Were getting BS with this Immigration Story -- saying US doesn't have the

[cthrumatrix]

work force.

Last time I looked we have more than enough people w/o jobs and companies shipping jobs over seas.

We are getting snowed on this.

Lou Dobbs has taken a lead on this...wages pressured by $200M a year by cheap labor alternatives.

They think they can "assure" that cheap labor won't take american jobs...this is such BS.

[doc03]

1. Agree

That's $200B. After reading the posts on DU about this subject
I would swear no one works for a living here. They can't understand that the whole illegal worker thing is just to suppress wages in this country and nothing else. If someone comes here legally I have no problem with that. When they are illegal I can't understand that at all.

[Dookus]

2. I live very

near some very large agricultural operations here in California.

I don't know any "anglo's" who itching to get a job picking produce.

A close relative also manages restaurants - big, famous ones. She says the restaurant business would collapse in a day without undocumented workers.

There really ARE jobs that Americans don't want to do for the wages. We need these workers - I'm glad they're here and I think we should do all we can to help them into the mainstream.

[doc03]

3. Let the market determine the wages and Americans will take the jobs.

Undocumented workers, that's like calling a bank robbery an unauthorized withdrawal.

[cryofan]

5. Believe me, Anglos USED TO do almost ALL manual labor all over

America (except for the South).

My father picked cherries in Michigan decades ago.

What happened has to do with the law of Demand and Supply. If the supply of labor is less than the demand, the prices go up. If more, the prices go down.

The flood of immigration both illegal and legal has caused erosion in the price of labor. Plus, it has caused more housing prices to go up. Can you see that this is a Bad Thing for American worker-citizens?

Businesses want higher revenues and profits, not lower revenues and profits, right? Well, your wages are like your profits (after you deduct costs). So all this immigration is BAD for Americans who already live. Supposedly, we run this country, and it should be operated for our benefits.

Do you see what I am getting at? This is not Rocket Science, is it?

[doc03]

7. American still do this work in this area

I worked putting up hay for $.50 an hour 12 hours a day 45 years ago, one of the other farmers in the area was paying $.75 an hour the next year, guess what the other guy had to raise his pay to $.75, no one would work for him.

[zelda7743]

11. cost of produce would be prohibitive

If the people picking the produce were to be paid better, the cost would be borne by those that eat the produce. Many people will not be able to buy the produce, sales will fall, and the people picking the produce will be laid off.
It's a vicious cycle that I don't have an answer for.

[cryofan]

15. Better to have a Race to the Top than a Race to the Bottom!

Race to bottom--> wages get lower and lower and consumer costs get lower, and investor profits increase.

Race to the Top--> Wages of pickers increase, so the amount of money they spend increases, and so the business down the street gets more revenue and so every worker has more savings. Investors get more profits.

The difference is that workers have a choice in the Race to the Top. The money flow THROUGH them, rather than FROM them.

[Dookus]

8. I see what you're getting at...

but I think it's more complicated than that.

I don't know where you live, but here in California, the state would collapse in about 4 days if all the undocumented workers went home tomorrow.

We need them here. We need to treat them better. We need to help them better themselves. We do NOT need to expel them.

First, we couldn't even if we wanted. Do you want to see 8 million people rounded up in a forced march back to Mexico?

Second, as I said above, even if we COULD get rid of them, the California economy would collapse.

Third, there really AREN'T sufficient numbers of anglos who would take the back-breaking and lousy conditions, even for a half-way decent wage.

[cryofan]

9. Now we are engaging in a dialogue

First, I am not calling for deportation of illegals. I say make them all citizens if they can show they have been working here.

Now, my main point was about supply and demand and how immigration affects wages. And beneath that, I am arguing that this country should be run for the benefit of the citizens of the country, and that the right to work here should basically belong to them, and foreigners should not have that right, except in unusual circumstances.

So, what I think we should do, and what some Democratic candidate should address, is that illegal immigration should be stopped using computer software that can check by phone whether an SSN is valid. This can be done, but the program was sidelined by....wait for it....corporate lobbies.

[Dookus]

13. thank you

yes, I like a good dialogue.

Personally, I've never been part of the Buchanan brigade that wants to blame immigrants (legal or otherwise) for our problems. My early political years were spent as a socialist, and in that time I came to believe that I really don't have a right to a better life than people in other countries. We ALL deserve a better life.

The Latinos (mostly) that come here to do our "dirty" work are decent, hard-working people who had the misfortune to be born a few hundred miles south of their ideal birthplace.


A hundred years ago, the low-paying back-breaking jobs were being done by European immigrants. The bulk of my American ancestors were coal miners in Pennsylvania. Believe me, the descendents of the Mayflower families weren't doing that work. They assimilated and grew into a middle class and today, very few of them want to do the jobs being done by Mexican immigrants. I don't blame them. It's awful work.

We CAN agree, I think, that we should have a national policy that requires ALL farmworkers of whatever national origin to have a fair wage and decent working conditions. We need creative solutions to this, because simply mandating that a farmworker make $15/hour is probably not going to do much for agriculture in this country, and it will make a lot of produce unaffordable for a lot of people.

It's a complicated problem. I understand your position. I myself have been unemployed for one year now, because what I do is now being done largely offshore. Nonetheless, I don't believe barriers are the long-term answer. I would hope to find a way that allows workers around the world to start gaining some of the benefits we enjoy here.

I have no more right to a decent job an Indian does. We simply can't require that the jobs stay here forever. Americans would not pay the price for a television designed, engineered and manufactured entirely in the US. We are not an island unto ourselves.

Again, it's complicated. But I have a reflexive response to people who want to blame decent, hard-working immigrants for our problems.

[lovedems]

6. I'd pick produce if they would pay me a wage I could live on.

With all due respect, it is called cheap labor for a reason and I think they are exploiting these immigrant workers for their own personal profit.

[PaDUer]

4. He's trying to make

the people slaves..those camps look closer daily!

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. H1Bs and Reverse Nafta

All the jobs they can move to another country to pay less, they are. The jobs you can't move, they will bring in people - temporarily - to lower wages for everyone else. Just like H1Bs.

[Elwood P Dowd]

12. You got it!

And all these pro-immigration posters don't understand what's about
to happen. When Bush and Tom Donahue support an immigration policy, you
know damn well what's coming.

[1songbird]

14. The plan will basically blow the roof off of the limit on HB1 visas.

Right now there is a limit on the number that the country will assign. Bush's plan will blow this out of the water because there will be no limit on the number of illegals that can get them. This is going to really hurt IT and engineering personel.