[lonerepubinma]

Oh!! They are available, it's just easier to sit at home and collect the check than get up and go to work.

[poobear]

If they are legal immigrants, then there is no problem here.

[JZelle]

Crab Pickers - Sorry!!

[oceanview]

pay more.

the discovery channel is running that show now on alaskan crab fishing - they have no problem finding workers, because they make decent money.

[mbynack]

Supply and Demand. As long as they can find migrant workers to work for minimum wage there's no urgency to raise wages to attract US Citizens.

[Pessimist]

"American workers simply are not available," I think he meant to add "at the wage we want to pay"...

[Labyrinthos]

I will say this again -- if you want to end illegal immigration, then get rid of the jobs by making employers strictly liable for unlawfully hiring illegals. The penalty should be a minimum of one year in the pokey, no excuses. "Strict liablilty" means that the employer is guilty even if he had reason to believe the employee was legal or at least didn't know the person was illegal. Statutory rape works the same way. If she's 16, your getting 20 even if she had 20 forms of picture ID to "prove" she was 18.

[cubram]

Hiring foreign workers to pick blue crabs is far preferable to importing foreign crabs and falsely advertising them as home grown!

[kellynla]

Please correct me if I'm wrong because I am not a farmer or commercial fisherman but I do know a little history on the subject and the very reason that children were out of school during the summer was so they could help with the farming of crops or commercial fishing whichever area they lived in! Correct?

So that these jobs that illegals are doing in farming or fishing industries could be and have been done by the young folks in the past...

[gubamyster]

"There is no work that won't get done without immigrants," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank. Without immigration, wages and working conditions would improve, giving U.S. workers incentives to take jobs, while businesses would become more efficient, he said.

[DumpsterDiver]

"We have to have the Mexican workers just to sustain our business [processing seafood]. American workers simply are not available,"

So why must the workers be Mexican?

The potential shortage of seasonal workers along the Chesapeake illustrated a broader problem in the United States — a mismatch between the supply and demand for legal foreign labor.

... John Gay, vice president for government relations at the International Franchise Association and a co-chairman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a business group that is pressing for more legal, year-round foreign workers for restaurant, health care, construction, building maintenance, landscaping and similar jobs.

Gentlemen, do you "need" seasonal workers, or do you want more cheap foreign labor overall?

"Regardless of race, heritage or national origin, we are one family under God," Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick said last month at a press conference announcing "Justice for [Illegal] Immigrants," a church campaign led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The conference has joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the union Unite Here, National Council of La Raza and other groups seeking broad immigration reform, including amnesty for illegals.

Forget about it.

[doc30]

I've been think and thinking about this. More and more Americans want a good standard of living, so they avoid work like this like the plague. However, if businesses were to stop using illegals, then a heck of a lot of jobs would go unfilled quickly. If there are 10 million illegals here and lets say the range of 1 to 2 in 3 is working as an assumption, then about 2% to 4% of the U.S. workforce is working illegally. Just as a rough guess. When 5% unemployment is considered full employment, then there really is a need for more workers than the U.S. has in supply. If the illegals were all shipped out tomorrow, that would mean 2-4% of the jobs out there would be available. These are all, right now, low wage jobs. By supply and demand, wages would have to rise for these positions to be filled. That would put an upward pressure on costs and the price for these items would increase. The net result would be that, on an economically comparable scale, nothing would change. The higher wages paid for Americans to work the jobs illegals are doing now would still result in the same relative standard of living. Americans would have to get used to working and living in conditions that illegals experience today. Provided social services aren't pegged to inflation pressures resulting from dumping the illegals, then living on the government dole would be worse than living in the low standards illegals live in today. In other words, it might be enough to get Americans to do the cr@p jobs they won't do today because welfare would be worse. All based on supply and demand.

[Blood of Tyrants]

"We have to have the Mexican workers just to sustain our business. American workers simply are not available,"

You want Americans, then you have to attract Americans. My guess is that the wages they are paying are so low that no American could take them and still make a living.

[Dan Evans]

Amish and Hutterites do the kind of labor that illegals do. The trouble is, there isn't enough of them. But there will be in a few generations. (They have up to nine kids per family). Amish have increased their population by about thirty times in the last century so anyone who thinks we need to import foreign labor should consider the people we have right here.