quote:Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.
posted
Last week there was a major roundup of illegal immigrants. Thousands were captured. Yet there was no news story about the companies they were working for being trageted.
I guess its all the fault of the poor. The business owners and corporations do no wrong, so why should they face problems.
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posted
Last weeks roundup was of illegal immigrants with police records in other than imigration offences. The press kind of missed that part.
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I am somewhat divided on this issue. To be quite frank, I think illegal aliens contribute to this country all out of proportion to what they cost us, even in places where the schools are hard-pressed to keep up with demand.
But I think that companies do tend to use/abuse illegal aliens and that some of the profits "earned" by some classes of employers are there because they are violating the law by hiring illegal workers, and paying them a lot less than a legal worker would earn or demand for that same work.
To me, they are cheats on the system, and I think that they ought to be exposed. Certainly investors ought to be told just where the profits are (at least in part) coming from so they can make a decision whether to support that/benefit from it.
Really, if the truth were more widely exposed, I think there are quite a few surprises out there for people.
I'm 100% in favor of hugely increased legal immigration, but I also would not kick out the illegals who are already here -- at least not if their only crime is being here illegally.
I also wouldn't rush to enforce against the corporations who hire them. I'd at least want to be certain that they aren't abusing their workers, though, or artificially holding wages low...
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posted
As a business owner who does not hire illegals and yet must compete with people who do - I am all for illegal hiring crackdowns.
By letting people get away with hiring these cheap labor sources and skirting the reporting and tax filing, we are only punishing the businesses that try to operate legitimately.
What I'd like to see is true enforcement of the laws already on the books and severe penalties for businesses that do the hiring. If it's not worth the risk anymore, then they'll work instead to hire legal immigrants and people who are already citizens and that will encourage legal immigration and everything will just be grand.
And if you do believe that will happen I've got some ocean front property in Arizona for sale, as the song goes.
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Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery. Unfortunately he could not abolish the slavery lurking in the hearts of men. So the slave owner mentality lived on and is thriving today in the United States. I'm talking about the people who hire illegal aliens. They are the spiritual offspring of Nathan Bedford Forest and his ilk.
Oops, there I go with sweeping generalizations again. I apologize to the good employers who are paying their illegal aliens a decent wage on which they can live well and support their families; and are unselfishly providing good health and other benefits; and are helping them learn English and get good educations because they value them as human beings and want to help lift them out of poverty to become prosperous and happy citizens of the United States. To those employers I take off my hat and offer my heart felt respect. They might be breaking the law, but I can forgive them of that because they are doing it to lift up some of their fellow beings.
But I offer only contempt for the other employers who, for their own greed, are exploiting the illegal aliens. These employers are addicted to the low cost disposable labor illegal aliens provide. They are getting rich exploiting the desperation and hopelessness of others. These employers would own slaves it they could.
Or maybe they wouldn't. This way they can exploit the desperation of illegal aliens without actually having to provide food and housing. Much better this way. None of that pesky noblesse oblige stuff required.
But it is still the same loathsome evil lurking in their hearts that cankered the souls of an earlier generation of slave owners.
And even if they never get punished here, Nathan Bedford is reserving for them a nice warm hovel by fire for later.
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...and here comes Belle with An Inconvenient Truth. Pshaw...next you'll be telling us that the situation is actually detrimental to legal immigrants.
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I'm still curious what the difference is between a "Guest Worker Program" and "Indentured Servitude".
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Dan- If the Guest Worker program can be compared to Indentured Servitude, I don't know what our current situation is like. Somewhere between that and slavery? Sounds kind of crazy, but if Guest Workers is a step in the right direction, then where are we now?
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posted
I think calling the illegal immigrants "slaves" is an insult to both the immigrants, who risked life and limb to get here for the low wage job they work AND the slaves who were kidnapped from their homes, put on a boat against their will and dragged over here kicking and screaming.
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quote:They might be breaking the law, but I can forgive them of that because they are doing it to lift up some of their fellow beings.
They are doing it because they have to. The labor shortage in much of the US is nothing new. And efforts to work around it are not always exploitive. I gave this example in another thread. In 1976 I had a close friend in southern Idaho with a bean farm. He was willing to pay $10 per hour to move irrigation pipe. (That was an excellent wage in 76. School teachers in that county were making 8K per annum.) In addition, any worker who finished the growing season recieved a $1,000 bonus. There were no takers. High School and College students considered the work "too hard". So, he hired illegals. He had one worker who was deported 4 times in one summer and still got his bonus.
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posted
I hear a lot of construction firm owners tell me the same type of stories. "Oh, Americans won't do this job, I have to hire illegals."
And yet, as an American business owner who has always paid well above minimum wage we've never had trouble finding people interested in working for us. People who were American citizens with ID's that we filed and paid taxes on.
I had one brick layer tell us that he couldn't find an American to work for 10 bucks an hour, so had hired only Mexicans. I responded by giving him the name of a guy that approached us for a job and we had to turn him down. He was looking for 8 dollars an hour or more and had brick laying experience. The brick laying company owner responded by telling me he wasn't interested and refused to take the name.
It wasn't a lack of people willing to take the work - it was all about profiting by having undocumented workers. I've had business owners tell me flat out they won't hire citizens because "they want you to cut taxes and you have to carry worker's comp on them." It's too expensive to hire Americans, not that Americans don't want the jobs. And the reason it's too expensive to hire Americans is because they want pesky things like an employer that legally pays their portion of the taxes and carries insurance so a kid who breaks his leg on a construction job isn't saddled with his own medical bills.
Yes there may well be people who refuse to take certain jobs - the agriculture industry particularly has a problem finding workers. But when you start saying there aren't any Americans who will take 10 bucks an hour to lay brick or move pipe then I've got to call that into question. Mainly because I know people who do such physically demanding jobs for less money that what you're talking about here, and they do it gladly because they have a job.
A good friend of the family that goes to our church is framing up houses in the summer heat for 7.5 bucks an hour. An American citizen. I get tired of the assumption that no American is willing to work hard. It's not true. Look at the house or apartment you live in, the roads you drive on. Hardworking people put in your pipes and electricity, did the framing and the brickwork and installed and finished the sheetrock and paved those roads out in the hot sun. Most of them were Americans who aren't afraid of hard work.
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Lets put it on a social perspective. My poor sister, whom I love more than anything can't come with her kids to stay with me. She is not eligible for a visa, a green card, nothing.
quote: I think calling the illegal immigrants "slaves" is an insult to both the immigrants, who risked life and limb to get here for the low wage job they work AND the slaves who were kidnapped from their homes, put on a boat against their will and dragged over here kicking and screaming.
I agree with you. What I said was that a whole bunch of EMPLOYERS in this country have the slave owner mentality. And that there is a special place in hell reserved for them. (I'd like to add that a lot of bureaucrats who are letting them get away with hiring illegals have a special place reserved for them as well. And if you don't believe in hell, then just think of what I've just said as figurative.)
I didn't say that those desperate poor folks are slaves.
But the fact that they are so desperate that they are willing to work for the kind of assholes I've described and at such low wages and in such lousy conditions tells us a lot about the conditions in their native countries. And in my humble opinion, if we were to just open up our borders like someone has sugessed it wouldn't take long to turn this country into one big slum - much like the countries that the illegals are fleaing from. What country flowing with milk and honey will people flock to then?
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posted
I thought you lived in Mexico, Robin. What country can't your sister come visit you from, because she is poor?
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