I love lettuce (at $50 / hour)

[Quequeg]

Recently, Senator John McCain offered to pay some union workers $50/hour to pick lettuce (with the expectation that this was one of those "jobs that Americans won't do.")

Yet, some people signed up.
http://news.aol.com/politics/story/_a/mccain-booed-by-afl-cio-labor-activists/n20060404155309990004?cid=771">McCain Booed by AFL-CIO Labor Activists - Associated Press - April 4th, 2006

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain's job offer.

"I'll take it!" one man shouted.

In jest, somebody created a web page which would allow people to apply for these $50/hour lettuce-picking jobs. Already there's more than 3000 applicants.
http://projectusa.org/db/forms/phpform/forms/lettuce-picking_job_app.php

McCain & Co LETTUCE-PICKING
Application for Employment
Job: lettuce-picker
Pay: $50/hour

This page describes the "I love lettuce campaign".
http://projectusa.org/index.php

Here are some comments from job applicants who wish to work for John McCain as a lettuce-picker.
http://projectusa.org/db/forums/picked_pickers.php

Senator McCain should hire me to pick his lettuce because. as a young 24 years old african american I've been working 2 jobs for 4 years now, because after I lost both of my parents, I had to give up my dream so I can take care of my 3 little brothers and sister. Even though I have 2 jobs I'm still struggling. So if the senator of mexico senator McCain can help me get a job at $50 dollars an hour I would Thank everyday for the rest of my life.

And by the way senator McCain and president bush the president of mexico, I work in a restaurant as a dish washer, which is one of those you claim that americans wont do.

Here's another job applicant:

Mr. McCain you owe me a chance at this job. Before you expanded the H1-B to 195,000 a year I was making $52 an hour as a computer programmer. The least you could do is hire me. The $2 an hour pay cut is just fine. Much better than unemployment after benefits are exhausted.

And I grew up on a farm and I have picked lettuce before. The experience pushed me to go to college and get a degree in engineering. Even a master's degree.

Here's what the liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times on March 27th, 2006:

...I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. If people like me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant demagogues, we have to acknowledge those facts.

First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration -- especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration.

That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants do ''jobs that Americans will not do.'' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays -- and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants.

Finally, modern America is a welfare state, even if our social safety net has more holes in it than it should -- and low-skill immigrants threaten to unravel that safety net.
...
What are we going to do about it? Realistically, we'll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.

Here's what Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times on April 9th, 2006:

It's often said that immigrants take jobs that Americans won't take. But look at employment statistics, and you see that even among maids and agricultural workers, only four out of 10 people are immigrants.

I can't write about this issue without thinking of Elmer, a neighbor when I was growing up. He's a high school dropout now in his 50's, but when I met him in 1971, he was earning $26 an hour in a union job. He's very hard-working, but for the last decade he's been reduced to janitorial jobs paying not much over minimum wage. People like Elmer haven't been heard from in the immigration debate, but they have the most at stake.

The 1986 immigration amnesty ended up bringing in waves of unskilled workers. They care for our children and mow our lawns. But as they raise living standards for many of us, they lower the living standards of Americans like Elmer.

That's a trade-off we need to face squarely. The impulse behind immigration reforms is a generosity that I admire. But the cold reality is that admitting poor immigrants often means hurting poor Americans. We can salve the pain with job programs for displaced Americans, but the fundamental trade-off is unavoidable.

Children are hit particularly hard, because they are disproportionately likely to be poor. Nearly half of American children depend on a worker with a high school education or less.

Here's some data which shows the percentage of workers who are immigrants in various jobs:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back206.html
The table 6 shows that the occupations with the highest % of immigrant workers have the highest native unemployment rate. For example, in the occupation "farming, fishing, & forestry", the % immigrant is about 52%, while the unemployment rate for native workers is 14%.

There are simply no labor shortages in America, especially of low-skilled workers, who have already been harmed by decades of high immigration. It's time we give the poor in this country a break.

If we want to help poor foreign citizens, then why don't we improve our foreign policy (e.g. improve our trade agreements, and put some pressure on the oligarchs rather than supporting them, and increase foreign aid).

The great thing about foreign aid programs is we could tax the rich to fund these programs, without taxing the poor. In contrast, high immigration is like a tax on the poor and a tax break for the rich (because the rich benefit from the cheap labor.)

Furthermore, high immigration hurts last year's immigrants, as they're often competing for the same jobs as this year's and next year's influx. So, the case could be made that a policy of reducing immigration would be the pro-immigrant policy (as it would help the immigrants who are already here.)

There's an economist named Randall Burns who worked on the Dennis Kucinich 2004 campaign for President. Anyway, Randall Burns believes we need to reduce immigration, while improving our foreign policy so that we stop supporting oligarchs and we increase foreign aid. (This includes fixing trade policies, among other things.)

Here are Randall Burn's articles and blog. Also, you can reach him at the Kucinich forum.
http://www.vdare.com/burns/index.htm - articles
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/author/randalburns - blog
http://www.kucinich.us/phpBB2/index.php?f=80 - kucinich forum

www.StopGlobalism.com       www.VOIDnow.org

[valerief]

1. Wow, instead of our tax dollars going to Halliburton and the oil

companies, they're going to steer some to lettuce pickers! And at $50 an hour. How grand! A car in every garage, a chicken in every pot, and a $50/hr lettuce picking job for all Americans.

[Warpy]

4. Yeah, I never made $50 as a critical care nurse

I'd be delighted to be out in the fresh air and sunshine picking lettuce for $50/hour! Just think about it, smelling the fresh earth, hearing the birds sing, if the job paid a decent wage, people would be clamoring to do it.

The problem is WAGES, not immigrants. Employers should never be able to get away with paying a depressed wage that won't support a single worker, and that means decent food, decent shelter, safe transportation, adequate medical care, and the ability to put money aside for emergencies and/or retirement. That is a thrifty wage, and that's what the wage floor should provide.

If employers had to pay, say, $9.00/hour, you can bet they'd find illiterate peasants from Mexico far less attractive than literate high school graduates from the US. If the laws against hiring illegals were enforced and cheap ass employers were socked $100,000 for every illegal they were found to have hired, you can bet they'd stop recruiting workers in Mexico, transporting them here, and teaching them how to avoid La Migra overnight.

Never blame the Mexicans. Blame their employers, blame the lax enforcement by a GOP goverment (although Clinton was bad, too), blame wages that have been depressed for the last 30 years.

And if you hear about one of those $50 lettuce picking jobs, drop me a line and let me know who's hiring.

[Quequeg]

5. OK, I will let you know if I come across any $50 lettuce-picking jobs

Please do the same for me, if you're the first to find a $50 lettuce-picking job!!!

If the laws against hiring illegals were enforced and cheap ass employers were socked $100,000 for every illegal they were found to have hired, you can bet they'd stop recruiting workers in Mexico, transporting them here, and teaching them how to avoid La Migra overnight.

Yea, the penalty is too low now. I think it's only about $5000 right now. But the worst part is that only 3 employers were fined in 2004. In Clinton's last year, it was over 300 employers. And in papa Bush 41's last year, I think it was over a 1000. So, enforcement has been gradually dropping in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and now enforcement is just about zero.

Although the house bill HR 4437 is very controversial, it does increase fines on employers a little bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_4437

Increases penalties for employing illegal aliens to $7,500 for first time offenses, $15,000 for second offenses, and $40,000 for all subsequent offenses.

But more importantly, it requires employers to verify the status of job applicants:

Mandates employers to verify workers' legal status through electronic means, phased in over several years.

There's something called the "Basic Pilot program", which was created in 1996 to allow for this electronic verification. The joke is that it has always been a voluntary system. It should be mandatory, and HR 4437 would make it mandatory.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/jmvtestimony022106.html

This program enables employers to electronically verify the work eligibility of newly hired non-citizens directly with the appropriate federal agencies using the Internet, and is considered one of the most promising and effective tools available to encourage compliance with immigration laws. Employers now using the web-based program report that it is easier to use than the current paperwork-reliant system, and brings virtually no disruption to employers and legal workers.
...
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed an important enforcement bill, H.R. 4437, known as the Sensenbrenner bill which, among other things, would gradually require all employers nationwide to use the Basic Pilot Program to verify that their workers are eligible for employment.
...
Three pilot programs were introduced in 1997 and the most successful, known as Basic Pilot, was reauthorized and expanded by Congress in 2004. An independent evaluation carried out by Temple University's Institute for Survey Research and the private research firm Westat found that Basic Pilot did reduce unauthorized employment among participating employers (the program is currently voluntary).

www.VOIDnow.org       www.StopGlobalism.com

[earthside]

2. Boycott and Protest Monday? NO!

I will not be on the same side as George W. Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sad to say that many progressives are getting their compassion for individuals -- forced into this country by poverty in other nations -- confused with what is in the best economic interests of working class American citizens.

The mega-transnational corporations and business exploiters of cheap labor are loving what they are seeing from the so-called "immigrant rights" organizations. They have succeeded in getting anti-NAFTA, anti-globalization people and groups on their side on this issue ... It is now just a small step to getting these folks on board the theory that we all will be better off if there is free trade and no economic borders throughout the entire world -- ie. globalization.

I understand the thrill of mass marches and mass boycotts ... but I do believe powerless, illegal immigrants and well intentioned progressives and liberals are being played for suckers by the likes of Bush and his globalization corporate cronies.

[msongs]

3. hey, I picked lettuce today and I was paid NOTHING.....

except the healty benefits and enjoyment of food I planted, tilled, grew, picked, and prepared myself :-)

Msongs
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