To: logic101.net
>>For one thing there are jobs that Americans won't do, or rather not enough of our citizens will do to meet the demand.<<
The notion that Mexicans do jobs we won't is a myth, told by the immigration lawyers, meat industry, religious 'charities,' and other pro-illegal immigration advocates who benefit from the influx and who have very powerful lobbies.
Mexicans have replaced Americans in many work sectors that once provided Americans with a living wage (for life in America, not life in Mexico). For example, the meat industry once provided well-paying jobs for Americans. Now, 60% of the industry is reported to be illegal immigrant workers, and the remainder poor, uneducated legal immigrants.
In fact, some of the big meat companies travel to Mexico to recruit illegal labor, and then bring them back here and dump them off at a local shelter.
These Mexicans will work under obscenely dangerous conditions (no sane American would do this) without complaint. Because of the stress and danger, employee turnover rate is up to 400% during the course of a year in these mega -meat factories(The meat industry likes this).
When they are injured or when they leave that job, Americans pay for their medical care. They don't earn enough to feed the families who follow them, so American taxpayers foot the bill for food stamps and health care, language classes, education and so on for the family.
Not only that, the rapid pace of the butchering assembly line makes it easy to accidentally cut the intestines of the animal and spill the gut contents and any infectious microbes therein into the meat. So listeria, E.coli057 and other killer microbes end up being spread all over the country. I would never eat the meat in this country from anywhere but local farmers I know well. Nor would most people I know.
Yet, if you think about the enormous costs the meat industry is foisting onto the back of the taxpayers, including the spread of a newly resistant strains of tuberculosis, as well as the crime these people bring to small American communities, I suspect one is paying a hell of a lot more for one pound of hamburg than they did when the Americans filled the jobs.
I think this is the same for other jobs where illegals have displaced Americans. We end up subsidizing the cheap labor.
17 posted on
06/16/2003 5:03:07 PM PDT by
Risa
To: Risa
The notion that Mexicans do jobs we won't is a myth, told by the immigration lawyers, meat industry, religious 'charities,' and other pro-illegal immigration advocates who benefit from the influx and who have very powerful lobbies. The biggest reason Americans won't do those jobs is that the employers have to compete with the welfare office. Hard to convince someone they should do an unpleasant job for $7/hour if they can receive almost as much dough staying at home watching television.
According to my boss, the medians on Korean highways are mowed by people using hand scythes. Although the use of hand scythes is largely "make work", it employs people rather than having them idle.
Too bad the government has decided idleness is better than demeaning labor.
18 posted on
06/16/2003 5:09:57 PM PDT by
supercat
(TAG--you're it!)
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson