Soulfein said:
FangsFirst said:
werepossum said:
Um, of course illegal aliens are here to take our jobs.
Technically, it's not true. They're here to take the jobs even WE won't, because they're desperate for something better.
Actually, their here to take jobs that we WOULD, but won't for below minimum wage. The belief that Americans wont take these jobs is incorrect. When a big group of illegals was rounded up, there was a large turnout to replace these jobs. Illegal Aliens work for below minimum wage, because the employer can pay them it and they cant complain. They live well below the poverty line because of this, and the employers wont hire an American who would work for minimum wage, costing more than the illegal.
The idea that illegal aliens work for less than minimum wage is untrue for the vast majority I've encountered. For instance, the La-Z-Boy plant in the town in which I grew up was number one in the country for years in both quality and productivity, and was the best paying factory work in the area. You were paid by the piece, so if you really hustled and did good work (since re-work or quality rejects takes lots of time) you could make $18 to $28 an hour. Then the factory began firing workers just short of thirty years (saving a ton on pensions) and began hiring illegals for $7.50 an hour, no insurance. Productivity and quality both went to hell, to the point that much of the work has been shifted to other plants and overall hiring has dropped. (These men are not furniture builders, largely don't speak English, and can't read plans - but they're very hard workers.) Even if each chair takes four times as long to build, as long as quality is sufficient to sell them then the company makes more money.
Drywallers in our area made about $18 an hour when I began architectural engineering fifteen years ago; today they make $10 to $12 in most operations. Use to be most of the drywallers were white or black; now they are mostly Hispanic. Again, quality took a nosedive because these men weren't trained drywallers when they arrived here, and again, cannot read blueprints. Quality for the non-illegals has also taken a hit, because the contractors have to bid so low to get work and because many of the best simply moved to different fields of work.
There's a meat packing plant that was raided out west - it was in the news a few months back. The owner complained that he only hired illegals because Americans wouldn't do the work. But after that story hit five hundred Americans were lined up Monday morning to apply for $8 to $12 an hour jobs. It's the same way with construction laborers, landscapers, and other physical trades. Even Mexicans standing outside Lowes or Home Depot don't work for less than minimum wage - try hiring one. In our area it's $10 an hour for all day, $12 an hour for half a day, bugger off if it's less than half a day.
Even when I picked tomatoes and did other farm work, the migrant workers (mostly legal Mexicans at that time) got paid much better than we teenagers doing summer work. The only reason we got hired is because we worked cheaper, else farmers would hire grown, experienced workers. These people don't get hired so much because their wages are cheaper - they are, but not that much in a lot of cases - as because their indirect costs are so much lower, usually working off the books or as independent contractors. That eliminates roughly half the cost of employment, as the employer has to match social security, pay worker's comp insurance, and usually provide some sort of health insurance to get quality, hard-working people. With illegals you have hard-working people who can't complain, can't take you to court, can't demand breaks and health insurance safe working conditions and worker's comp. If an illegal gets hurt, the hell with him; the employer just hires another. (Worker's comp is extremely expensive to the employer, by the way.)
I don't actually subscribe to the Chuck Harder theory that the worker owns his job, but honestly, do you think jobs just magically pop into existence when an illegal crosses the border? Any job - ANY job - has its labor rate set at least partially by the number of people able and willing to do the job. Cheaper labor rates help society to some degree, since there is more money to invest and resource owners have more money to spend, but increasing the labor pool also lowers wages across the board. (Except, honestly, jobs like mine. The more money owners have, the more they build and renovate, and the more work I have. But even that's finite; as ordinary people earn less money, they have less to spend, so eventually the owners feel the squeeze as well.)
And the next time someone tells you illegals are taking jobs Americans won't do, ask if those jobs were advertised at $100 an hour. There are NO jobs Americans won't do, there are only jobs Americans won't do at that wage. For my money, breaking the law to hire an illegal because you "can't afford to pay that much" is no different from downloading an album or a movie because you "can't afford to pay that much."
