[rellimpank]

----AMEN-----

[hobbes1]

buffet-style restaurants need much less staff that full-service ones

Hey...that's great Mark..If you like scarfing at Sizzler, it's all good, but many of us prefer our dining out to be Dining.

[hobbes1]

thus we have fewer attendants but more gas stations and get in and out faster than we used to when we trusted our car to the man who wore the Texaco star.

And those of you that don't live in NJ or Oregon, sweat in the summer, freeze in the winter, get wet in the rain...etc.

[BenLurkin]

I don't buy the WH's argument that there are jobs Americans "won't do".

Look, IF there are jobs Americans "won't do" then we don't have "unemployment". We have "refuse-employment".

[StatesEnemy]

But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.

Not to mention that the TRUE COST of these workers (school systems, hospital visits, subsidized housing, food stamps... etc) is shifted to the taxpayer.

[Redbob]

TO hear some folks tell it, you couldn't get a home built here in the Southwest without Mex labor, but I can tell you that's not true:

Just yesterday I moved into our new place, and I don't think a single worker on that job speaks any more Spanish than "una mas cerveza, por favor, senorita!"

BTW, it came in under budget and only a *little* late!

[eleni121]

Mark you are not living in the real world.

I for one and I am sure there are many - would welcome some SERVICE! for a change!

Everywhere I go surly, lazy incompetent US born employees (many so-called professional ones) resent their jobs and as a result the customer/client is given short shrift.

Bring on the Mexicans or anyone else who is willing ot do the work without some tight assed unionists hovering in the background telling employees tbey have a right to dish out poor service.

[WackyKat]

If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up (say, through actually enforcing the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.

These "jobs American" won't do" only exist at that wage level and working condition because aliens can be found to do the work.

Illegals are a massive subsidy to business, which shifts the cost of illegals onto the taxpayers through the welfare state.

Illegal labor is "cheap" only to sleazy employers, it is very expensive to the rest of us.

[Dubya]

grant amnesty to millions of illegals

How sad.

[gubamyster]

ping

[Dane]

Yeah so? Willie Green would be posting Luddite articles making the machines doing human work the enemy, rather than Mexicans, so what's the point?

[Beck_isright]

"The idea that a modern society like ours requires the ministrations of foreign workers, because there is no other way to do get these jobs done, smacks of the apocryphal quote from a 19th-century patent commissioner: "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Amen again.

[wasp69]

I think we could end this lazy streak that some in this country have by ending welfare and closing the border. Then again, there are some "jobs" or elected officials "won't do".

[StatesEnemy]

I have a hundred dairy cows...

Those industrious Holsteins produce vats of milk and cream every day for my bottom line (and my shareholders)... and the best part?

Their barn was built (and is heated) with taxpayer money (subsidized housing).

Their feed? You guessed it, bought by the "commonwealth" (food stamps)

When one of them gets sick? I send the vet bill to Washington.

What A Country!

[jonatron]

Even if there is a labor-shortage, there's plenty of Welfare recipients and Convicts available to work off their debt to the government for all the services they're provided with.

[StatesEnemy]

Here we go....

[StatesEnemy]

Wow... compassionate in the first sentance...

[Middle Man]

"After all, without immigrants, who will pump our gas? Oh, wait — we never imported immigrants for that and so now we pump our own gas, aided by technology that lets us pay at the pump — thus we have fewer attendants but more gas stations and get in and out faster than we used to when we trusted our car to the man who wore the Texaco star."

Mark's Economics For Dummies. I remember when there were never anything less than full-service gas stations with 2-3 attendants all over your car servicing under the hood, cleaning the windshield and you got a free drink glass with a fillup when you were done. (And road maps were free.)

Now with the price of gas sky-high, you pump it yourself, pay for it yourself and probably make more trips to the mechanic's since there's noone to let you know when there's a problem brewing with your engine -- unless you perform all those checkpoints yourself every time you go.

And this is called "Progress".

[GovernmentShrinker]

If these immigrants are really taking jobs that Americans "won't" do, then by all means give them guest worker visas and let them work here -- right AFTER we kick all the native born deadbeats off welfare!

[Moonman62]

But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.

That's it in a nutshell. Karl Rove and GWB are buying votes once again, at the expense of law abiding Americans.