Wait a second, I am the FR chief apologist. Fact is we need Mexican labor, but need to control it and identify it. I personally work with a number of lumber companies that cannot find enough American labor to do their work.
What would you suggest, close the mills and move them to Mexico or China? How many busisesses are you willing to sacrifice?? What would you do if you were “el Presedente”?
Pray for W and Our Troops
I agree with you, and would like to add - working here yes, if Americans cannot be found to do the job FOR DECENT WAGES (no slave labor groups ever again) AND...voting here...NOT UNLESS YOU ARE A LEGAL CITIZEN. That way we’ll take care of the Republicans needing Mexicans as cheap labor, and Democrats needing a new victim society for votes. THAT last sentence is the bottom line to all immigration issues.
I would give the actual worker and not his parents, spouse, and children a "temporary worker visa" good for three years, renewable once, and then send him/her home.
I would make them pay U.S. taxes (just as you or I would pay Mexican taxes if working there), and perhaps an exclusion from SSI (and no future benefits).
I would allow them to register for this program in the US, and even do the renewal here.
Finally, ensure that the immigration status of parents trumps the "citizenship" of any anchor babies, in other words that when a parent's "temporary work visa" expires, they must leave the country, no exceptions. If they want to put the anchor baby up for adoption or other caretaking in the US, that's their decision.
This is the program sketched out by the White House more than a year ago. It does not provide for permanent residence or a "path toward citizenship."
President Bush said he would not provide amnesty, and would not insert any "path to citizenship" in his "temporary worker program". Yet he has lied, and given a verbal signoff to exactly that.
We have laws already on the books to do that. Why haven't they been enforced?
I personally work with a number of lumber companies that cannot find enough American labor to do their work.
The fact is that American business wants cheap, plentiful labor that it can exploit. Could the "fact" that lumber companies cannot find enough American labor have something to do with the wages and benefits offered? Once businesses are forced to pay these immigrants comparable wages and benefits, they will lose their attractiveness. And this will set the stage for a new crop of illegals.
What would you suggest, close the mills and move them to Mexico or China? How many busisesses are you willing to sacrifice?? What would you do if you were “el Presedente”?
What is the real cost of these "guest workers," self-selected or otherhwise? Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. At the same time we tell our children to stay in school, we import high school dropouts into our economy. The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 29 percent, compared to 18 percent for native households.
Will the lumber companies and other businesses pay the increased costs for schools, hospitals, prisons, and other social welfare systems?
—I personally work with a number of lumber companies that cannot find enough American labor to do their work.— Yes, that is true at my wife’s employer as well. But its an educational problem. Schools aren’t producing kids with blue collar skills. Yesterday I learned from a neighbor that teachers are not allowed to have kids study their rulers divisions below 1/4 inch!!!!! Madness!!!!!
At the same time we have marginalized young men in the ghetto who don’t know what it is to have a good, solid job. Maybe its unrealistic in lumber products, but a mild labor shortage would be good for the low end of our labor market.
The employer takes a second look at the kid in the ghetto, the kid starts his climb out of poverty and we all benefit as a society.