Illegal Immigrant Births - At U.S Taxpayer's Expense

[Wags]

Way back in the 80's Reagan and Congress passed an am·nes·ty bill that allowed millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens. Now 20 years plus later, there is a movement to grant am·nes·ty to 10 to 12 million more illegal immigrants because the laws on the books were and are not being enforced.

If and when this latest am·nes·ty is granted I guess we will wait another 20 years and then the President and Congress will pass another am·nes·ty bill for the new 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants, who will replace the current group of illegal immigrants.

Folks the problem is that our borders are not secure there needs to be effort to document and know who is entering, staying and leaving our country.

Is it alright to expliot the Mexicans as long as we get to enjoy and we benefit from their cheap labor?

GOD BLESS US ALL

[haha]

Originally Posted by Wags

Is it alright to expliot the Mexicans as long as we get to enjoy and we benefit from their cheap labor?

It is hardly exploitation to allow someone to do something for pay that he could never get in Mexico. Would these ilegales risk death to get here if they considered that they were being exploited?

However, from our POV, it might be that the only way there will ever be the will to close the border would be to demand and enforce that everyone got paid high dollar, whether they be doc or un-doc.

This would stop illegal immigration in its tracks. With our current system, the people who pay the cost of uncontrolled immigration are not the same ones who reap the benefits, which are mostly lower wages for all unskilled labor, not just illegals.

Ha

[Wags]

Originally Posted by haha

It is hardly exploitation to allow someone to do something for pay that he could never get in Mexico. Would these ilegales risk death to get here if they considered that they were being exploited?

However, from our POV, it might be that the only way there will ever be the will to close the border would be to demand and enforce that everyone got paid high dollar, whether they be doc or un-doc.

This would stop illegal immigration in its tracks. With our current system, the people who pay the cost of uncontrolled immigration are not the same ones who reap the benefits, which are mostly lower wages for all unslilled labor, not just illegals.

Ha

Ha, you are right to some extent on the point of exploitation because they are surely making a lot more money working here in the US then they would in Mexico. As far as risking their lives to come to the U>S I do not think that they look at it as exploitation, but rather as an opportunity to better the lives of their families.

I have seen some exploitation by some employers here in the U.S and usually the illegal immigratants are in between a rock and a hard place as far as getting a fair shake and some justice. But then again I have seen some employers that pay them a decent wage and welcome these human beings in as part of their families. Ha, there is good and bad.

Here in Texas we need the workers from Mexico and other Latin American countries in order to work the farms and ranches, but surely there must be a way to make all these happen.

My hope is that we as a nation can find a fair and compassionate way to accommodate these people as we go about finding a solution to this complicated issue.

GOD BLESS US ALL

[Texarkandy]

If every illegal alien worker in the US were removed & those employers had to raise wages/benefits to levels that would attract US Citizen & Legal Resident workers the costs to the American consumer of those products (be they agricultural or other) would rise very little (1% to 6% -varies depending on the product).

Most of the cost of a product/service is not in the manual labor required to produce it (including agricultural products.)

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Originally Posted by Independent

Many fewer illegal workers would not "cripple" any important sector of the economy.

You're apparently not very familiar with either the construction or agricultural businesses.

[bpp3]

Though I should probably keep my mouth shut, seeing as I don't really have a dog in this fight...

Originally Posted by Notmuchlonger

Why cant a system be set up that people come over legally and documented?

...seems a very good question to me. If having a pool of low-wage, disposable labor is needed to keep the economy functioning, then why not formalize it? Make it easy to cross at the official crossings. Why force people to cross the desert? That seems better than the status quo, at least.

[chinaco]

Arizona has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration.

Arizona has become a real fault line in the debate over illegal immigration. The state has adopted one of the toughest immigration laws in the country. Instead of simply being fined for hiring illegal workers, businesses can now be shut down. By almost all estimates the law is working. Bus loads of illegal and legal workers are streaming out of the state.

Exploring The Immigration "Fault Line" - Couric & Co.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Easy. If it was "legalized" or formalized, more businesses would employ the cheaper people from the newly legal and more easily accessible labor pool. Unions would go batshit. Liberals would swarm en masse to raise the minimum wages for this new group of workers.

Funny coincidence. My dad and I took Gabe to lunch at Benihana today. Every one of the teppanyai chefs were hispanic. Five bucks says at least a portion of them werent legal.

By the way, it looks like the minimum skill set to do the cooking act has declined significantly, the food quantity is much lower, and the prices are ridiculous...compared to going there a few years ago.

Gabe was amused though.

[bpp3]

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny

Easy. If it was "legalized" or formalized, more businesses would employ the cheaper people from the newly legal and more easily accessible labor pool. Unions would go batshit. Liberals would swarm en masse to raise the minimum wages for this new group of workers.

Ok, continuing on, at some point the wages for low-skilled labor get depressed under the influx of cheap labor (efforts of unions and liberals notwithstanding), and the US becomes no longer as desirable a work destination, and equilibrium is reached.

[Edit: Add] OR, unions and liberals are successful in reducing the number of low-wage jobs, the unskilled job market saturates as prices go up and demand goes down, and equilibrium is reached.

Problem solved.

I'm serious. This still seems better than the current situation, which from what I read here sounds as though it could be charitably described as a festering humanitarian crisis, and uncharitably described as widescale criminal exploitation.

[Independent]

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny

You're apparently not very familiar with either the construction or agricultural businesses.

Well, apparantly I'm not. I figured they try to make a profit by providing goods that people want to buy. They hire people to help them do that. Just like all other businesses in the US.

Why would these industries be "crippled" if we had fewer illegal workers?

To speed up the discussion, I'm not considering a case where all illegal workers magically disappear on 4-11-08. We both know that would be a big problem on that day, and we also know that isn't going to happen.

I'm talking about a situation in which more effective law enforcement was able to reduce the number of illegal workers who entered the US over the last 20 years by 50%, or even by 80%.

In that case, I'm sure we would have functioning agriculture and construction sectors in the US today.

Or, more to the point, I'm talking about a situation where we're able to stop the growth in the number of illegal workers in the US at today's levels (I think this would require changes in gov't policies), maybe even roll the number back a little. If we do that, I expect we'll still have functioning agriculture and construction sectors 20 years from now.

In either case, you'd pay a little more for your oranges or house, but you'd still be able to buy some oranges and some sort of house.

Maybe we're just hung up on the definition of "cripple".

[Texarkandy]

Originally Posted by Independent

..... In either case, you'd pay a little more for your oranges or house, ....

And only a very little more - most of the cost of construction & agricultural products is NOT in the labor as the pro-illegal alien folks would have you believe.

There have been economic studies done on this very issue - unfortunately you don't hear very much about them because anytime it gets brought up someone else pulls out the race card & shouts it down.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Originally Posted by Independent

Maybe we're just hung up on the definition of "cripple".

FWIW, my FIL was an illegal alien and I just spent four years living in a city with a double digit percentage of illegals as part of the population, heavy agriculture and one of the highest volume construction booms in the country.

In manual picking operations, products that cant be harvested by machine are picked by hand. Roughly 99.4% of the people doing this work are migrant illegals. They get about a dollar per bushel basket for picking. Depending on the product, that can take 15-60 minutes. Figure that at minimum wage. Then figure it for what you'd have to pay someone to stand outside in 100 degree weather all day. The range of customers who would pay 2-3x for a lot of fruits and vegetables would be pretty limited. If nobodys buying it, nobody will grow it. If you're not growing anything, you might as well sell your farmland for development.

Construction wise, there was some sort of "strike day" a couple of years ago where all the illegals stopped work for a day. Absolutely zero construction happened that day, and for a couple of days after that. Lets factor in the price of this fairly skilled labor. You'd pay $25-30 an hour for a reasonably well skilled unlicensed contractor that has familiarity with framing or roofing. If you didnt, they'd be doing indoor work at home depot. You pay about $8-9 tops for an illegal who may have much more experience. I know a roofer who has two options: have 15 illegals with a rickety truck come by and scrape off all your shingles in about 4 hours, or 4 legals and a dumpster, and that takes all day and maybe into the next one.

If I were to replace the roof on my house, it'd be about $10k with the illegal labor. $17k without. On my old house, painting it inside and out and replacing some flooring would be about $6500 using illegals and $10k using legals. Oh yeah, and the guy who would do it for ten was a divorced drunk being prosecuted for not making his child support payments. His work quality wasnt so good.

Apply that range of economics to an entire house.

[kcowan]

Too stories from CNN:
- Farmer relocates his lettuce farm to Mexico so he can get cheap labor.
- Quality Italian leather product are being made in Tuscany by illegal Chinese immigrants.

This problem is not unique to the US and will not go away no matter what politicians do.

[Independent]

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny

FWIW, my FIL was an illegal alien and I just spent four years living in a city with a double digit percentage of illegals as part of the population, heavy agriculture and one of the highest volume construction booms in the country.

In manual picking operations, products that cant be harvested by machine are picked by hand. Roughly 99.4% of the people doing this work are migrant illegals. They get about a dollar per bushel basket for picking. Depending on the product, that can take 15-60 minutes. Figure that at minimum wage. Then figure it for what you'd have to pay someone to stand outside in 100 degree weather all day. The range of customers who would pay 2-3x for a lot of fruits and vegetables would be pretty limited. If nobodys buying it, nobody will grow it. If you're not growing anything, you might as well sell your farmland for development.

Construction wise, there was some sort of "strike day" a couple of years ago where all the illegals stopped work for a day. Absolutely zero construction happened that day, and for a couple of days after that. Lets factor in the price of this fairly skilled labor. You'd pay $25-30 an hour for a reasonably well skilled unlicensed contractor that has familiarity with framing or roofing. If you didnt, they'd be doing indoor work at home depot. You pay about $8-9 tops for an illegal who may have much more experience. I know a roofer who has two options: have 15 illegals with a rickety truck come by and scrape off all your shingles in about 4 hours, or 4 legals and a dumpster, and that takes all day and maybe into the next one.

If I were to replace the roof on my house, it'd be about $10k with the illegal labor. $17k without. On my old house, painting it inside and out and replacing some flooring would be about $6500 using illegals and $10k using legals. Oh yeah, and the guy who would do it for ten was a divorced drunk being prosecuted for not making his child support payments. His work quality wasnt so good.

Apply that range of economics to an entire house.

I'll agree that without illegal workers, we'd have to pay the people who pick tomatoes or roof houses somewhat more. We'd still eat tomatoes and live in houses with roofs. I'd like to see your calculation on the 2-3x retail price for tomatoes. And, I'd like to see why you think the "entire house" including land, financing, and materials would go up by 70%.

Overall, you and I would consume a little less. I think the number is significantly less than 5%. Think of it this way: illegal workers earn about x% of the total wages paid in the US. That means about y% of the amount you spend goes to illegal workers. y must be less than x because some of the cost of the things you buy goes to capital instead of labor, and some of the labor is in foreign countries. I think y is less than 5%.

At the same time, American born workers would earn more. I'm sure there are some jobs where illegal workers get paid less for exactly the same work. However, there are many where legal and illegal work side-by-side for the same pay. (Think of meat packing plants.) In those cases, the shift in supply of workers leads to a shift in the price of labor.

[Rustic23]

This thread has degraded into what most illegal threads do. Cheap labor vs higher cost to the public.

1. Illegal is illegal. We have a law and it should be obeyed. So either enforce the law or change it. Enforcing some laws and ignoring others is IMHO is not a good thing.

2. Doing away with Illegal Workers does not mean doing away with foreign workers. There is not reason a guest worker program can not work.

3. Foreign worker does not automatically mean a path to citizenship. Likewise, just because someone has been here for 50 years does not mean they are entitled to citizenship.

4. Employers should be responsible for their workers. If they are going to employ foreign workers that will use public services, the employer should pay. Should not be difficult to ask 'Who do you work for?' at schools and hospitals.

5. There are no simple solutions to complex questions, and this is one that affects each state differently. Folks in Minnesota don't have the same problems as those in Arizona.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

1. The average person commits 4-5 'crimes' per day. Wheres the outrage for all of those unenforced misdemeanors. Heck, oral sodomy is illegal in a few states still...cant we crack down on those offenders?
2. Yes there is a reason. Foreign illegal workers are used because they're cheap. Legitimizing them removes the cheap.

Heres what I think the presumptions are. That we can make the illegals go away cheaply and easily, we manage to secure our borders without reducing individual freedoms, a whole bunch of problems dry up, the government reduces our taxes for these brazillions of dollars we're doling out to illegals, a whole class of citizens step up to start performing all these jobs for minimum wage, costs dont go up much, yada yada yada.

Except none of that is going to happen.

If we're going to go on a "this is illegal!" crusade, I'd like all the people who speed excessively, swerve from lane to lane and tailgate to get tossed in jail for a month for endangering my property and my life for pretty much no reason or benefit.

Hundreds of thousands of accidents, 50,000 deaths a year, billions in property damage and medical costs. But we're worried about Carlos scraping shingles off a roof?

Maybe we can send all of our reckless drivers to Mexico?

How about we redirect our corn syrup production to only be sold in Mexico...then they'd all be so fat they wont be able to make it over a wall?

[Rustic23]

CFB, I do not intentionally speed, run stop signs, or spit on the sidewalk where it is illegal. I do not excuse those that do, and if they are caught they should pay the price. For me, the excuse, everybody else is doing it, does not work. Your rant on this subject is enough to win you 'ignore' status.

[ladelfina]

Gov't. responsiveness has to come into play. NOTHING will change unless this is taken seriously as an "all hands on deck" issue. This is true whether you are pro/con "amnesty" or any similar form thereof, or whether you're for strict/loose immigration levels overall.

I think I posted elsewhere here how Long, Expensive, and Painful and Ultimately Fruitless my DH's quest for a green card was.. despite the fact he had every right to it as my spouse. After more than 4 years and a couple thousand bucks plus endless hours and reams of obscure documentation (30 y.o. military records important why?), translations, notarizations, apostilles etc. -- all this pre- 9/11 -- we just gave up (not for that alone, but if he'd had the perm. green card in hand that would have tipped the scales towards our staying in the US). Just to precise: there was nothing wrong with his application.. just that we got a notice (not supposed to have been forwarded, yet it was..) that invited him for his final interview.. several months after we had already left the country. D'oh!

Four years and nothing to show for it. It should have been four MONTHS, maybe.

When your strawberries are rotting in the fields, your roof's falling in, and grandma needs her diaper changed.. you can't wait FOUR YEARS (or more) to vet an immigrant worker. That's why Italy (and the US) make a big stink every so often but on many levels turn a blind eye to the illegals.

Also, people who get on their high horse about the morality of it have to ask themselves about essentially victimless crimes and put that in a matrix of cost/benefit to the "perp". The benefit of even a min.wage to these folks is immense, and while their "costs" to society are highlighted by the media.. overall those costs are lower than what they give in taxes and benefits to the industries that hire them. You have to look at them paying sales tax, gas taxes, rents, buying stuff.. SS and income taxes even if they are using a fake number and will never see a dime of SS if anyone does..

Here is some food for thought:
The Case for Open Immigration: A Q&A With Philippe Legrain - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Yes, it would be nice if everyone respected the law. It would ALSO be nice if the element that goes into apoplexy over this would also weigh in on lawbreaking in the executive office (Bush hushed-up AWOL and DUI.. torture.. Scooter Libby) and in the halls of Congress (Vitter, Duke Cunningham, Ted Stevens, etc. etc.), or on Wall Street. Where are the "moral" examples? Why do we give the Michael Milkens of the world ticker-tape parades? Why do people cry for Ken Lay? A society that has come to base itself on opportunism and individual risk-taking over the rule of law and regard for society at large gets both sides of that coin.

[Rustic23]

Ladelfina,
Could you not find one Democratic crook in Washington? How about:

William Jefferson Clinton - Impeached by the House of Representatives over allegations of perjury

Sandy Berger – stole classified documents from the National Archives

Robert Torricelli Withdrew from the 2002 Senate race with less than 30 days before the election because of controversy over personal gifts he took from a major campaign donor and questions about campaign donations from
1996.

Daniel David Rostenkowski Indicted on 17 felony charges- pleaded guilty to two counts of misuse of public funds and sentenced to seventeen months in federal prison.

Melvin Jay Reynolds - U.S. Representative from Illinois from 1993 to 1995. Convicted on sexual misconduct and obstruction of justice charges and sentenced to five years in prison.

Charles Coles Diggs, Jr. - Democrat - U.S. Representative from Michigan Convicted on eleven
counts of mail fraud and filing false payroll forms- sentenced to three years in prison.

John Murtha, Jr. - Democrat - U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania. Implicated in the Abscam sting, in which FBI agents impersonating Arab businessmen offered bribes to political figures; Murtha was cited as an unindicted conspirator

To name a few. I am sorry if you think asking people to obey the law is offensive to you. I am not on a high horse. I believe Duke Cunningham is in jail. I don’t know about Vitter or Stevens, but if they broke the law they should punished. As for Bush, I take this as just more of your liberal rants. If you have proof he has broken the law, come back from abroad and file your charges.