Posted on 04/22/2006 11:49:07 AM PDT by Rick_Michael
3% of Illegal Aliens Do Low-Paid Stoop Agricultural Labor; the Remaining 97% Take Jobs That Americans Want and Need
The most recent Pew Hispanic Center 's study indicates that 97% of 12 to 20 million illegal aliens are working in construction, hospitality, manufacturing, restaurant, administrative and service jobs. Are these jobs that Americans will not do?
The distinguished Senators Kennedy, McCain, Specter, Brownback, DeWine, Martinez , Hagel and Graham appear to believe that Americans are lazy and unmotivated to do a days work. If this is so, then who did these jobs before unethical employers opted to break the law by hiring a massive number of illegal aliens on the cheap? Incidentally, who is doing these jobs today in states where ethical employers are still hiring Americans, paying living wages, healthcare benefits and on-the-job accident insurance?
Whereas most Americans feel great compassion for the 5 billion people living outside the industrialized world, anyone of who would live a better life in America; our Senators seem to place their sympathies with the crooked and influential employers that want to keep the criminal alien employees that are already working for them. If this were not the case, the illegal alien employers represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would not object to granting Guest Worker status ONLY to those who have never violated our immigration laws.
Let's be honest about this. The Senate Judiciary Committee amnesty proposal is in effect an amnesty for the criminal employers who have been avoiding employer sanctions since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). IRCA was America 's last failed attempt at granting amnesty to criminal aliens to stem the tide of illegal immigration. The border security and employer (of illegal alien) sanction provision of IRCA were not enforced. So after eliminating the 3.5 million illegal aliens in the United States via the 1986 amnesty, the number of illegal aliens has swollen to 12 to 20 million in 20 years. Why? Because our government did not secure our borders and enforce employer sanctions as promised in the IRCA.
The Government Accounting Office (GAO) report dated March 6th, 2006 concludes that the agency that would be in charge of the proposed amnesty of 2006, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, is incapable of administering and enforcing the new amnesty, therefore condemning the proposed 2006 amnesty to failure from the start.
28% of prisoners in federal prisons are illegal aliens, according the United States Justice Department. Not all of those 12 to 20 million illegal aliens have come to America to work. Some have come to commit crimes.
Only 5% of those surveyed by the Pew Hispanic Center in December 2005, who have been in the U.S. for two years or less, were unemployed while still in Mexico . Unemployment plays a minimal role in motivating workers from Mexico to migrate to the U.S.
As to the "hard-working" claim, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes: "The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 24.5 percent compared to 16.3 percent for native households."
If we think that education is going to protect our jobs against globalization on one hand and on the other, the labor cheapening effect of open-borders, think again.
Our Senators and some in Congress are working closely with America 's most powerful business interests, many controlled by multinationals and globalized capital, to either outsource your job or import both skilled and unskilled labor in massive proportions. The idea is that skilled workers in other countries will work for less than comparably educated Americans; and that when labor, when properly viewed as a commodity such as sugar or oil, gets cheaper with over-supply. If you are relying on the Senate and the Congress to ensure your wellbeing and that of your children, you are sadly mistaken. Their efforts are creating open borders is only one part of the problem.
The front page Los Angeles Times article dated March 6, 2006 entitled “ That Good Education Might Not Be Enough , states, "More education has been the right answer for the past few decades," said Princeton University economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan S. Blinder, "but I'm not so convinced that it's the right course" for coping with the upheavals of globalization. Most studies suggest that beyond the manufacturing sector, the "offshoring" of jobs has been comparatively modest. But some analysts say the ground has been laid for a substantial pickup. In a recent paper, Blinder offered a rough estimate that suggested that as many as 42 million jobs, or nearly one-third of the nation's total, were susceptible to offshoring.
A growing number of Americans: Democrats, Republicans and independents, agree with the sentiments expressed by the Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid who is quoted as saying, “ Currently, an alien living illegally in the United States often pays no taxes but receives unemployment, welfare, free medical care and other federal benefits. Recent terrorist acts, including the World Trade Center bombing, have underscored the need to keep violent criminals out of the country.”
The Field Poll of September of 2005 showed that 81% of Californians are concerned about illegal immigration and 49% think that is a very serious problem. The Field Poll of March 2006 showed that 57% of registered voters think illegal immigration is a serious problem and a whopping 71% of registered Republicans share that view. It seems that many now agree with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid even as he is now supporting the Guest Worker Amnesty tooted by President Bush.
President Bush and the Republican Senators echoing his wishes would like to correct us when by all appearances the forgiveness of crimes and tax fraud committed by illegal aliens looks like an amnesty. The President claims that it is not. In my opinion the penalty for illegal immigration is deportation; anything less is amnesty.
On light of the utter failure of America 's last attempt at granting amnesty, IRCA of 1986, there must not be any talk of Guest Worker programs until our borders are secured, employer sanctions are enforced and the last illegal immigrant has left or has been deported from our land.
To make your opinion heard about the proposed amnesty of 2006, you are welcome to visit www.numbersusa.com where you can use tools to contact your Congressperson and Senators.
My name is Tony Dolz . I am a foreign-born Hispanic legal immigrant, now a naturalized citizen. My wife is also a foreign-born legal immigrant. In our family we celebrate legal immigration and oppose illegal immigration. I am a candidate for California 41 st Assembly District. The cities of my district include: Santa Monica , Malibu , Malibu Heights , Pacific Palisades, Topanga, Agoura, Agoura Hills, Encino, Woodland Hills, Westlake Village , Hidden Hills and Calabasas.
why, oh, why do people fall for this lie when it is so obviously, demonstrably false?
first of all, they're not being paid $4.00 an hour; they're being paid ten or more. plus, the whole family gets involved. meaning, they can actually make some real dough.
too, UCLA recently did a study on the relationship between farm wages and the price of produce (the proverbial $5 a head of lettuce, and all that). per the study, farm wages account for 15% of the price at the market. in other words, of your $0.89 head of lettuce or $1.00 a pound basket of strawberries, farm wages are about 15 cents.
okay, everyone, let's put on our thinking caps ... what happens if you double wages to $20 an hour, or treble them to $30, or, or, well, why not? times four to $40 an hour?
answer: head of lettuce costs a buck and a quarter. (yawn.) and, and ... all of a sudden we got a million or two american citizens in california off the welfare roles and making 80k a year, instead of a bunch of illegals living off the taxpayers. why is that a bad idea?
and ... the $5 a head lettuce canard? the study concluded that farm wages would have to rise to $300 or $500 an hour (can't remember, but it was hundreds) for that to happen, and for that kinda dough, not only would i be the first in line to pick strawberries, but you, mr smartie pants, would be right behind me in line.
and i would wager the life of my precious baby daughter that all of the farm positions would be filled by competent, capable, grateful americans ecstatic to have such a job at levels considerably less than $300 an hour. $100? $50? get it?
i'm in favor of a wall. enforcement. deportation. employers in jail. real measures. but the real answer is simpler. we all pay thirty or forty cents more for a head of lettuce (big deal) and the problem goes away. moreover, potential prosperity for millions of unskilled and young americans.
this, too, is the crux of the problem with the whole guest worker nonsense which works as follows: place an ad: strawberry pickers for $4 an hour. no takers. okay. then the farmer gets to bring in as much third-world trash as he wishes with the blessings of the federal government. huh?!? how 'bout this, instead: place another ad: $20 an hour for strawberry pickers. or $30. or whatever market forces require.
importing third-world slave labor, legally or otherwise, to undermine the basic economic law of supply and demand is not the answer. it's the problem.
"Not to long ago I walked by to see how they were doing and I found two separate crews working.The one doing the framing were speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent and the other crew was putting in the electrical and they were Brazilians.
I didn't ask them how much they were paid but if the developer couldn't afford to pay them whatever American carpenters and electricians would charge he has no business building the houses to begin with"
One cannot make a judgment as to whether folks are here illegally simply because they speak Spanish with a Mexican accent. They could have been here for generations or here on a visa.
"One cannot make a judgment as to whether folks are here illegally simply because they speak Spanish with a Mexican accent. They could have been here for generations or here on a visa."
That was exactly my point. It's wrong to assume that a work crew that is speaking Spanish is made up of illegals. It might be, but it also might not be.
That's especially true in states like Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Each of those states has a large population of US citizens who speak Spanish as their first or second language. Lots of green card holders in those states as well.
problem with "guest worker" program: imagine if the ad, instead of strawberry picker for four bucks an hour, oh, say, school teacher for four bucks an hour. or store manager for four bucks an hour. or engineer or doctor or nurse or tire guy for four bucks. or whatever. (you know, the jobs americans won't do.)
oh, i advertised but couldn't fill the positions. so now i get to import guatemalens. all of them.
the answer is not to import cheap labor. the answer is to raise the pay to the level that is necessary to attract and keep qualified people. simple. everyone (except george bush and frist) knows this. (actually, they do, too. they lie.) even harry reid. my five year old daughter knows this. it is an economic law, immutable as gravity.
and finally, what is this smug, superior attitude of everyone that strawberry pickers deserve to be abused with low wages, disrespect, etc.? what is inferior about the job(s) that place food on our tables? that feed our nation and others? just 'cause it doesn't take a degree from berkeley? (which i had thought we had all decided was not necessarily a good thing?!?) why not reward the people who actually do something good for each of us every day (putting strawberries on our tables) instead of the swine brainwashing our children to believe crap (professors at berkeley). who says a teacher should make more? (cushy indoor job. don't have to get your hands dirty. work half the year. etc. face it: if we weren't f*****g with the laws of economics, strawberry pickers WOULD be paid more than teachers.)
That particular mantra has been repeated by the White House so many times it long ago lost whatever scintilla of credence it may have once had. Nobody, and I mean nobody really believes it, especially the chanters.
Amazing.
Note this only includes the federal prison system and not local or state penal institutions
From http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/penalcontrol.shtml
# Number of federal prisoners, 2001: 125,904 # Percent of federal prisoners that are incarcerated for a drug offense, 2001: 56.3%
# Average annual growth in federal prison population, 1995-2001: 8.6%
# Number of prisoners the federal Bureau of Prisons is planning to hold in 2009: 211,516
So between 35,000 and 58,000 federal prisoners are illegal immigrants.
* Average annual percent growth, U.S. federal prison population, 1990-2000: 8.6% * Number of prisoners per 100,000 population, 1925: 79 * Number of prisoners per 100,000 population, 1980: 139 * Number of prisoners per 100,000 population, 2000: 478 * Number of prisoners and jail inmates per 100,000 population, 2000: 699
If the criminal prisoner rates are consistent, then about 85,000-140,000 illegal immigrants are in the state and federal jails and prisons.
My math must be off though, since the US population is nearly 300 million, and the article alleges the illegal population is about 5% of our total population.
My instinct tells me that there is probably a disproportionate number of illegals along the border states compared to the remainder of the country, and probably about a 5:1 ration of illegal immigrants in major cities near the southern border. If so, this would imply about 25% of the population near the southern border is composed of illegal immigrants.
This doesn't seem to mesh with my impression of the demographics. My gut feeling is that the numbers are off by about an order of magnitude.
Disturbing, nonetheless is the report that nearly a third of all federal prisoners are illegal immigrants. Especially considering many law enforcement activities simply release illegal immigrants rather than handling them due to logistical constraints.
Where the remainder of society only has less than about 0.7% of its population as federal or state prisoners, if true, this would imply illegal immigrants are about 20 times as likely to be composed of federal or state criminals who will be convicted and incarcerated in their midst as US citizens.
This number doesn;t check, however, with the alleged population of illegal immigrants.
My gut feel is that the illegal population is closer to 1 million than 20 million. The numbers would seem to balance better.
Without the taxpayer provided babysitting service the illegals would need a higher wage.
Deserves to be reposted. Brilliant.
Of course 50% of those born in Mexico take welfare or EITC compared to about 15% of all other Americans in the US.
Here's an interesting statistical source.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1405.html
Biggest problem with the strawberry picker anecdotes is that there aren't that many strawberries to account for that many illegal immigrants.
By looking at the stats, our impressions of reality might be more based upon our 1960s-1980s intuition of illegal alien demographics and are off by a couple orders of magnitude when analyzing the present.
To the left of me there are illegal aliens driving up from Mexico onto military bases, not as terrorists threats, but as grand theft threats to government contractors. On the right of me, there are liberal government regulators whittling away our private property rights. In the middle, we're so busy keeping our heads above water hoping to avoid the next big weather catastrophe that the numbers just never seem to balance out.
Thank the Lord He's providing for us, because manmade economic systems and utopian liberalism isn't ever going to keep up.
Nobody pays illegals 4 bucks an hour. The illegals in California get 8-9 bucks an hour to pick strawberries. But they can steal an American blue collar workers constreuction job for 9-10 dollars an hour, so they do that rather than pick strawberries.
These are jobs that Americans elitist politicans will not do.
The study is flawed.... Its 5% not 15%.
You got that right!!!
Im in the industry in CA. >90% ARE illegal.
"The study is flawed.... Its 5% not 15%."
I wouldn't doubt the numbers off...I don't know how significantly. Is your assertion have a study...link, please?
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