Everybody’s immigration problem
These past weeks, I’ve had to deal with a couple of large dying acacias in my backyard that were threatening to tumble onto my neighbor’s roof on the downhill side. Not good.
I called my regular gardening service and they wanted $1900 to pull out the two trees. Again not good. I tried another service. They wanted $1700. Ditto. Then I crossed my fingers and tried the phone number from one of those smudgy business cards that pop up in your mailbox. A guy came over, Hispanic, in his fifties. I had no idea whether he was illegal or not and certainly didn’t ask. His English was pretty good. Good enough to quote me five hundred dollars, which I accepted. A crew showed up a few days later and did the job just fine in four hours. Some of them spoke English, some only Spanish. I doubt they were citizens, but again I didn’t ask. They were nice guys and I was happy. I had saved myself 1200 bucks.
So I’m a hypocrite if I support the Arizona legislation, so I won’t formally, although I sympathize with it. We’re all in a puddle of goo when it comes to immigration, especially all of us here in the Southwest. And we’re all poseurs. This doctor I appeared with on a panel the other night – a paleo-liberal – kept referring to illegal aliens as “undocumented Americans.” I hadn’t heard that one before. He had already awarded them with citizenship. Would he have called illegal aliens from China or Thailand that as well, or was he referring in his mind only to folks from South of the Border? Who knows? But he sure sounded like a smug fake. I wondered how many illegal aliens he employed over the years – or that day.
It’s hard not to sympathize with the unfortunate people you run into when employing illegals. For the most part they have been very friendly to me over the years, patient with my sometimes wobbling Spanish, and grateful for any money I gave them. I don’t go out of my way to employ them, but I don’t avoid it either. In fact, I don’t think I could avoid it, even if I wanted to. I’d have to give up eating in restaurants and stop taking my clothes to the cleaners.
So I acknowledge that I am part of the problem. But this doesn’t stop me from despising hustlers like Al Sharpton and his tedious enabler Geraldo Rivera (does anybody still watch him? well, I guess I did) when they exploit this situation for such obvious personal gain you wish they’d spend even five minutes as illegal aliens themselves.
What is to be done? Damned if I know. But I have to admit that sometimes I am afraid. I love Mexico and have been there who knows how many times (50? 60? 80?). I went all the time, slipping over the border to Ensenada for the weekend or flying down to Oaxaca for a serious cultural/culinary vacation. That is I used to. Now I’d rather go to Iraq. Mexico seems more dangerous, especially around the border. It’s a war zone ruled by murderous drug lords. Recently the carnage has become extraordinary. Having that border wide open seems, well, crazy. You feel terrible for the Mexican people and you fear from your own life if you visit a border town.
Mexico never has fared very well at fixing itself. (“So far from God, so close to… etc.”). Its leaders of the right and left are worse than Chicago. Maybe a fence would help them face reality. And make things a bit fairer up here.
But then people like me might have to pay more to have our dead trees removed. So it goes.
The first part of your essay is just BS, just because someone is Hispanic and gives you a good rate has nothing to do with ill versus lee, what if they were Russian, I have met legal Russians with limited eng, so there )
I lived in California Central Valley when fruit tasted like fruit. Every year, migrant fruit pickers would arrive to pick whatever was ripe and they moved with the harvest. They timed their arrival about perfectly. At the time, nearly 100% of the migrants were white. But, they moved on found permanent jobs and blended into society’s middle class. Then Mexican Green Card workers arrived to take their place. Eventually, in search of easier work, they too moved on to construction, painting, masonry, electricians, plumbing, kitchens, hotels, and never returned. Now, illegals flood through our borders and farmers can’t find workers to help with the harvest. Mechanization has helped but machinery can’t do it all. Who will harvest our foods when all the migrants have moved to more desirable jobs? We will have to get used to eating machinery picked peaches and tomatoes with no taste. There is a place and need for guest workers but only if they are temporary guests. Either way, whether they stay or go, we are going to pay a whole lot more…. It’s just a question of how badly do we want a peach we can taste or to be able to lie down in a hotel bed with fresh linens? We must make guest workers temporary and welcome legal immigrants. We are the only country in the world that grants such leniency to border crashers. Unless we control our borders, we won’t even have peaches left to harvest because illegals won’t even pick them anymore. As for me, I’d rather have a peach I can taste and a clean hotel bed all provided by a hard working guest worker looking forward to returning home to his/her family.
I live 15 miles from the border (El Centro), and support Arizona. We can not fix our immigration problem without FIRST gaining control of the border first. The last amnesty fiasco demonstrates that. The drug and gang wars accentuate it. The protesters are avocating lawlessness. Arizona did not write a new law, it just gave itself the authority to enforce existing Federal law. We can dicuss guest worker programs, liberalizing legal immigration policies, even amnesty for current illigals, but ONLY after the rule of law is enforced and the borders are under control. Is that heartless? I contend supporting the status quo, where illigals are exploited, blackmailed, and live in daily fear, is heartless. Fix the border, stop making average American citizens (the 70%) that support enforcement the villains, then the natural generosity of American citezens will kick in, and everyone wins. Except the criminals and exploiters, boo hoo.
The hypocrisy of the Obama administration and many members of congress on the illegal immigrant issue is just astounding. Raids on places of employment to deny them a means of earning a living and then condemning a state whose people are down in the trenches dealing with the myriad of problems that come with having to live with this underclass of people. They are used for their convenience when times are good and shunned when times are bad. They are only considered “undocumented Americans” if they were to vote for Democrats.
I do not quite understand: do you want to close the border from the drug lords and their soldiers, or from the refugees? Maybe you would like to clarify it a bit, at least for yourself — and share with us. Thank you in advance.
Be glad to. I am interested in your choice of the word “refugees.” Rather loaded. Mexico has been blaming and using the US as an excuse for its problems ever since I can remember. As with most (not all, but certainly this one) blame-the-other-for-your-problems strategies, it in fact ultimately makes things worse, especially for the poor of that country. Mexico will not function successfully as a country until it quits blaming us and corrects itself. This won’t happen as long as its leaders of the right and left continue to use El Norte as a whipping boy and a stop-gap employment center. Mexico has magnificent resources, some of the most extensive in the world, and yet the country is screwed. Why? We’d actually doing a longterm favor to the Mexican people by erecting a fence . Also, we’d be honoring those of us with nostalgia for such principals as “all equal before the law.” #2 Jim, above, seems to have that just about right.
And there is a reasonable solution: a secure border, with generous immigration and work-permit quotas. The vast majority of now-undocumented people are honest and hard-working. But securing the border, and screening out the MS-13 members and other criminals is more necessary every day.
Honest – not entirely.
The vast majority may not steal from you personally, perhaps. But how honest can anyone be when they are in a country illegally?
Mexico will not function successfully as a country until it quits blaming us and corrects itself. This won’t happen as long as its leaders of the right and left continue to use El Norte as a whipping boy
Heh! Seems just like a situation that exists in the Middle East.
Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to have a law and then to object to its implementation; or is the law a discriminatory one only to be applied to those other than South of The Border types?
Remove the law and permit the multiculti diversity free for all in today’s PC world and suffer the consequences, not just from increased violence but the political shenanigans when there is no control over who enters the country.
State Department Travel Alert….okay, so it’s a Mexican Travel alert
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0427/Mexico-issues-travel-warning-over-Arizona-immigration-law
Orale pues.
Its leaders of the right and left are worse than Chicago.
Could you explain this, Roger? I’m not sure what you mean here, by comparing a nation’s leaders to another country’s city.
It’s hardly an apples to apples comparison.
Chicago’s, if you would prefer. I thought it was metonomy.
Roger, perhaps you meant metonym, a word for which Wm. Safire would love you.
Thank you for a succinctly and pequantly written piece, but ‘worse than Chicago’? Can it get worse than the =:0bama mob? You’ll see in this long hot summer runup to the elections.
The best description of mexico was in P.J. O’Rourke’s Holidays in Hell. I do a lot of work in Mexico and have learned to navigate the cities by the large statues in the roundabouts. I know a few of them (Juarez, Carranza) but the rest are mysteries. Endless Civil war and revolution makes a lot of statue material but not a basis for economic growth. It’s said a mexican laborer if five times as productive in the US than in Mexico. I’d believe that.
This is perhaps the number one question: what would you be saying if the illegals possessed blue eyes and blond hair? That’s it in a nutshell. This issue has been race carded by the Democrats. Logic has next to nothing to with anything. The irony is that the Hispanic citizens of Arizona and California should be the foremost opponents of illegal immigration. They are often the ones forced to compete in the marketplace with these individuals. I am utterly convinced that this problem would have been resolved ages ago if it instead involved lighter skinned Canadian illegals.
It behooves me to add that Mickey Kaus is behaving like an innocent child. He actually thinks he can get the Democratic Party to abandon race card politics. Kaus’ campaign against Barbara Boxer is truly an existential threat to its top leaders. If he is even mildly successful—many Democrats will split off into a third party, or join the Republicans.
“I do not quite understand: do you want to close the border from the drug lords and their soldiers, or from the refugees?”
I don’t believe he said anything about closing the border at all. He mentioned putting up a fence, which is a sane thing to do.
Here’s my analogy. Say you’re holding a party at your house and you send out invitations. Say you invite 50 people. People start arriving at your house and ringing your doorbell and you start letting them in. After awhile you notice the house seems more crowded than it should be and you’re seeing faces you don’t recognize. You do a little investigating and discover that your back door is unlocked and people, without invitations, are sneaking in that way. They are enjoying the party, eating the food, having a good time but they were never invited. They never even had the courtesy to come to the door and ask if they were welcome. No, they just took the opportunity to sneak in the back.
What is the first thing you do? Why, you lock the back door, no? You cut the problem off at the source.
Then, you can have time to deal with the rest of it. You’ve got a big crowd in the house with everyone mixed together so it might take awhile to figure out who is really invited and who isn’t. You might even let the uninvited people stay, if you have enough to go around and they seem like good people who aren’t going to cause trouble.
But what you don’t do is to tell everyone to stay and then go back to your party without doing something about the huge problem of the unlocked and unguarded back door. It’s just asking for more trouble. You don’t even know who might come in that door next.
What you do is lock the back door and insist people come in the front door, which was the plan all along. There’s a procedure for that. You get to look people over. You get to check invitations. You can bend the rules there if you want to.
Polite people don’t sneak in their neighbor’s back doors, they knock at the front door. The front door isn’t locked. You still let people in who have invitations. You can still let other people in. But it’s your call because it’s your house.
All we are asking is for the Federal government to do its job and lock the back door. Make people come in through the front, the way millions of other people came to this country, legally, through the front door of Ellis Island and places like that.
With the back door locked no one has to wonder who is here illegally. The Arizona law would be irrelevant. And we could all just get along because we’d know we were all playing by the same rules. The inherent assumption would be, if the system worked properly, that no matter what language someone spoke, no matter what they looked like, no matter where they lived or what car they drove, they are a fellow citizen or green card holder, legally entitled to be here and would be treated exactly the same (because they would be exactly the same).
What an excellent and very fitting analogy of the situation! KUDOS
Dear Roger,
The idea that liberals deserve the moral high ground for their position on illegal immigration is nonsense. For liberals, it is acceptable for Mexicans to immigrate so long as they sneak in the back way and keep their heads down. They don’t have the honesty or decency to simply vote into place an immigration quota sufficiently large to permit safe and orderly immigration.
Just a couple of nights ago I saw Arlo Guthrie in concert. Arlo sang his father’s song Deportees and he commented that although the song is 70 years old, the victimization of illegal Mexican immigrants described in the song continues apace to this very day.
How could this be so? It is so because the status quo, which creates a perpetually vulnerable underclass of illegals, serves the purposes of the Democratic Party. With periodic amnesties, they get the Democrat-voting Mexican immigrants in the numbers they want without ever having to take the political heat for advocating high immigration quotas. And who suffers most? The Mexicans who come to this country in search of a better life.
A more honest approach would be to build a big fence on the Mexican border and put an even bigger gate right in the middle of it. Such a system would permit the US to screen immigrants for infectious disease, criminality, or other undesirable qualities and thereby protect our citizenry. But it would also create a far safer environment for Mexican immigrants, keeping them out of the clutches of unscrupulous “coyotes” and other criminal elements and permitting them access to economic and social benefits without fear of deportation or reprisals.
Another problem with the current system is that it rewards those Mexicans who flout our laws by sneaking across our borders and penalizes those who would like to come but respect our sovereignty and stay home. The Big Fence/Big Gate approach would also remove this serious inequity.
The honest and responsible thing to do is to amend our immigration laws to permit a greater flow of legal immigrants. Of course, it has been the responsible course of action since the time of Woody Guthrie. And just what has happened in those intervening years? The Democratic Party has stood shoulder to shoulder with the nativists to keep the Mexicans out. Shame on them!
Yours truly,
Neobuzz
Uh, Roger you have the same reason for wanting illegal aliens as the democrats. You want poor people who can be exploited. They want the votes. You want the yard work. Likewise, big farms want the slave labor.
I laugh at all the sensitve liberal types who think there is something humanitarian going on with the immigration problem. Amnesty is simply about getting people that can be exploited. The hypocracy is mind numbing.
-Rick
#11. I think you missed the point of Simon’s post. He called himself out on his hypocrisy. Check your reading and check your spelling (hypocrisy).
When that same Mexican breaks his back cutting down your trees are you personally going to pay his medical expenses or are you going to give the bill to us? You may have just taken money from a legal resident and given it to a criminal. You didn’t check on his insurance did you? I’m sorry he didn’t crush you neighbors house and leave you with the repair bill.
This, unfortunately, is the problem. Using illegal aliens because they drive down labor costs is much like what happened with slavery in the U.S. The costs of the institution were socialized: everyone in the slave states got stuck with the bill for slavery, but the benefits were individualized to the slave owners. Businesses that hire illegals, and individuals with nasty tree problems, get the individual benefit of cheap labor; the rest of us get stuck with the emergency room visits because the illegal alien and his family don’t have health insurance, nor can they afford it on wages that small.
Actually, Clayton, the labor was not that cheap. The other people who gave me estimates were just hugely overcharging. Whether the workers I ultimately used were legal, I do not know, as I said. But there were four of them there for approximately four hours. That’s sixteen man hours for $500. I don’t know what the contractor took from that (he was one of them) but counting them all equally that comes slightly over $30/hr. Not such bad pay. The others were clearly trying to rip me off by asking $1700-$1900. So not everything is so simple.
Mr. Simon, think maybe those other contractors were running a legit business? Workers comp, ins, retirement plan for employees, fair wages, you know, things required by state law. I’m with the guy that wished your cheap labor guys had cratered your neighbor’s house. You are the problem, as I see it.
The problem we have dealing with illegal immigration is that both political parties turn a blind eye to the issue. Republicans represent business people who benefit financially by employing illegals, while Democrats court illegals as yet another group of government-dependent victims and future (present?) voters.
American citizens need to ask tough questions during the present congressional campaigns and demand accountability after the elections. Force your elected representatives to fence the border, impose tougher penalties on those who hire illegals, discontinue all public assistance and crack down on gangs. We do this and many (if not most) will return to Mexico. Only then can we allow legal entry to documented workers and those who would be of benefit to America.
I will post again my idea to help America, and the illegal alien.
Secure the border with the US military yesterday.
Develop both sides of the southern border. Starting at the largest population sites. With a US military General in charge, build railroads, schools, apartments, water treatment plants, roads, etc… All illegal aliens inside America that want a job can come work there.
This is a military operation. Start small, and work our way to large. Mexico must help on their side.
Taking the money we give to the commies in the UN, we take all illegal aliens within age limits and health who wish to be apart of the military, and form a UN peace keeping force.
All illegal aliens swimming into southern Mexico from the other Latin countries, get a chance to be apart of Force Recon UN division.
Mexico is our neighbor. I want to help, but not with the destruction of American culture, and Mexico’s poor on the sugar tit, or jail at tax payer expence.
We have a guest worker program, cut the red tape for workers during peek times of the year.
We have been in Afganistan for almost 10 years. What if we had followed my plan for the last 10 years?
With a hispanic, retired US General in charge, who can speak Spanish. This person then becomes the GOP presidential candidate, if (when) Pelosi and Reid ram through amnesty and voting rights for all illegals. Election handily won.
Obambi can’t speak Spanish.
The irony of ironies…after all these years, our neighbors from the south are now desperate for their very own official:
Greengo cards…
My advice to anyone contracting work to be done on the basis of a business card and a super-low bid, check to be sure the company is licensed & bonded and carries adequate liability insurance. If the job goes wrong and one of the trees crashed through a neighbor’s roof or fell on one of the workers, and your contactor was not legit, you would probably be liable for damages. Always a good idea to check out small contractors. Having business cards printed up only cost $50.00 and doesn’t really mean a thing without the license, bond and liability coverage.
it’s under the table money and that is what people like. saving a thousand bucks on labor, when we ourselves are underpaid or worse, jobless, is very appealing.
as payback for our bad karma, we also have uncontrolled vicious mexican gangs, murderous criminals of all sorts, and generally despicable types sliming their way into and across our country and especially these border states.
it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out at a glance the difference between a regular person of mexican lineage and some scumball who is looking for trouble. so let’s stop the bullsh*t about racism.
It should be easier to do that task in Arizona than in anywhere east of the Appalachians. So, fellow Mexican-Americans, complain about #1070 if you will, but as far as seeing whether profiling runs rampant, I sure as hell would rather see it tested in Arizona than out east.
As a former resident of NJ, I seem to remember the words and concept “racial profiling” were “invented” there. Re: the State Troopers stopping the car for speeding on the turnpike that just happened to have African-Americans in it. What a hullabaloo that was! I supported law enforcement then and I support my Governor in AZ now.
“Undocumented Americans”? Does the doctor also refer to crack cocaine dealers on the street corners of Oakland as “Unlicensed Pharmacists”? Just wondering.
Sirs,
Why should we Americans condone illegal immigration? If illegal immigration is condoned if not supported by the federal government, then why should I, an American citizen, respect any law of the federal government?
Look back at the Constitution, which states that the Federal Government is tasked with securing our nation’s borders.
If the Federal government is not constrained by the law of the land then nor am I, a free individual.
In my travels about the world, every country I visited either required a visa, or documentation and proof of financial wherewithal that if I came to said country, I would have the means to leave. They also required that I stay in said country no longer than my visa or permit permitted. If I stayed longer, I would be deported. These countries include, Russia, Australia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola, Fiji, Hungary, South Africa, Canada, et.al..
As far as the supposed racism re: illegal immigration of the recently passed Arizona law, I beg to differ. To my understanding, it makes no difference whether the illegal is Mexican, western european, asian, or whatever. If you are illegal, you are a criminal, get out. As mentioned above, this is my experience in countries foreign to myself.
If you are in my country illegally, the USA, most certainly you can not expect me to treat you any differently than you would treat me if I were in your country illegally. Get the Hell out. Hod Coburn
You know what? Follow your heart. Focus on the contradiction of enforcement you see in our laws and leverage that into a reason to ignore all federal law. Good plan. I’m sure nobody will notice.
I have a business installing heavy stone objects in landscapes. My crew are stone masons with training and practical experienc. We work at nice homes for wealthy primarily “progressive” clients. You know the kind of clients I mean Roger. In Los Angeles, it is difficult to find strong dedicated men willing to do heavy landscape work full time, and long term. I pay a good fair wage, well above minimum, and paid vacations etc.. Upon opening my business, I contacted local industrial,labor, and other employment agencies — over a period of a few months I found … noone! I stepped into a Labor Ready office and asked why I hadn’t heard back from them after 2 weeks. (I was offering $13 starting wage to $15 after the first year +1 week paid vacation year 2, 2 weeks year 3). They said that their candidates only wanted to work part time and temporary. A week or so later, I hired a couple of Guatemalan guys. I knew that they were illegal. These specific men don’t swear on the job, they don’t gawk at clients or their daughters, they show up on time, and we work a clean hard day. I respect them, and now, after many long hard days, I see them as friends. My foreman has 10 years now, not one day sick, not an unfinished job, not an unhappy client. So now I feel some loyalty for his work; a decade feeding not just his family (in Guatemala), but mine and my American employees who depend on his skill and focus as well.
Our federal government, in combination with local and state governments, have done little over more than 3 decades to stem the huge influx of illegal immigrants into the County of Los Angeles. Now alot of roots have been spread. I would prefer hiring U.S. citizens as my employees, no matter the job description. But I will not relocate my family, work with losers, or close my business over a dearth of quality U.S. applicants in my neighborhood.
David, I am a stonemason(having been one for 25 years).I can’t even begin to tell you the number of jobs I have lost to contractors who knowingly use illegals. They pay almost slave wages, no workmans comp, liability ins., or any other of the necessary expenses I feel obligated to pay. Do I resent them? Hell yes!! At least you seem to be paying your guys a livable wage, but you are still helping to kill our country. How much of those wages you pay go right back across the border instead of staying in our economy? Have you made any attempts to help your longtime employees become legal citizens?
Rick,
I truly sympathize with you. I do not know the labor climate out where you are.
But here the situation is rather muddy. My son is in a crummy public school. Emergency services are stressed. (Private schools here can run up to about $35,000 a year). There was alot of illegal immigration within a relatively short period and it overwhelmed us. Now, decades have passed with little Federal action, and roots have entangled. My older son’s girlfriend has parents from Mexico. She speaks perfect English, but I suspect here parents are illegal. I haven’t asked her immigration status.
I would like for our federal, local, and state government to work on resolving this problem with tight control at the borders, felons deported, and no more toleration of illegal arrivals or visa overstays. Out here, you can eat in a restaurant and (no ethnic profiling) illegals are not just washing the dishes, but sometimes prepping and cooking the food — chinese, indian, french, italian .. in low end and high end restaurants. There are alot of young people here whose parents came illegally. But these young men and women shouldn’t live in a nether world. That is unhealthy for them and for us. Resolution, either through deportation or legal permission to stay must be worked out. Either way, there will be suffering and discontentment. In the meantime, illegal aliens will be a substantial portion of the work pool in Southern California.
Regarding my workers, we pay worker’s comp., liability insurance and medical coverage (Kaiser Perm.). I would very much like to work on legalizing them. By the way, the majority of my employees are not illegal. It is not in our business plan to use illegal labor. In most parts of the country, I pay well enough that I could hire qualified U.S. citizens for every position. I have considered moving, but a hard fought client base is here and I am from here.
David, I appreciate your story. Why not work with these people to get them documented. They are the kind of people we need in this country. I’m sure there are many more stories like yours out there. These are the exact same people that made America great. Contact your Congressman. They (your employees) may have to return to Guatemala and return with documentation. It could be a long process and maybe not, but well worth it to retain such great employees.
Thanks. Depending upon your experience and perspective the problem is either simple to resolve or complex. It is not at present a simple matter of legalizing masonry workers from Guatemala. I have a brother in law from Guatemala with a good middle class technology job. He is content in Guatemala, no interest in moving here. But we invited him for a visit. They denied him a tourist visa. So you might conclude that illegal immigration has destroyed trust and made for a cynical, sometimes seemingly random process of acceptance or rejection of visa applications. My wife has a friend (about my brother in law’s age) who works with a company in Guatemala. She was just awarded a 10 year visitor’s visa to the U.S.. Now why did she get the visa and and my relatively well paid brother in law did not?
Here’s what happens when you knowingly hire illegals when you know better:
Convicted Area Port Director
Lorraine Henderson
March 2010, Boston, MA – Customs and Border Protection Area Port Director Lorraine Henderson, age 52, was convicted in the U.S. District Court in the District of Massachusetts on a one count violation of 8 USC 1324(a)(1) – encouraging and inducing an illegal alien to remain in the United States. Henderson’s illegal activity began in 2004 and continued through 2008, when Fabiana Bitencourt, a Brazilian national who was in the United States illegally, cleaned Henderson’s home every few weeks and charged $75.00 each time. Henderson referred Bitencourt to a co-worker who later fired Bitencourt after learning she was in the United States illegally. The co-worker subsequently warned Henderson that Bitencourt was in the United States illegally. In September 2008, Bitencourt told Henderson she had an immigration problem and needed Henderson’s help. After offering to talk to someone to find out what options Bitencourt had, Henderson told Bitencourt, “Don’t leave..’cause once you leave, you will never come back.” Henderson was arrested in December 2008 pursuant to a criminal complaint and was subsequently placed on indefinite suspension without pay. Henderson is currently awaiting sentencing.
Growing up in Western Kansas, in Dodge City where roughly 50% of the population is Hispanic and many of them illegal, I think I can speak to the problem. It’s very simple, there are jobs.
When Ronald Regan signed the amnesty bill in the 1980s it was on the condition that in the future there would be large fines for companies who employed illegals. Those fines of course, never materialized.
While a border fence is a start. And closing the border would help. Actually closing it is the next thing to impossible. It’s over 1,000 miles long and has no real natural barriers. (Yes yes the Rio Grande, but it’s very shallow, placid and not very wide.)
The true solution is to dry up the jobs. You fine the employers enough that they are unwilling to hire illegals and pretty soon you won’t have an illegal immigration problem.
Patrick
Same with the drugs…just dry up the demand in the USA and the gangs will stop!
It is my understanding that leftist lawyers stabbed the employers in the back. They were sued if they demanded proof of one’s ability to work in the country based on racial and ethnic characteristics. What does that mean in the real world? It meant spending an unbelievable amount of money to thoroughly check the ID person of all potential employees. There was no such thing as the Internet in that era. It cost a small fortune to even begin to comply with the newly passed law. Enforcement soon became a virtual impossibility.
David, I hope you go to jail. You are breaking US law. There are no jobs Americans won’t do, just jobs Americans won’t do for cheap. Your Guatemalans use the hospital and we pay for it. Your illegals have kids who go to our schools, and they never paid the freight to build them. We’ll take care of our own, but not the citizens of another country. Shame on you. Stop making excuses.
You are not even being slightly fair to the other David. He would have had to close his business long ago had he completely complied with existing law. We have to make it easier for everyone involved in this mess. That is why it is imperative the federal government offers an inexpensive and quick way of verifying work eligibility. It alone will probably take care of most of the problem.
We talk a lot about the drain on resourses since they dont pay taxes and about crime. Here’s another item to add to the list. I just wonder if David (19) keeps a fund set aside so he can pay for medical treatment when one of his illegals gets hurt on the job. Or does he think work comp is going to pay for it? I work in a small hospital in a small agricultural community where on the job injuries tend to be pretty serious and expensive. Most employers of illegals won’t pay those bills no matter how large or small. They will even deny that the injured person works for them and refuse to hire them back when they recover. They don’t hold their jobs for them if they get sick either. Talk about exploitation! Some of these illegals do try to pay their own bills but most do not. Through Medicare we used to be able to submit bills for emergency services for them and at least got a small (and I do mean small) reimbursement but the funding dried up last June. Most such bills go unpaid.
A small group of illegals won a hefty settlement against their employer in California and here a woman I know of who was severly injured is also suing. David, ya better set up a legal fund as well.
In a way I understand your situation and sympathize to a degree, but you can’t have it both ways. If they get hurt, no matter how much you may want to help, you may not be able to afford it. The way things are now, it is too easy for employers to just walk a way in these situations and leave the rest of us holding the bag.
I agree with Kcom, we need to start by locking the back door.
These are not “my Guatemalans”. And these specific individuals do not have kids in our schools. I have a child in a subpar public school I believe in part due to illegal immigration and the unwillingness to confront it. I agree that there are no jobs that Americans won’t do. They are just not populating the local physical labor pool. I grew up in Southern California and have watched as services and public areas have deteriorated. But I am not making policy. If I were to close my business or go to jail (as you suggest), then about 10 people will lose their incomes, 2 of whom will be illegal aliens and 8 of whom (some with families) are not. All ten pay social security and payroll tax. I won’t be out there demonstrating against Arizona..I at least respect their willingness to do something. But I won’t get my undies tied up too tight either. After 30 years of this, there is some complexity and some tangled roots. If you can’t perceive that and communicate accordingly, then there is always blood pressure medication.
You are unwilling to get involved to improve you child’s subpar education. All 10 of your employees pay taxes. You haven’t helped your case here.
You seem to be trying to say that you are doing some good by employing these two but your apathy makes your words ring hollow. Just how is it that the two illegals pay social security taxes? They may be paying but certainly they are doing so under stolen cards. Nice.
Mexican food is one of my favorite foods (I cooked it tonight). My favorite frozen drink is the Margarita. I love the people from Mexico. I would be lying if I did not say that a couple of my ancestors from one side of the family were stowaways on a ship and come here illegally. Therefore, this subject is so hard for me, but I love my State, I have always cherished the stories of the Alamo, and I do not want anything to hurt my great state of Texas.
This subject is so hard for me, because I know I have so many friends that feel just the opposite of how I feel. I feel Arizona is right, I feel that if the Federal Government is not going to defend their state than they will have to defend themselves.
You got a better deal for two trees than I did for one. I paid much more for one old dead oak tree a few months ago. My tree was huge and beside my house, and had to come down. I am so sad about my old oak tree, and the men who took my tree down were from Mexico and could not speak much English.
I love the Mexican people, and I am sorry they are coming here illegally, and I wish they would do it the right way.
I agree with Arizona.
I feel Arizona is right, I feel that if the Federal Government is not going to defend their state than they will have to defend themselves.
And there you hit the nail on the head Tonya. The Federal government has abrogated it’s basic responsibility to provide for the common defense and to defend it’s borders. Increasingly the states are finding they must do for themselves.
As the states more and more find they cannot rely on Washington, and then start to turn to each other for assistance and support, they will also begin to realize they don’t need Washington.
What happens after that is not something I can see. There are several possibilities, few of them anything but bloody. We _must_ stand up in November and make Washington see, or this country is headed down a very dark, dark path.
Patrick
I support inmigration, legal inmigration.
Mexico has requierements for anyone who goes there to work and live. Tons of paper work with the government…ask the Hondurans and the rest of Latinamericans who want to go to Mexico. You need a passport and a visa and if you are there illegally, they deport you.
Democrats have a vested interest in legalizing as much illegal aliens as possible. They figure these are guaranteed future votes for them. Research has shown that Mexicans remain on welfare generation after generation (three so far)and do not assimilate as was thought. Travel through border cities or larger ones like Los Angeles and you see why there is no need to. Look at what is happening in Belgium between the Walloons and the French speakers or Quebec to see what’s in store for us.
“A crew showed up a few days later and did the job just fine in four hours.”
I think you are missing the point here, Roger. Let’s follow up on bloomergal #16 –
You don’t mention how big the crew was. Let’s assume it was 6 people. 24 man-hours for a 4 hour job. $15 per man-hour + a $50 contribution to the cost of the tools + gasoline + a 20% mark-up for the Man => your $500 quote.
The additional $1,200 on the quote from the regular guys had not much to do with labor rates — and everything to do with excessive intrusive government. Regulatory costs, insurance, inspection fees, wasted time that has to be paid for somehow. That $1,200 you kept in your pocket, Roger, was really money you “stole” from the government. But congratulations for “stealing” it back, Roger. It was your money.
The illegal guys are not only here illegally, they don’t bother with the rest of the government-imposed overhead. Hence they can undercut “legitimate” (i.e. government-supporting) businesses.
Notice that this realization points to a partial solution to the problem. Cut back on government regulations; fire the bureaucrats; reduce the overhead burden on legal businesses. Then you would not have to hire illegals, Roger, to avoid paying the insupportable financial burden your goverment has imposed on those who play by the rules. And the attractiveness of hiring illegals (i.e. avoiding excessive government-imposed costs) would decline markedly.
Lets see, how many hispanic countries are there in the Western Hemisphere? Dozens..and every one of them is exactly the same.
Cesspools of corruption, poverty, ignorance, and unrelenting violence. Its not the political arrangements of Mexico or its proximity to the USA. Its every country that shares Hispanic culture and values. Sure its fun to visit these places with a plane ticket home and a American passport, but how many people who romanticize these places could live there? We all live under the
present mass hysteria called MultiCulturalism we are all scared to admit what all of us know is the truth..all cultures ARE NOT EQUAL, and where hispanics go..so goes the culture that makes
Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia…failures
Actually, there is a bit of variation. Costa Rica is not that much like other Central American countries. It was settled by Spaniards who were interested in farming, not exploiting Indians. Argentina, until Peron, was not so different from Canada.
Belize is also an exception. Until recently a Dutch colony, english speaking, US dollar
Can anyone explain why the need for a Mexican male to pick
apples for 5 months out of the year means that we have to support that mans 12 cousins, his Grandparents, his 2 wives, his 5 kids, with free hospitals, schools, food stamps and housing for 12 months of the year, forever.
‘A little kindness is the beginning of great cruelty.’
Yesterday is gone
the times are changing
tomorrow will be different
Not mockery, just an associational mechanism with
too many degrees of freedom. In plain English:
If the US follows the lead of Arizona, follows the Law,
it can regain the confidence of the People before the
situation in Mexico deteriorates to the point that
there are refugees, and terrorists, coming across the
border in numbers, and committing acts, that are
intolerable to the People, and the People demand that
the State _do_something_ or the People will.
The State will not let a good crisis go to waste;
None of us will like what it does, or dare protest.
Anglos will be going to de-tanning salons, to make sure
that there is no chance they will be mistaken for a
Mexican, by the Zone Police, or the Vigilantes.
and of course that cannot happen here, unless,
to paraphrase Hemingway, the US goes morally bankrupt
slowly, and then all at once.
Roger, Kudos for a reasonable column and many reasonable responses. Some of us Ivy Leaguers, believe it or not, can do most of our own tree work, as long as a crane is not needed, but most of our culture has gone in a different direction. We want Walmart prices, but who the hell wants to work at Walmart? We evidently can’t live without the Mexicans and the Chinese, so here we are. You are right; it is a quandry.
That’s ridiculous. Fact is most immigrants from Mexico do not perform menial work. Most take white collar jobs.
And don’t kid yourself that Amercians would not be glad, especially these days, to have to lower end jobs.
On the news we hear how conventions etc are canceling on Arizona…because of the new immigration law.
We are frankly afraid to go there, it has NOTHING to do with the new law.
We have family there and we were planning to visit this summer. However, these plans have changed . Again, not due to the new law, it’s due to the unrest. We have illegals running what goes on in the state.
You can support Arizona’s law without denouncing immigration. If the Federal Government wants to open up immigration, then that’s what they should do. They can create a new Ellis Island. What’s not ok, is for them to act like this is the only way immigration can be done. They’ve convinced everyone that if you support border enforcement, you’re a racist and xenophobe. That’s not the case at all. I myself love Mexico too, if Mexicans want to come to the USA and live and work, I have no problem with that whatsoever. I welcome them in fact. But I also completely support immigration enforcement, it’s not fair to all those immigrants that line up the lawful way, dish out thousands of dollars to the federal government for the privilege to sit on waiting lists for a decade while the US government would support them more if they just snuck in. Lawful immigrants are required to carry identification with them at all times, but if you ask illegal immigrants it’s a civil rights violation. Odd how illegal immigrants have more rights then lawful immigrants under the current system. There’s no reason it has to be the way it is and there are more options to immigration than unlawful entry.
Amen!
Mr Simon,
I am a Mexican American who can trace his families lineage in Arizona back to the late 1880s. My Mexican grandmother had 14 children in Arizona (all of her 9 sons served in the military in WWII.) My mother alone had seven children. We have a huge number of family members spread throughout California, Nevada and Arizona. All of us, and I mean all of us, support American immigration laws. None of us with the exception of a few younger ones are supportive of President Hussein. Unfortunately everybody (we took a big vote) hates Hussein. We think these Mexicans that we see on TV protesting the Arizona immigration law are either thugs or being misled and used by the Husseinis. Obama is using the fear of violence in immigration protests to attack and undermine the middle class tea party movement. But it is not going to work because most Mexican Americans support Immigration laws.
One more thing, even though we support immigration law, a majority of us hate Sheriff Arpaio for playing his games at humiliating Mexicans.
There is no dilemma. US has 50.000 troops in Germany but cannot protect it’s own border. It’s a joke.
It is a real puddle of goo to be sure. My grand parents were immigrants and I remember my gran speaking gaelic telling me she would have “got in” America, no matter how. On the other hand, things have changed. Guess we should try “alot of things” till something works. However, a marshall plan for our shouthern neighbors would help, when we find some money that is. Great article, thanks !
What I want to know is how I can get “illegal immigrant” status. After all, why should I be discriminated against just because I was born in the USA? The government should allow all of us – “gringos” – the option to sign up for “illegal immigrant” status. Then we could work “off-the-books”, be paid in cash, and not pay with-holding income taxes, or SSI taxes. We could also drop our health insurance policies and just go to the emergency room when necessary – just like the illegal immigrants. (And, it might just save the republic if the senior citizens could opt for “illegal immigrant” status and be allowed to drop out of Medicare – and use the hospital emergency rooms like the illegal immigrants). Finally, it would really be great, with our new “illegal immigrant” status, to have all the MSM reporters, President Obama, Senators McCain and Graham, and all the democrats, kissing our asses 24/7 – just like they do all the other illegal immigrants.
Time to point out that the economic problem is only half illegal Mexican “scabs” takin’ our boys’ jobs.
The other half is unions, workman’s comp, insurance, permits, etc., etc.
Get rid of all them and the wages of an American working man would be take-home equal to the Mexicans with a better job done.
You haven’t met the enemy yet, but it IS you.
Was watching a show about building a supermax prison last night. There was some serious
fence action going on. That one prison cost over $5 million. There are thousands of prisons
like it in this country. My point is, they could build an impenetrable fence within a few months
if they wanted to. The people want it. But as with most other things these days, the President & Congress don’t care what the people want.
In the bigger picture this administration has no plans whatsoever to close our borders, quite the opposite.
Think North American Union. Think NAFTA and CAFTA on steroids.
Personally, I say let’s just take Mexico. They obviously can’t govern themselves, provide for their own people, or enforce their law. And they have resources, oil. Probably the majority of their people would support the idea.
Let’s not forget that the US did implement massive deportations of illegals back to Mexico.. 3 seperate times.
Herbert Hoover did it, Harry Truman did it, so did Eisenhower. Millions of illegals deported over concerns about jobs and crime. Google “Operation Wetback”
Warm up the buses, boys ! God bless Arizona
What problem? What dilemma? First, we begin a program of deporting all illegals. If everybody would stop the bellyaching, it will work. Once you start they will leave before being shown the door. Second, come down hard on any company who has illegals working for them. Sentences and stiff fines should do the trick. Third, build a wall similar to what Israel has between us and Mexico. Fifth, tax any remittance going south at 90% and then tax any bank, money order or Western Union at 90% on any transaction going south. That will stop money from leaving the US. Sixth, revoke or invalidate any Mexican consular cards. Seventh, revoke the anchor baby entitlement. Word of mouth will get the message passed on that hospitals will no longer deliver babies from illegals. Eighth, nobody gets welfare or other assistance without proof of citizenship and work history.
Who will do the work that the illegals did? Get everyone on any kind of state or federal assistance below the age of 55 and force them to work-or not get their assistance. No work-no welfare. Simple.
The reason why Roger was quoted so much is, and pelaut covered this, because the cost of doing business is exhorbitant. The myriad of taxes, rules, regulations, health care and the costs of litigation have either driven many businesses out of business or off shore. There is no competition anymore. Competition drives down cost.
Either we do it all the way or not at all. Not going all the way only gives the left room to maneuver and use loopholes.
I never once saw in this article where Roger thought to himself he could do the job himself. It was beneath his dignity I am guessing. An elite who could never imagine doing hard physical labor himself. I could hardly imagine that Roger works for less than $200 for an 8 hours workday. How many men at 4 hours were required to take his two trees out? We do not know, but I would bet that it was 5 or more individuals. Chances are for those 4 hours they earned $50 each if they were illegals, and the boss man kept the remainder to pay for cost of doing business. They had to have access to tools, they had to have a vehicle to dispose of the remains of the trees, they had to likely pay to dispose of the tree remnants and those would be part of the cost of doing business. Taking down trees and ridding the landscape of the roots is very labor intensive and the whole activity is also dangerous. It is pretty much a given that these laborers put there health on the line with no risk aversion and little work site safety consideration. Roger would surely have been magnanimous if one of them had required stitches and paid for those medical bills? Of course not.
Roger lives in America, where he gets all the benefits of living a first world lifestyle. I am certain when he works he demands to get paid a fair wage for the good work he performs for his employer. A job that ensures his safety by looking at work site safety issues and work flow safety concerns, and likely gets employer provided insurance for when all the safety consciousness does not prevail, probably even gets disability coverage as well. Would someone like Roger work for enough money to pay for 1/4 of a room in a rented 4 bedroom apartment, the ability to eat the lowest cost food available for nourishment and just enough money to go to second hand stores to buy clothing? Surely I jest, Roger is a first rate, first class citizen in the highest living standards world leader country. Roger is better than these people he hired, he has the right to have their barely living wage labors.
Of course, the people Roger hired found that they benefited from his $500. They come from a country that is third world and maybe they were even third class in that world they left behind. While it sucks that those places exist, they exist because those people have not earned freedom. They have not shed the blood, sweat and tears that our nation did in 1776, 1861, 1913, 1941, the whole of the cold war. What have they done to deserve to live in a first world nation? They cheated, they broke laws, they likely stole identities, they corrupted government officials and they are willing to allow the Rogers of the world to ignore the citizens of his own country’s needs. Roger is a traitor to his own countrymen, as he allows people who have no birthright to take the jobs his countrymen could and would do, for a fair wage for doing a good job. He turns his back on the men and women of this nation, many of whom are veterans from wars that protected his ability to live in a first class country and earn his first class lifestyle and keep his first class home. Roger is elite and he deserves, no has the right, to pay people third class wages to get his chores done. I sure hope his parents do not see how Roger grew up to be a man that did not learn the morals they taught. He sure as hell did not learn the moral of treating his fellow ‘man’ in a way in which he himself would wish to be treated. A lesson I am very certain parents of Roger’s time would have taught to all their children.
Roger,
I admire you for being so open about what you did. But in business, there’s a multiplier for billing out services that’s about 2.0-3.0 times whatever salary is paid out to employees. That covers FICA tax co-pays, overhead, administrative costs, profit, health insurance coverage, liability insurance for products and services, federal/state/local taxes, depreciation of assets and equipment, yadda, yadda. And what the employee pays as his share of his health insurance coverage doesn’t even enter the multiplier calculation. (Basically, running a legit business is a tough row to hoe.) If the crew you hired was making about $12/hour on average, that’d be about $192 for labor charges. With a multiplier of about 2.0-3.0, that’s in the range of $384-$576. So, basically, you probably got a fair market-value price from possibly a perfectly legit firm. Your other two quotes look way out of line. But that’s just my take.
[BTW - last week my wife and I just had a lot of our trees pruned/topped off and tied up to prevent future ice storm damage or limit our liability from neighbors dead limbs crashing onto their property. It was a licensed, insured firm in business for a long time. The crew consisted of a supervisor/worker, 2 young white kids and an Hispanic who spoke very good English. 6 hours of crew work on-site over 2 days and maybe 2-4 hours each of travel/setup/demobilization(about 32-40 man-hours), all done with courtesy and consideration for us and our property. All for $1,200. Even assuming these guys got $10-12/hour, and with a 2.5 multiplier, this work was pretty reasonably priced (particularly for Boston!). And we just got face-to-face quotes for other work that were so ridiculously high I had trouble keeping from rudely bursting out laughing when I heard the numbers. And so I promised "to call them when we made a decision". Yeah, like that's gonna happen.]
But other commenters have brought up one consistent point – liability and insurance. And the bigger the public and financial target, the quicker you attract lawsuits. At least here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.
Good Article.
I live here in AZ. I have used assistance when necessary. You claim it was cheap. I would differ. I used a couple guys who actually ran a lawn business on the side. During the normal hours, they were in construction. They were more reliable than non-Hispanic I had used in the past, kept a schedule to work around our watering schedules (those are fixed, when you are on irrigation), and provided additional handy work when appropriate. It was a fixed monthly fee. They performed well.
I agree with you that we are in a conundrum- I appreciate their service and hard working ethics, yet the few who really want the dream are outwayed by those who come here for a handout. And, yes, there are those who get into the “system”; those who are recruited to be a minion of some other advocates bidding. I find it disgusting: build a preformed entitlement class ready to go as soon as the amnesty ball drops. That is why I am fighting back now.
I would gladly allow the leaders of the US to work with our neighbors to the South in a radically new program: For every one (1) hard working person from the South, we get to send two (2) worthless entitle-spoiled citizens.
Personally, I do not want any form of amnesty to take place as I believe it dumbs down our culture of exceptionalism.
Roger, one of the realities of your tree removal project is that the two gardening services you contacted would, had you chosen one of them, showed up with maybe one Anglo(the owner)and a crew of Mexicans. Setting aside the boss the percentage of legal/illegals would have been the same as the guys who did the job. No easy way out of this one if you need to get work done in California.
Glenn, couldn’t agree with you more. Almost all tree services here, at whatever price, use largely illegal crews. So you’re damned if you do or don’t. Of course, that friendly, loving fellow at #42 thinks I should have done it all myself. I’m sure he used his x-ray vision to see the size of those acacias.
Were these guys insured? If not, you were taking a big risk.
I am just waiting with dread for the news that the Mexican government has finally toppled. For years we have allowed Cubans to come here because Castro is a communist. Somehow that seemed a noble thing to do…but what do we do if Mexico collapses? 3,000 soldiers at the border will not stop the wave coming. I understand why the Governor of Arizona signed that bill. I read that the number of people crossing the border is half what it was 3 years ago…that might be an improvement, but there are still millions here and there is still a drug war in Mexico.
I have no idea what the answer is. It seems the left wants to turn them all into Democrats and the right wants to wave a magic wand and just make them all disappear. I don’t think either one of those things will happen.
Steve is right. Although legit tree service companies probably do have crews with illegals among them anywhere throughout the SW regions, the legitimate businesses carry liability insurance. Since topping/pruning/tree removal is otherwise known as the “widow-making” business it is extremely risky to hire anyone who does not carry insurance for such a job.
Arizona – Doing the Work the Feds Refuse to Do
Arizona, by enacting a strict illegal immigration law has decided it wants less murders, kidnappings, assaults, rapes, human smuggling, drop houses, home invasions, drugs, welfare recipients; and fewer illegitimate users of their schools, health care and judicial systems. What’s not to like and cheer on about that?
MUCH MORE at: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/04/arizona_just_doing_the_job_the.html
Barry Davis
April 29th, 2010 | 9:27 pm | #18
Black Voters Taking one for the Team?
Compare:
The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in March, but the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent, according to new figures released by the Labor Department Friday.
On the whole, the economic news was mixed, but for African Americans, it was particularly troubling. The unemployment rate for whites held steady at 8.8 percent compared to February and went down for Asians from 8.4 percent to 7.5 percent. But it rose to 16.5 percent for Blacks from 15.8 percent. Hispanics showed a slight increase as well from 12.4 percent to 12.6 percent.
On the other hand:
How Illegal Immigration Hurts Black America
With national unemployment hovering around 10 percent and black male unemployment at a staggering 17.6 percent, it’s just not true that undocumented workers are doing the jobs that we won’t do.
By: Cord Jefferson | Posted: February 10, 2010 at 6:36 AM
Here is the key paragraph:
Despite President Fox’s assertion, of the Pew Hispanic Center’s top six occupational sectors for undocumented immigrants (farming, maintenance, construction, food service, production and material moving), all six employed hundreds of thousands of blacks in 2008. That year, almost 15 percent of meat-processing workers were black, as were more than 18 percent of janitors. And although blacks on the whole aren’t involved in agriculture at anywhere near the rates of illegal immigrants—a quarter of whom work in farming—about 14 percent of fruit and vegetable sorters are African-American.
For their efforts, African Americans were paid a median household income of $32,000 in 2007. In the same year, the median household income for illegal immigrants was $37,000.
Read the whole article at
http://www.theroot.com/views/how-illegal-immigration-hurts-black-america
#11 Rick: “big farms want the slave labor”
Americans want cheap strawberries and lettuce, Roger wants his acacias cut cheaply, I want cheap meals at Popeyes. (Yet even in a bad economy it’s hard to find people who will work for minimum wage.) Millions of people around the world want a decent job and a better life and know they can find it in the USA. If they can get here they will come.
Twenty five years ago the last immigration reform act required that a new employee show proof of his right to be in the country to his new employer. That didn’t work.
NAFTA was going to create good jobs in Mexico. Nope.
Enforcing current laws might work if the general public and all levels of government had the will to do so.
Lots of “undocumented Americans” (what a GREAT term!) are in the day labor market. I’m sure there are also many who used fake IDS to find well paying jobs, and whose employers withhold income tax and FICAmoeny from their paychecks. Does the IRS notify employers when they find a tax return whose SSN and name don’t match? My guess is that the IRS and the Social Security Administration have the same view as most local, state and federal agencies– verification of a person’s right to be in the country is not in their job jar.
As bad as the immigration problem on the border is now, if there is serious civil unrest in Mexico (a revolution like 1910 in Mexico or 1959 in Cuba), we’ll have a massive wave of refugees. Cubans and Haitians need boats; a kid in Juarez just wades the river and climbs the fence. If we build a wall, are we willing to shoot people who try to cross it?
“Mexico has issued a travel warning to Mexican citizens in Arizona.”
How can we induce them to offer travel warnings for the rest of the USA?
Well, one of the things this comment thread is reminding me of is why I always do my own work. It settled all of the moral issues for me. The only things I ever hired anyone else to do were the things I absolutely could not do myself, such as installing a new air-conditioner.
The one intelligent thing I can add to the debate is this: I taught high school in Arizona for many years, and some of the best students I ever had were illegal immigrants. The U.S. needs to do a much better job of giving good kids a way forward to become productive legal residents.
Well, once you make all these people legal, then they have to be paid a least minimum wage and then they’re not so cheap anymore.
Many liberals see the illegal aliens as a harmless, non-threatening addition to our economy. They are not. After all, they pick the strawberries and we use and abuse them- supposedly. But here I want to relay a telling vignette from my daily life to illustrate. I work in a Southern Californ medical building and in a nearby office I have been watching the traffic for ten years now. Hundreds of “patients” are “treated” at this office in a day. The office gets more traffic than any other office in the entire building. In the morning I walk into the elevator and I never have to push the button for my floor because there are always from two to six patients in the elevator and the button has already been pushed for the floor that I share with this other office. The people in the elevator are more than 95% hispanic( non-English speaking). Once in a while I see an African-American and I may have seen 2-3 whites in the ten years I have been there. I know the faces of the people that work there and I can differentiate patients by the papers they often carry in hand. Essentially this is an office that treats illegal aliens for Worker’s Compensation Injuries. These people do not speak English, yet they have found their way into the system to make claims against employers and insurance Companies. If the employer is uninsured then I believe the responsibility reverts to the State of California Uninsured Employers fund. . I watch these so-called patients running to the elevator carrying their walkers, canes and crutches in the air. They leave with neck braces. I see no casts at all, ever.
The point is that it quickly becomes common knowledge in the illegal community that faking work injuries is a wonderful way to score an easy buck . This of course requires complicit involvement of the physicians and chiropractors treating them. This costs every tax-paying,insurance-buying employer lots of money. It sucks the system for the truly injured workers of our state. It cuts compensation to practioners who have provided care to legitimately injured workers and causes the system to treat all physicians and physical therapists as suspects. And why should we be paying for people who come here illegally in the first place. Illegal arrival in this country is not a victimless crime. All the entitlements are bankrupting this state.
My husband and I have put our money where our mouths are. We do everything we can ourselves, without hiring any illegal. We have done remodeling and learned a lot. We have taught our sons, their friends and our friend’s children how to work with their bodies and hands and not to be elitist. They have grown from the experience and earned some spending money. What we cant manage ourselves, we hire trained licensed and legal people. I have no illegal housekeeper and we pick up our our own messes as best we can. I saw this pickle coming years ago and swore off the illegal worker addiction. As far as picking the fruits, there are creative ways to use our younger generation for seasonal work. We could all get involved.
So tell us, how would you feel if YOU owned a gardening service and were losing your long time customers to the possible/probable illegal aliens? Let’s not even get into that kind of work not reported so no taxes are paid by them but as a citizen YOU have to pay taxes to put their illegal kids through school.