Immigration Reform: Who will cut our grass, cook our meals, do our house

[TrueAmerican]

work? Wash our Cars? Repair our appliances? Paint our houses? Put in our wood floors? Work on our cars? Etc.

Answer: In my house, it's doesn't change. My wife, kids, and I do it all. And most Americans do it themselves too.

So that argument is full of baloney.

P.S. I once hired someone to fix my big screen tv. He wanted to be paid up front. After my wife paid him, he didn't return. When we called him for 6 months straight, he said he was waiting for parts from Juarez. I ended up doing all the repairs to the t.v. myself.

[fasttense]

1. I have not heard this argument against legalizing

illegals. Are there people who are seriously making this argument?

[TrueAmerican]

2. I guess you haven't been paying attention

It's all over the board.

[MrTriumph]

3. Man, are you out of touch. My neighbor pays illegals to mow his yard

I am having a roof put on a house next week and I'd bet the company will use illegal labor. In my ceramic tile business I can no longer lay floors because the price has not changed in 20 years because companies hire low wage illegal labor. And I bet if I were to stroll down the street I'd eventually find a baby sitter for a pre-schooler that is illegal.

These are all jobs Americans will take. But you have to pay them a living wage. Unless you are a Republican, and then you HATE FAIR WAGES.


Get real!

[TrueAmerican]

4. So you contribute to slave wages?

Not in my house.

[bowens43]

7. Slave wages?

Compared to what they could earn in Mexico or Honduras? They don't come here for 'slave wages', they come here because they can make MUCH more then they can in their home country. The 'slave wage' argument is bullshit. If we actually cared about what they make, we would all support amnesty. The wages are low because they are afraid of deportation.

[MrTriumph]

23. No, but because I won't hire illegals, I cannot compete in some market

segments.

And this is no secret. Example: The best airport built by Mexicans is DFW International Airport.

[bowens43]

6. This is the best argument for amnesty.

If these workers had LEGAL status they wouldn't have to work for what Americans consider to be low wages.

[MrTriumph]

22. No, it is a numbers game. Too many workers drive down wages

x

[Ganja Ninja]

5. I know who'll do it!

Someone you'll have to pay at least a minimum wage.

I personally don't have a problem with letting in the Mexican workers. All I want is for those workers to get paid the same wage as American's.

Living in Florida as I do I know people in the hotel industry and I hear them complain about how hard it is to find housekeepers. My answer to that is, charge more money and pay your employees!

This really gets to the heart of a real problem in America, CHEAPSKATES! They don't want to pay for anything. They don't want to pay taxes. They don't want to pay wages. They don't want to support the community. They want it all for themselves and they want everyone else to do their bidding for a pittance. Cheap fucking bastards!

[Saphire]

8. sure, charge more....charge so much that I won't be able to afford

to vacation in Florida. Charge more so that I won't be able to afford a dinner out with my family. Charge more so I can't afford a house and charge more so that I can't afford fruits and veggies for my kids. That's a great solution. Meanwhile, my pay stay's the same or my job gets outsourced. Despite what the govt. says, they will never, never get rid of the illegal immigrants. We DO need them here. I'm not interested in picking apples for five dollars a day, are you??? If you paid me ten dollars an hour, each apple would end up costing about three dollars each. That, I cannot afford.

[QC]

13. It takes you twenty minutes to pick each apple?

In truth, labor is a very small part of the cost of produce. You could double the pickers' wages without adding much to the cost of the final product.

[Ganja Ninja]

16. See what I mean.

It's like "you go live under a bridge so I can have my vacation".

[novalib]

12. I have heard that in some cases

the workers do not get paid at all.

Some companies hire "day laborers" to do work like roofing, landscaping, etc.

The homeowner pays the contractor, but the contractor doesn't pay the day laborers.

The contractors get away with this because the day laborers cannot complain to anyone. If they do, they risk being arrested.

It's really awful.

[Ganja Ninja]

15. Usually day laborers are paid by the company they work for.

We use day laborers once in a while in our company. We pay a labor supplier and they pay them. Some of these guys are living on the street. A lot of these guys are drunks or addicts. Sometimes the guys they send us take off at noon and go get drunk and don't come back. We've had all kinds. We've hired some of them on permanently. Some others have shown up and were combative and still drunk from the night before. We send them home and we don't pay the company that sent them out. The ones that are getting screwed are probably working under the table.

[newyawker99]

18. Hi novalib!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Greyhound]

19. Close but not quite. The main factor driving the depression of wages

is corporate consolidation. As we've allowed the corporatization of our industries, we've also allowed them to drive the individual small business owners out. Once there is no more competition, the corporate model takes over and begins to drive profit margins up, resulting in diminished services and higher prices.

A good example of this is the restaurant industry, when I was in high school I was the assistant manager of a local landmark restaurant. It had operated in Denver for over 30 years and was very popular, a local institution. Because the owner liked me and had known the family for many years, it was pretty much assumed that I would become the manger and eventually take the business over, so I was made familiar with every aspect of the business including how much profit was made every month. The grand total? 4% - 5% net profit, and this was the high end, I was told 3% net profit was average for the lower end of the industry (coffee shops, corner delis, etc.). The employees were all paid very well (some of the staff that had been working there for over 20 years and one woman had been there since it first opened). The owner, Gary, paid himself a decent salary ($35K), and as the sole proprietor, got the profits. He died quite wealthy.

In contrast todays corporate restaurants demand 35% profits and this must increase every quarter, or it is closed. There's where $$ are going, into corporate bureaucracy, excessive salaries, shareholder dividends. It is the same everywhere they've taken over, and this is accomplished by taking most of the additional money from the workers, since they were unable to simply raise their prices to reflect the new profit model. Today we face a situation where jobs today that were considered middle-class blue-collar professions that pay less that they did just 20 years ago (construction trades are great examples)

There is no need to raise the prices of goods and services, merely to accept less profit.

[Ganja Ninja]

21. Some places in the Florida Keys can't find employees anymore.

Most of the business I'm talking about a privately owned not major chains. Major chains are few and far between in the keys.

Since hurricane Wilma hit last year the entire labor force has been practically priced out of the keys. People can no longer afford to live there for the wages they are paying.

A large portion of what used to be called affordable housing in the keys was wiped out especially in the lower keys. The damaged housing is being bought up by wealthy people to be rebuilt as ultra expensive vacation homes. What housing is left is too expensive to afford on the 10 or 12 dollars and hour they are paying for most of the menial jobs.

We are talking rents for flood damaged trailers in the neighborhood of $1,400 a month. On top of that everything is considerably more expensive in the keys than the mainland from electricity to food to medical care.

What's happening is the rich are crowding out the working class. There's even proposals to bus in cheap labor from Miami, a four hour ride in some cases.

So it isn't just major corporations causing all the damage. It's a society that puts little value on work and instead values only wealth.

If you can afford to build a second home in the keys then you shouldn't bitch about paying a similar mark up for all the service workers that live and work there. There's too much for the haves and not enough for everyone else.

[Greyhound]

25. You are absolutely right. Corporate consolidation has made it the

most significant, but the inequity of wealth in private hands is just as damaging.

Your example is also indicative of both how and why illegal immigration is so damaging to our country. Without illegals, the community would have to increase wages to attract local workers for those "menial jobs". Any full-time job should pay enough to live, and without the detrimental effect of illegal immigration, it would.

[Nikia]

24. I honestly don't know why FL and CA hotels can't pay more

I live in the rural Midwest. Many of the hotel maids are poor white Americans. Those hotels are not in a prime location so they charge $50-$80/night while they are charging significantly more in areas where they are hiring illegal immigrants for under minimum wage. It just seems odd from the wage arguement point of view.

[Deep13]

9. Will no one stand up for this country?

Apparently the anything goes Washington culture that turned a blind eye to repreated abuses of the administration and R lobbyists has caused the Senate to extend its collaboration with lawlessness to illegal aliens. Perhaps 12 million people who have unlawfully entered this country without a passport may be allowed to remain, to compete with Americans for work and ultimately to become citizens. What the Senate proposes is legalizing crime.

We know why the Rs want this. It is cheap labor for business. Why is our side supporting it? The only reason American labor commands the wages it does is because it is in limited supply. The more workers there are, the less labor costs. As the gap between rich and poor grows and the middle class shrinks, illegal labor only exacerbates this problem. Further, cheap, illegal construction labor has fueled suburban sprawl and continues to destroy the remaining open space in this country. The 2000 census put the population at 300 million, up from 280 million in 1990. This growth is fueled exclusively by immigration, most of which is illegal. That sprawl also increases our use of damaging fossil fuels by those who drive an hour to the city each day. By midcentury, our population could be at half a billion. Unless we want to be the next India, we need to curb our population growth.

Another aspect people fail to appreciate is the shift in Congressional representation. Illegal aliens may not have passports, driver's licenses or file income tax returns, but they are counted by the census. Being mostly present in border states, illegal immigrants allow conservative, Southern politicians disproportionate representation in the House and the electoral college. It is a resurrection of the old 3/5 compromise where labor is counted but does not count on election day.

This country is prosperous despite our gluttonous ineffeciency because of cheap energy, cheap land and cheap labor. American businesses and consumers do not pay the real costs of goods and services because they are subsidized by the consumption of finite open space, the importation of cheap oil and the use of cheap immigrant labor. Instead of paying one of the millions of unemployed, unskilled Americans to do meanial work, it is cheaper to import often illegal labor. Instead of supporting our educational system, it is cheaper to import educated, technical workers or medical personnel from India. As our space is finite, it should be clear to everyone that this economy cannot be sustained.

American may once have been a nation of immigrants, but their native born descendants live in a mature nation where added population cannot be helpful to the average person. If we truly believe we need immigrant labor, then there are thousands of people waiting to get into this country who did not enter unlawfully and who do not continually break our laws simply by being present.

[Greyhound]

20. I will. It is us against them, and we'd better wake up soon. n/t

[oneold1-4u]

10. A short story "illegals"

I saw this at a neighbors just last year. The contractor made the appointment to do sheetrock on the whole interior of a small home. The supplies and crew arrived and went to work and had the job done in 2 days.
There was only one worker who spoke a bit of english (crew boss)and he was likely paid $4 or 5 an hour. The other six, maybe $2or 3, and all in cash each day. It cost the contractor so little that there was at least 6 or 7 hundred $s worth of waste and left over materials, that were never picked up.
Most of the day workers share some small cheap rental and sometimes the contractor pays for that and utilities because they would need some type of ID to do this themselves.
I do think that if the US government did this for Mexican workers for 6 months each and sent them back, or enlisted them in the military, they would have a lot more control, and new schools and highways could be done for a lot less to the taxpayers.

[Lars39]

14. On a larger scale, Opryland Hotel in Nashville houses immigrant workers,

or at least they did a few years ago. Probably hasn't changed.
Opryland Hotel is owned by the Gaylord Corporation out of Texas.

[misternormal]

11. I can't even afford to pay "slave" wages...

... So it continues that I will have to do it all myself.

[slackmaster]

17. I do most of my own as well

Lately my fiance has been helping arrange and clean things up.

I HATE hiring people to work on my stuff.

[in_cog_ni_to]

26. MY landscaper was an immigrant from Mexico. My paper man IS an immigrant

from Mexico. The man who remodeled my basement is an immigrant from Mexico. MOST Americans do not "do it themselves." I do what I can, but I cannot build a room, do lanscaping BY MYSELF and I don't delver my own paper. I don't have a housekeeper...wish I did though...I hate cleaning house. My auto repair people are U.S. citizens. The guy who put in my hard wood floors is a U.S. citizen. HOWEVER, when I was looking for someone to finish my basement, I went through the phone book and called 6 different contractors and not ONE of them returned my call because it was a "small job" and not a complete home remodel or I wasn't wanting to build a new house. I can NEVER find contractors willing to take a little job. THAT SUCKS. My friend's husband is an attorney and a client of his was paying off his legal fees by working on the attorney's rental properties and that is how I found someone to finish my basement for me. I hired his client. I did what I could myself, but I'm no contractor. I had to have someone do it for me.

[Minnesota Libra]

27. My one simple rule - Won't hire anyone that isn't English fluent..........

....check this out for the fairness issue....


Americans March in Mexico City
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=7324