"Illegal Immigrants Do Jobs Americans Won't Do"...

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William Haskins

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tourdeforce

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One applicant, who asked only to be identified by his first name Jorge, said "Los buenos trabajos son duros encontrar especialmente unos donde no estarás incomodado por los federals" before running behind the dumpster when a police car appeared in the parking lot.


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Jongfan

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Sadly they get killed doing those jobs due to the lack of basic safety precauctions that are overlooked by business owners trying to save a buck.
 

veinglory

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I think it is a mixture of truth and myth. Some jobs in harvesting are at minimum wage level but require you to move all over the country for 4-5 months of the year, and then the job vanishes until next spring. I think the agri-lobbyists ought to focus on making the job tolerable rather than keeping the borders open. If the job isn't one a person in a first world nation would deign to do, is importing people more willing to be screwed over the answer?
 
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I used to be and still am a big wall across the border, troops guarding it, etc guy....but my position has evolved.

Business owners should be targeted and massive fines should be levied against them for hiring illegals.

But the business owners need to have a methodology that works regarding checking paper work to make sure it isn't fradulent, stolen, etc.

If they can't get hired, they won't come.

And put in a guest worker program so business can get workers if they need it.

It's a no brainer.

This problem is solved with the simplest of ease. Everyone is happy.

Republicans are satisfied that illegals aren't streaming in.

Liberals are happy that ...:Shrug: Nothing makes many of them happy.

Uh....well...they won't be able to say "they do the jobs that Americans won't do." They can still do that through the guest worker program and work towards citizenship. I'll even let a dude bring his family if he's accepted into the guest worker program. But no social services. Okay...a family can come if both the husband and wife are in the program.

So...that's done.

Just do it you morons in Washington before we lose the entire Western/SW third of the US.

Act now.
 

jst5150

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So, stifle business? Stifle the economy? Kill the consumer? Kill consumer income? Consumer income spent accounts for 66 percent of our economy. Those businesses and others count on that income to thrive. So, you kill jobs to save jobs? The corrallary doesn't wash.

Unfortunately, capitalism thrives on small business and entrepeneurs. It also thrives on cheap labor. Looking back over American history, this axiom is proven time and again.

It would not surprise to learn that -- in the country I am serving -- they hire workers from other countries to come in and do the labor. All of it. On my base, there is plenty of construction, all done by other countries' citizens.

In short, the solution isn't slapping mandates for disallowance of jobs. It placing more rigorous protections on those jobs. If an illegal wants the job, fine. Create an "Illegals wage." After all, it's the same line of thinking as needles of users or condoms for sex. Of course, many businesses already do this (under the table; graft; and so on). And let's not even get into all those people streaming into our ports in shipping containers who get nothing and work as slaves.

A complex problem that needs a complex solution not easily brokered in a few thread responses and one that is mired in politics, money and the usual culprits.

jt
 
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It's actually an easy problem with an easy solution.

Target businesses. And I mean target.
Increase border secruity.
Have a guest worker program for the companies that rely on cheap labor.

Done.

Everyone happy.

Problem solved.
 

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billythrilly7th said:
And put in a guest worker program so business can get workers if they need it.

It's a no brainer.

Conservative Repubs, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives, think this idea is akin to opening the gates of Hell, and they torpedoed it good and dead in the last Congress. Bush and the Democrats largely support it.

caw
 

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So, the answer to an economy based on cheap labor is to re-institute a form of discrimination getting rather close to slavery? (Something the use of imported cheap labor often results in via the work gang system and language gap).

Other countries manage to have thriving economies based on better education and industries based on skilled labor and value-added products. National economies don't have to be based on the exploitation of an underclass.
 
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blacbird said:
Conservative Repubs, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives, think this idea is akin to opening the gates of Hell, and they torpedoed it good and dead in the last Congress. Bush and the Democrats largely support it.

They only have a problem with it because they want border security first and then that guest worker stuff, path to citizenship stuff later.

I agree with both sides.

I didn't like Bush's plan and I didn't like the conserv republican plan.

I like a mixture of both.

Give me 25,000 more border patrol. Keep building the fence. Increase fines for business to MASSIVE levels. Create a document and I.D. examination system that is near foolproof. Institute a guest worker program. Put the people in the country on a path to citizenship.

Done.
 

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Other countries manage to have thriving economies based on better education and industries based on skilled labor and value-added products. National economies don't have to be based on the exploitation of an underclass.

With respect, name one. And be sure you're looking at the grassroots labor force -- industry and manufacturing -- when you do.

India? No.
China? No.
Any of the Seven Tigers? No.
And so on.

However, I could be wrong. Perhaps there is a model of economic good that doesn;t use cheap labor yet offers one of the top 10 GDPs in the world.
 

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In his badly-underesteemed novel Picture This, the late Joseph Heller made the following point (paraphrased slightly -- I don't recall the exact quote): Every prosperous nation is rich in poverty.

caw
 

eldragon

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Raise min. wage so that Americans want to/can work the jobs that pay min wage.

Open the borders and let them compete for jobs with Americans.


Make sure companies pay everyone a fair wage and hire the most competant workers.



Everybody is happy and we all go eat at Olive Garden.
 

maestrowork

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There's a problem with that. How are small companies going to keep their businesses afloat and compete with big corporations? It's not just a work force issue. There are always two sides.
 

WildScribe

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We should just annex Mexico... then maybe they'll all make a run for Canada.
 

badducky

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Speaking of Canada, when I was in Vancouver I read newspaper articles constantly decrying the shortage of workers. When I was in Texas, I read articles constantly decrying the abundance of illegal workers.

This is a supply and demand equation, and we're always fighting it from the supply side. I can only wonder what would happen if we attempted to fight this problem at the source of the demand: companies looking for cheap labor.

Fans of the brilliant series "The Wire" probably heard this already, but one of the large themes of the series is how post-modernism and the new technologies of the world have made some few people very, very rich, but have cheapened the value of the lives of everyone else.
 

eldragon

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maestrowork said:
There's a problem with that. How are small companies going to keep their businesses afloat and compete with big corporations? It's not just a work force issue. There are always two sides.

Granted, I haven't thought it through.

As Gilda Radner used to say,"Nevermind."
 

badducky

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Small companies will do exactly what they've always done and always do: They will work harder, smarter, and with better staff to compete with larger businesses.

That's always how small businesses stay afloat, and one of the reasons small businesses are the cornerstone of the American economic system.
 

Christine N.

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The problem with raising minimum wage, or even enforcing the growers to pay minimum wage to migrant workers is that the price of the products of agriculture HAS to increase. Then the consumer suffers, and people buy less produce.

Personally I'd like to see more local organic food grown, and each area use that, reducing the cost of shipping and thereby the retail price of food, but I know that produce can't be grown all year round in certain areas.

I'd like it if food that was bad for you was more expensive, and healthy food got cheaper, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Anyway, I can see how many people outside of agriculture would like those jobs currently fulfilled by illegal immigrants. IF, that is, they can make a living wage at it. It's the classic welfare trap - jobs that they can get don't pay more than they get from the government, so they're stuck. And we get illegals taking jobs.
 

badducky

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Look around town, and I bet you'd be surprised at the number of locally owned businesses that survive and thrive. Maybe it doesn't seem that way at first glance, but look around. Many "multi-national" corporations are merely locally owned franchises. Like Subway and McDonald's.

When I was an insurance agent, I focused on benefits packages for small businesses with 5-15 employees, and I never ran out of owners to call, or people to tell me "Go away" in over a year of work 40+ hours a week.
 
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