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?
Nice try, but the lumber companies cannot find American workers and have tried for 20 years. They can barely keep Mexican labor before they head down the road for easier work. Your exploiting the worker argument sounds vaguely Marxist. How expensive you willing to make a house??
So you are basically for eliminating the lumber industry to get rid of Mexicans. That is not an answer.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Without knowing the lumber company's competition, how does this have meaning? If the lumber company's competition is another nation that doesn't have those regulations, then the alternative is to go out of business. To "balance" this monster, wages and benefits offered by all must be the same, which would ultimately require international oversight of wage regulation. Great. Just great.