What about that bill for tattooing illegals?
Posted on 10/01/2006 1:41:26 PM PDT by World_Events
Shortly after dawn, the day laborers began gathering beneath a San Diego Freeway overpass in West Los Angeles.
A house painter pulled up in a pickup, looking for an assistant. He offered $12 an hour. A worker jumped in.
The work is undertaken by men from Mexico and Central America. Most are in this country illegally. The jobs, which last only a day or two and pay cash, are all but invisible to the state and federal governments. No one has to fill out paperwork, follow safety regulations or pay taxes.
Yet what happens here is far from marginal. The jobs that flow out of this day-laborer hiring spot — and from thousands of others around the state, some as informal as a street corner — are a pillar of California's economic strength.
To see why, check out Adrian Lopez, 20, who is kicking around a soccer ball as he waits. Lopez, who came here from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, is carrying in his Everest backpack a Sony Walkman from the Best Buy across the street.
It's got a CD by the Argentine group Los Enanitos Verdes inside, bought at a Ritmo Latino store. He has a bottle of Kirkland Premium Drinking Water, purchased at Costco, and a spare Old Navy shirt. He likes the grilled steak at Baja Bud's. He wasn't impressed by "Monster House."
"Immigrants buy everything here," Lopez said in Spanish.
"Overall, immigration has been a net gain for American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our $13-trillion economy," 500 economists wrote in an open letter to Congress on June 19.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"David Streitfield also wrote the Americans-won't-do-landscaping-even-for-$34/hr"
I'd do it for half that.
I will NEVER, EVER hire a Latino unless they show me their citizenship papers first!! And yes, I'm willing to pay more for house repair services. And oh BTW, I've run into PLENTY of American males who are willing to and will do a great job for a decent price!!
rant off
I do most of my own landscaping and I'm disabled. What I can't do I pay a neighborhood kid to help.
is an English garden and landscape historian whose work has focused on California and the West Coast. He is the author of California Gardens: Creating a New Eden (1994) and wrote the first scholarly article on Green Gables: Charles Greene’s Masterpiece in Woodside (1911 and 1926-29). David has taught at the University of Washington since 1971, where he is Professor of Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Planning, and Adjunct Professor of Architecture. He is the Director of the Italian Landscape Studies program, based at the University of Washington Rome Center in the Palazzo Pio, a large Medieval and Baroque palace in the center of Rome
75 Years of Landscape Architecture at Berkeley
No sign up needed. -- Find a Home Depot, and join the crowd waiting for jobs.. -- I'd guarantee that if you can speak reasonable english you will be one of the first chosen to work..
My 17 year old is currently making $7/hour at Foster's Freeze......which is a wage, I'm told, that Americans won't accept.
Does someone with a brain really and truly believe the BS that Americans won't work at this pay level? Goes to show you, the power of media.
Nothing to see here. It's just Caltrans getting ready to pour some cement.
Or, as posted on the original FR thread (from Malkin):
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times [David Streitfield] ran a piece of open-borders propaganda masquerading as journalism, which featured a Riverside, Calif., landscaper named Cyndi Smallwood who claims she can't find workers to dig ditches even at $34 an hour.The claim seems preposterous, but the Times assures us that Smallwood has no ideological ax to grind. She is "ambivalent on immigration reform," the Times reports. Just an ordinary landscaper, you know.
But it turns out there's a tiny bit more to the story that the LA Times isn't telling you. Reader Christopher L. wrote this morning to point out that a simple Google search shows that Cyndi Smallwood is president of the Orange County chapter of the California Landscape Contractors Association, and is a member of the association's "Immigration Task Force." The activist group opposes the "Punitive Immigration Reform Bill Proposed by Rep. Sensenbrenner."
(snip)
What about that bill for tattooing illegals?
After a hard two days pressure washing my house (no Illegals, just my own American hands doing the work Americans don't want to do), I NEEDED that laugh! Where can I me some of those????? I NEED them! Its HARD being a conservative in a Liberal state!
Meantime, his significant other, who had one child immediately they crossed the border, is ready to deliver citizen # 2, which will be paid for by taxpayers. Ditto the mother and children's food, meds, education, etc. HUGE net loss for the economy. When the bread winner gets hurt, the little Spanish speaking family of 4 will be totally on the dole, including interpreters paid for by taxpayers.
vaudine
Boy is this guy tunnelvisoned.
"Illegal" and "essential" don't belong in the same sentence.
Ping!
Los Angeles County has 90,000 heads of households on cash welfare, with a mother and child receiving nearly $700 in cash, $200 in food stamps, paid child care, paid travel expenses to work or training, paid ancillary expenses such as work clothes or boots. Statewide in California, there are just under half a MILLION heads of household on welfare.
San Francisco has 10,000 single adults on cash welfare. Alameda County has 14,000 heads of household on cash welfare, sitting less than 50 miles from the heart of Califonnia'a agricultural heartland.
But the LA Times says we can't get along without illegal workers.
"Illegal-But Essential"
Even a Frenchman can see through that Bravo Sierra:
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
-- Charles DeGaulle
Sometimes attributed to Georges Clemenceau.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle
Furthermore, you should know that the three men I admire most in order are: 1)Thomas Jonathan Jackson, 2) Robert Edward Lee, and 3) James Ewell Brown Stuart.
I too am proud of the south!
....a few thoughts:
Yea, that "day without Hispanics" sure ground the California economy to a halt. Not.
"The jobs that flow out of this day-laborer hiring spot — and from thousands of others around the state, some as informal as a street corner — are a pillar of California's economic strength."
Or...a way to fleece the law abiding workers /taxpayers of California....none of the illegal pay gets taxed...thus increasing the tax burden on US taxpayers. How about the US citizen / blue collar worker whohas to compete with these illegls?
""Immigrants buy everything here," Lopez said in Spanish."
Legal immigrants?....or illegals.
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