Posted on 03/31/2006 11:36:38 AM PST by doug from upland
A Body Blow To Illegal Labor? Court rulings and legislation could change the game for companies such as Mohawk It could soon be high noon in Calhoun. The town of 13,000 tucked away in the northwest corner of Georgia has been reshaped during the past decade by a huge influx of Latinos. The big draw: jobs at Mohawk Industries Inc. (MHK ), the town's largest employer. The $6.6 billion carpet maker employs 32,000 workers in all, 4,000 of them in Calhoun and surrounding Gordon County. Once staffed largely by whites, Mohawk today has a workforce made up substantially of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. The lure of $7-an-hour work has helped lift Hispanics to 12% of Gordon's population today, up from less than 1% in 1990.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
"...Illegals pack an apartment with 20 or so people..."
Here in CA they are having 'front families' who pay cash for a house (half a million dollar range) and then turn it into a boarding house. It's happening all over Sonoma Napa and Mendocino.
Companies that have volunteered for the pilot say the reporting mechanisms are flawed. Giant chicken processor Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN ), which joined in 1998, says the program helps verify Social Security numbers, but it cannot identify immigrants who may have assumed other people's names and personal data. "We believe companies should not be placed in the role of policing who has proper work documentation," says Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson in a statement. Tyson was able to defeat a RICO suit brought by the Justice Dept. similar to the one Mohawk is fighting.
I live in NC where we raise a lot of chickens, turkeys and hogs with the assorted processing plants for various well known poultry and meat packers. Recently, in our area, I have noticed buses that are painted white. The windows on these buses are totally painted over and appear to be sealed. These buses have a very small (about the size of a salad plate) Tyson logo on the front otherwise they look like the old-fashioned yellow school bus that has been painted white with the windows completely painted over. I have come to believe these buses are full of illegal workers. I can think of no other explanation other than Tyson is trying to hide the use of illegal Hispanic workers.
If someone has another plausible explanation I w/b glad to listen!
The effect of a crackdown "would be very, very significant and very, very costly," says Bert Lance, a Calhoun native and former head of the Office of Management & Budget under former President Jimmy Carter....tells me the program must have merit.
This is the 1st story I have read that offered a hint to one of the two reasons unemployment remains low in areas where cheap illegal aliens inundate towns:
The 1st reason is that there are as many illegals as a company could want, so long as it has no scruples about displacing a resident that has roots in the area that may go back for many generations.
The second, super top secret tip top priority PC hide it under the rug reason, is that the legal resident worker who got replaced by the illegal has to pay his bills somehow, can't raise his family for less than 1/2 of what he was making (or would have been making if the resident just graduated from high school), and is unwilling to either live 5 familes to the household or have his wife be his girlfriend instead, and pop out babies for the welfare money, and has moved the hell out of there!!
Nothing will lower unemployment figures faster than White Flight
Here in NC illegals working as roofers get $56 for an 8 hour day = $7 /hour. An American citizen in NC, who is a roofer, gets $15 to $19 per hour with benefits -- needless to say here in NC we are being over run with illegals.
(Yes... That Cesar Chavez.)
After all, they came to Georgia in the first place, just to jilt the New Englanders they'd used and abused for 100 years.
In hiring illegals, the employers are participating in the illegals' arbitraging of living costs in the States versus Mexico. In Mexico, living costs were held down for a very long time by government subsidies of an assortment of staple goods, foodstuffs, and services. The cost of living still reflects the effects of those subsidies in the Mexican wage structure, which hasn't yet risen to reflect the removal of the subsidies because Mexican labor has little bargaining power -- because of high birth rates which were subsidized for 75 years by low living costs.
So, in effect, Mexican wage structures still reflect the effects of three generations of state socialism, and U.S. employers can participate indirectly in the socialist low-wage/labor-cost subsidy by hiring Mexicans in preference to Americans.
And of course they say things like "Americans don't want to work" -- and they always leave out the rest of the sentence, ".....at the Mexican labor-cost arbitraged wages we want to pay."
bumping
I'm a Tarheel, too, so I know. But if I were an employer and could get the job done just as well for less, I would be stupid not to.
I would hope someone would turn you into the irs. There are still people running their businesses legally, and the greedy creeps that hire illegals should have the crap sued out of them.
Yeah and what is the IRS going to do? We have corporations already fleecing the taxpayers and I don't see the IRS going after them very often. But let's go after the small business person who hires Mexicans. That makes sense.
No, he shouldn't retract or apologize. If you don't care to know whether you are hiring an illegal, you are part of the problem. And you gave them money under the table on which they will never pay income taxes.
Maybe a few decades ago that would not be a big problem. Right now, it is a huge problem. Wake up. This invasion is tearing apart our nation.
When it hurts other businessmen, yes. It does make sense.
The largest local newspaper is going to interview me for a story about this during the week.
Hiring illegals is an unfair business practice. It is driving legitimate businesses out of business.
Before he was Jimmy Carter's OMB guy, Bert Lance was a Georgia banker, and a member in good standing of the rich men's club, in the enabling and services division.
Bert Lance and men like him always were, and always will be, Part of the Problem. I wouldn't doubt for a second that he personally profits from illegal immigration, wage hold-downs, illiteracy, poverty, and inability of workers of any description to bargain on wages and working conditions.
Bert knows what all the other men in big white houses know: everyone who isn't a member of the club, is trash. Seven dollars an hour and the county medical clinic are good enough for them.
And you really believe the IRS is on the job of tracking down these employers? Any information on that cause I sure haven't heard of them doing it.
I know several people hurt by it. The cost of flooding the country with illegals is far too high.
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