[RS]

"Only a few years ago trained blue collar workers easily made as much money as degreed people."


Hate to bring it up, but the article is about "labor-hungry farming and landscaping ".


How long ago was it that farm workers easily made the same as mechanical engineers ?

[marron]

My older relatives worked the fields that are presently worked by illegals, back in the fifties. They traveled state to state, with the kids. Some of them eventually settled in the area permanently, and over time worked their way up the ladder.

One of my cousins works in landscaping right now. He actually makes pretty good money, but don't ask me how much of it he declares on his taxes... its a cash business, you know...

But where I live, farm work is 100% foreign and of that, heavily illegal. But it wasn't always like that, and I see no reason it has to be even now.

But unfortunately we are not only talking about farm labor.

Where I live, a high percentage of blue collar labor is done by foreign nationals. Whether they are legal or not I would not know, but that they are foreign nationals is not hard to ascertain. I lived in Mexico, my spanish is fluent, so the differences are easy to distinguish, but if you aren't sure, just ask. Its not a secret.

I was on a recent power plant project, where of about 50 electricians, all of them were foreign nationals. Not Mexican Americans, but Mexican natonals. Again, I have to assume that they were legal, but there have been serious changes in immigration policy and they were never debated publicly.

In the last decade or so, the motel industry has been swamped by foreign workers. It is startling to note that in even the smallest town miles off the main route, the proprietors are from India. I love folks from India, and I love people who are willing to take a chance on their own business, but that isn't the point. There has been a tremendous influx of South Asians over the last decade or so.

I read an article recently about Indian billionaires, and it mentioned one who made his fortune buying up US motels. So I assume that this is the explanation behind the motel demographic shift I have observed.

Maybe something similar has happened in the convenience store industry, where all of them are now run either by arabs or south asians.

The excuse given is that Americans won't take those jobs. But until recently, they did.