One of the reasons I support illegals is because of a bigoted contractor I knew who was highly dishonest (he would steal from his customers). He was the black sheep brother of an employer of mine, and the employer hoped that some of my honesty would rub off on him.
He said the illegals were all taking his jobs.
Of course when it came to actually hiring labor he would hire illegals.
"They're hard workers," he said.
I see a lot of hypocricy like his around, and I don't like it at all.
I think he lost jobs because people who hired him discovered his theft of stuff from him and really didn't like that. This, of course, has little to do with illegals.
I have benefitted from illegals by working for a company that I believe hired them. (I didn't dig enough to get proof, but I'm sure they did). This company, however, created jobs for plenty of good people, both on the factory side (the Spanish speakers, who were very hard working) and the administrative side (who were all American citizen types). I no longer work for that company, but I'm sure there are thousands of American manufacturing companies that have very similar profiles.
So people should understand that low-end illegals don't just steal jobs away from other manual laborers; they create administrative and technical jobs that are generally higher paying and more pleasant work.
None of the business ventures I've been involved in managing have hired illegals. I have experience with American workers, which unfortunatly has not been favorable.
I guess you can say that on the whole I have a positive impression of illegals and don't like the way they're beat up on here, with nobody to tell the other side of the story. That's why I've spent a lot of my time and effort to try and express a more balanced view of this topic.
My personal ideology is that people are people, and what matters is how good they are as workers and as human beings, not the color of their skin or their citizenship. I'll take an honest, hard-working illegal alien over a lazy or dishonest American any time.
I'm afraid this is not a popular viewpoint on FR.
D
Well its a good viewpoint. I have not liked how illegals ,some that have been here for years, have been treated or talked about on this board. For years they have been here doing work and yes raising familes but the majority of Americans never gave a big hoot. As long as the food was cooked, our fields were harvested, our cars worked on , and our homes built we certaintly took the fruit of their labors. I suspect many illegals are shocked to be called criminals nowadays in the same way a rapist or bank robber is.In the end they are human beings and have a dignity as such. Many have families here that are 100 percent full blooded American. It makes no sense to me to have these families broken up. I have asked repeatly if posters that wish to deport illegal aliens or at least want to starve them out through attrition and sanctions if they would entertain an exception for cases like this. The answer has been overwhelming no. Well at the end of the day, I am not sure how that is consistent with the dignity of the human person or the importance of the family in our country.
I wouldn't mind Bush's plan so much if it weren't for the Reconquista (demographic conquest of former Mexican land) aspect to this. Some people in the Latino community (and this includes, no doubt, some illegals) sincerely want the S.W. United States to revert back to Mexico. Mexicans have been taught that this land was stolen from them (rather than ceded by their own government per the Tready of Guadalupe Hidalgo). In this light, legalization instead of deportation or attrition is a form of slow demographic suicide for that part of the U.S.
Furthermore, there is the plain ol' National Security aspect of this. Homeland Security cannot even properly screen the 950,000 legals who come into the U.S. each year. What makes you think they'll do any better with a flood of 12 to 30 million just-legalized people?
"So people should understand that low-end illegals don't just steal jobs away from other manual laborers; they create administrative and technical jobs that are generally higher paying and more pleasant work."
You and Mr. Bush have a misplaced sense of compassion.
You see the glass half-full, in the hardworking and sincere nature of the illegal immigrant (as do I), but you refuse to look at the glass half-empty or completely empty for the people they displace and they do displace people.
They displace the people who are already here legally and at the bottom of the education and skills ladder.
They displace citizens and legal immigrants who have only a high-school education or less.
They displace one or both spouses among first generation immigrants for whom having second, low-skill job helps to pay the bills they can barely pay on their initial jobs in their first decade here.
They displace college kids and teens who just need spending money or temporary work to help make ends meet.
They displace all those most in need of the jobs that are at the bottom, the jobs that greedy employers want to pay less than legal wages for, instead of the legal wages that would be demanded by first-generation immigrants in part-time or shift work, those without a high-school diploma and teens and college students.
They also displace skilled workers who are unwilling to work for depression era wages.
There is no such thing as "jobs Americans won't do", there are only employers who won't pay the wages Americans deserve. It is neither economic necessity or moral necessity. It is greed.
[1]When too many workers are chasing too few jobs, employers typically cut wages, confident that beggars can't be choosers. What U.S. Labor Department data reveal is that the wage-cutting scenario is exactly what has unfolded recently throughout the economy's illegal immigrant-heavy sectors.
[2]Take restaurants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants comprise 17 percent of the nation's food preparation workers, 20 percent of its cooks and 23 percent of its dishwashers. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though, inflation-adjusted wages for the broad Food Services and Drinking Establishments category fell 1.65 percent between 2000 and 2005.
[3]Ten percent of the nation's hotel workers are illegal immigrants, the Pew Center estimates. But the BLS data show that their inflation-adjusted wages fell nearly 1 percent from 2000-2005.
[4]In the booming construction industry, illegal immigrants make up some 12 percent of the work force. But from 1993 —when median home prices began surging at a record pace — through 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in the sector rose only 3.02 percent. And from 2000 to 2005 — the height of the boom — inflation-adjusted construction wages actually fell by 1.59 percent.
[Summary]These wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make clear that these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who can accept poverty-level pay.
That is greed.
[1],[2],[3],[4],[Summary] from http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0428edequal.html
I can attest to every single one of these work categories, in New York City alone.
The hotel industry housekeeping crews 15 years ago were predominately staffed by the wife-spouse in a first generation legal immigrant family in a union minimum wage job. Now the industry has a large % of illegal non-union labor and increasing numbers of first-generation legal immigrant families are moving up state or out of state.
Fifteen years ago, college students from the suburbs from Manhatten colleges could rely on waiter-waitress jobs in the large resturant industry to make enough to share an apartment with two or three others in the city, or to just help meet expenses. More now live back in the suburbs with mom and dad and spend hours commuting, instead of working.
You have always been able to tell the "hard hats" at Manhatten construction projects from the "cash" workers. Although the number of construction projects in Manhatten seems to have exploded, it is definately more of the "cash" workers you see, while middle class cityizen, union suburban skilled tradesmen are having a harder time staying in the trades.
It is greed, not a lack of willing workers.