Posted on 03/28/2006 12:45:30 AM PST by Exton1
Who is this fool? Who buys his bread?
What they need is to not scare capital away by confiscatory govt. policies. If one looks around the world at those foreign societies with the worst living standards, their problem is clearly not a lack of cheap labor. Indeed, their problem is a corrupt and unrestrained govt./dictatorship.
The worker is damned if you do and damned if you don't. With cheap labor, you have a lot of low paying jobs, with expensive labor, you have a few higher paying jobs and a lot of machines.
Just heard Senator Bill Frist say it on NBC.
Amen to that!
Are American's ready to kill for their quality of life or accept third world living standards? Those are the choices. The hundreds of thousands who went to the streets aren't going back peacefully.
"One of the factors "encouraging business to hire" is the availability of cheap labor, much of it from illegal immigrants."
Cheap labor certainly ain't cheap to us taxpayers!!!!!
What makes 'cheap labor' even more taxing on this country is the fact they send most of their earnings back to their homelands.
This is how illegal immigration costs the U.S.
1. The illegal immigrants have robbed from our taxing system.
2. The illegal immigrants have robbed from our Social Security System.
3. The illegal immigrants have robbed from our Health Care System.
4. The illigal immigrants have robbed from our School Systems.
Ah, hold on a second. There are winners and losers to this. The consumer gets cheaper landscaping, cheaper vegetables, and can afford a better house because the labor to build it is cheaper. That translates to an increase in living standards for many.
How many consumer goods are people able to afford now because they are cheaply made in China? Compare to 50 years ago when they weren't?
As far as national living standards being dragged down by illegals, show me some hard data. After Luxumbourg, the US citizen makes the highest salary in the world. I don't feel that my living standards have decreased in the least because of all the illegals here.
Lest the emotional interpret this as advocating illegal immigration - I'M NOT.
It's a myth that the U.S. economy "needs" more poor immigrants. The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force, the Pew Hispanic Center reports. In no major occupation are they a majority. They're 36 percent of insulation workers, 28 percent of drywall installers and 20 percent of cooks. They're drawn here by wage differences, not labor "shortages." Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking; many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate; many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government's poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent. What we have now -- and would with guest workers -- is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico. By and large, this is a bad bargain for the United States. It stresses local schools, hospitals and housing; it feeds social tensions (witness the Minutemen). To be sure, some Americans get cheap housecleaning or landscaping services. But if more mowed their own lawns or did their own laundry, it wouldn't be a tragedy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032101146_pf.html
Data from one state. Californi http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/12/06/news/top_stories/19_56_5812_5_04.prt
That is the point. Import the government program dependent.
ANY paying of dollars is a total joke.
People will come to the USA knowing they can raise the PENUTS to pay a joke fine.
(I have seen it myself with legal consultations. The money is treated as a mere minor point. You want it you will get in.)
This law actually makes the 10 year wait now FIVE.
Thanx for the info. I do agree that illegals are a very real stress in California and border states, where they comprise a good size minority. How they affect the overall economy of the US is probably much less. We are a powerful economy of 300 million people, and I haven't really seen anything that says the illegals are whacking it significantly.
Cheap labor bump
I strongly suspect that the primary impetus for our nation's open borders policy is not the desire for cheap labor, but for new consumers. The Mexican who enters this country illegally is not "valued" by our government and corporate interests in this country because he works for low pay, but because he may find himself in an aisle at Wal-Mart next month or in a Ford dealership five years from now.
But if the low wages mean less consumption, not more. Otherwise cheap labor countries in Latin American would be better markets than USA.
It's America's future. Better get used to it.
Having said that, I agree with the article completely. We are in a race to the bottom, sold out by politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Our schools don't teach.
Our borders are all-but open and essentially non-existent.
Our manufacturing base is vanishing.
And, due to changes in legal immigration policy, our nation is losing the cultural cohesiveness that "makes a nation".
Wish I could be more optimistic, but - nearing retirement and having seen too much - I'm not.
- John
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