[sarasota]

I saw a piece last evening re: the housing market. It was pointed out that the job paid $8/hr. and if wages had to be raised (to attract "legals"), the house would cost $10,000-$15,000 more.

[KantianBurke]

that's assuming of course that there will be people able to afford it in the first place. Now Mr. Illegal and his 30+ roommates sure. But out of work techies with a wife and kid? Uh uh.

[TruthNtegrity]

If the house cost more because we hired Americans at a fair wage, then I'd pay it.

I refused to allow a crew from a roofing company who could not produce any ID to do the work. It cost me $1000 more to do the roof, but I did not contribute to the underground of illegals working for construction companies around here.

Integrity has a price. We have the lowest cost vegetables and fruits in the world. I am still paying the same price for fruit and vegetables except for oranges and grapefruit, that I paid when I first moved into my own apartment 30 years ago. Don't you think it's time for the cost of this produce to go up so that American kids can have as their first job, picking fruit for a local grower?

If Greenspan hadn't put so much pressure on companies not to raise prices for "fear of inflation" which is the Boogeyman to Greenie, we wouldn't have farmers using illegals to keep the costs down and we wouldn't have had Silicon Valley, CA and the Beltway Bandits, No. VA, resorting to H-1B's to keep the costs down. Are you aware that a programmer's career ends at 35, because at that point, his company can hire two H-1B's for his salary? And for engineers, the end of his career is 40. Most people have no idea how many unemployed in this Country are our programmers and engineers.

There is a price to pay for everything. In order to keep jobs for Americans, we need to stop the illegal aliens from working for so little that they drop the wages paid for every job, so that Americans are forced out of their own farms and industries. What is true is that the illegals work for so little, live in houses of 15 at a time, so they can send money back to relatives in Mexico, and they force the payscale downward.

With accountability, first of all, we get them to pay taxes on their earnings. Second, we can track them (although I sure hope the programmers they hire to do that programming are not H-1B's as they really are not good programmers,) and that we bring these illegals out of the shadows. Being able to track them is not a bad idea. We are starting to get a handle on the illegal alien problem by starting where we are, which is in some heckuva pickle.

I believe that ultimately, control of our borders has to be addressed, and that is where the President is heading. You just can't correct years of ignoring the problem by rounding up and deporting 8-10 million of them in one full swoop. But forcing them to come out of the underground is sure a start.

TNT

[PuNcH]

I saw a piece last evening re: the housing market. It was pointed out that the job paid $8/hr. and if wages had to be raised (to attract "legals"), the house would cost $10,000-$15,000 more.

Well I can assure you that the price of housing has been skyrocketing despite the wonders of illegals replacing citizens as cheap labor.

[navyblue]

I saw a piece last evening re: the housing market. It was pointed out that the job paid $8/hr. and if wages had to be raised (to attract "legals"), the house would cost $10,000-$15,000 more.</>

I don't know if your figures are correct, but even if they are, that is money which would be circulated in and driving the American economy and not Mexico's. Econ 101 my friend. Consumption in our economy boosts our GDP. The shift of capital (money sent home to Mexico) does not!

[Puddleglum]

I saw a piece last evening re: the housing market. It was pointed out that the job paid $8/hr. and if wages had to be raised (to attract "legals"), the house would cost $10,000-$15,000 more.

I would be interested to see if the contractors who have been hiring illegals have been passing the savings on to the consumer. I wonder if the difference between the contractors' salaries and their laborers has increased or decreased since illegals filled their jobs? In other words, is the house cheaper or the profit margin higher?

[Hattie]

Yes you are right. They are building hundreds of new two story homes behind me right now. And the workers are Hispanics. My husband and I commented tonight that they would all stand empty if wages had to be paid to Americans for this. Ordinary people would not be able to afford new homes again.

[FITZ]

I saw a piece last evening re: the housing market. It was pointed out that the job paid $8/hr. and if wages had to be raised (to attract "legals"), the house would cost $10,000-$15,000 more.

That's not really true because in California where there are many illegals, the houses are more expensive than in a state that has few illegals. California has the most illegals and has the most costly houses.