorts of studies. Further, that article does not appear to be entirely anecdotal given the stats it was quoting.
Clearly this is something you take personally (out of curiosity, are you Mexican or of Mexican descent? )I am an immigrant myself by the way and I believe you are an immigration paralegal. So you have a vested interest in this discussion which is great. That said, don’t create a strawman. You asked what relevancy this study had on the debate and I think I have answered.