Principled Immigration

I read on FR about an American crew that was SENT HOME after the cheaper illegals showed up.

I have family on the Coast, and I haven't heard anything about that from them.

The consensus among labor economists is that immigration has somewhat reduced the earnings of less-educated, low-wage workers.

Oh no, not according to the FROBL, who extol the miraculous ability of illegals to reduce costs but not lower wages.

Well, I can do a search if you want to read the article.
Of course, President Bush pulling Davis/Bacon wage protection and promising that companies hiring illegals for reconstruction would not be prosecuted didn't help either.

Nothing like support for law and order from the highest levels of government.

Who do you propose SHOULD do the work to re-build New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, if the contractors cannot find workers locally, or who are willing to live in difficult conditions in order to live there while they work? Florida had the same problem two years ago when four hurricanes hit during one season. Many construction projects were delayed because they couldn't find contractors to do the work, and costs doubled and tripled because the demand for building supplies went through the roof.

FROBL

Who?

Same old open borders crap, same old appeal to greed with the fraudulent Ponzi scheme of "if we don't open the borders, you boomers won't get your checks!"

There are also some in the United States who want to close the door to newcomers simply because they are outsiders. Over the course of the twentieth century, that attitude seemed to be fading away, but in recent years sleeping nativist sentiments have been irresponsibly inflamed by anti-immigration groups. . . sovereign nations have the right to control their boundaries

What is the nature of the "right to control their boundaries?" Why is not protecting your culture and people from becoming a minority, at best, in their own homeland not part this so-called right? If that isn't a legitimate reason for controlling your borders then there is no legitimate reason for doing so. I also love the term "nativist." Why doesn't she just say racist? What is it about the nature of the debate on immigration policy that forces this little evasion? Could it be that openly calling immigration foes racist makes plain the racial nature of present immigration policies which might make the "natives" see that nature and that they, too, have group interests?

[FROBL] Who?

Free Republic Open Borders Lobby.

You know, those that find agreement with WSJ op eds to be reasoned presentations, including the WSJ classic Open Borders? Why Not?

Maybe some preplanning is in order. Why not have the state or counties keep a supply of building materials on hand for emergencies? Or neighborhoods band together to have supplies on hand? After all, in Florida there are hurricanes every year.

Require citizens to volunteer some time towards rebuilding in their local community/neighborhood.
Habitat for humanity.
Army corps of engineers.
Lousiana National Guard.
Church groups.
Americorps.
CCCs from California.
Out of work autoworkers from Detroit.
College students during the summer months.
Able bodied men on welfare from any state.
Convict "trustee" crews.
Off season firefighting contract crews.

OR Manufactured and modular homes.

That's just in a couple of minutes.
Offer good wages and provide some sort of housing, and they will come.

More jobs Americans wouldn't do....in 1940.
Welcome to wonderful world of globalist slavery.
From another thread on FR.

This advantage to the farmers of hiring temporary foreign workers was no accident. It was deliberate. In 1940, one grower wrote to the U.S. Department of Agriculture that if Washington were to help them find labor, the Bahamas would be a far better source than either the U.S. or its territory Puerto Rico. “The vast difference between the Bahama Island labor and domestic, including Puerto Rican,” wrote the farmer, “is that labor transported from the Bahama Islands can be deported and sent home, if it does not work, which cannot be done in the instance of labor from domestic United States or Puerto Rico.”

This moment of brutal honesty by a sugar farmer in the months before World War II gives us insight into the mind of shrewd employers throughout the decades. If your worker’s visa limits him to working for you, you become, in effect, the government.

A typical employer in a free market has only the power to stop paying his worker or possibly sue him if he doesn’t perform promised services. But under guest-worker programs, the employer gains the power of deportation.

In recognition of the fact that the employer/guest-worker relationship exists outside of the free market, the federal government provides special protection for these guest workers, guaranteeing adequate housing, food, and other conditions. In the rest of the economy, the enforcement mechanism for the worker’s needs is called freedom of movement. In a free market, a dissatisfied worker can walk away from a job. In the 20th-century indentured servitude of the cane fields, no such freedom existed, dragging Big Government even deeper into the realm of business.

In 1982, workers walked off the sugar field when their bosses told them the wage they would pay for a row of sugar that day. The price wasn’t worth their sweat and blood, they surmised. The next day, law enforcement greeted the workers outside their barracks, and 300 cutters were soon deported. Future cane cutters didn’t try to haggle much over wages.

Cutting sugarcane in Florida was a job Americans wouldn’t do. But that is true only when you take into account the whole package of cane-cutting employment. What Americans wouldn’t do was subject themselves to slavery, where not only their wages but their right to hold any job in America was dependent on remaining in the good graces of the boss, on whom they also depended for food and shelter.

I work with lots of contractors. They always find someone sooner or later. Then both employer and employee get taxed to death. Put in the Fair Tax!

The Senate is not just granting amnesty to illegals, it is granting itself amnesty. Each Senator swore to uphold our laws and Constitution. They have not enforced the law. They have done nothing to stop illegal immigration. The legislation they now propose, in essence, grants themselves AMNESTY.

Fight all you want about whether illegals are getting amnesty, but there is no doubt, the legislation proposed by McCain and the other spineless Senators grants amnesty to themselves.

They are letting themselves go free. They will no longer be abdicating their duty to uphold our laws if legislation passes in its present form.

Offer good wages and provide some sort of housing, and they will come.

I'm not sure they will. They won't even do those jobs close to home, why would they travel some distance to do them? It's a different world from the time of the depression. Folks just aren't desperate now, with the social safety net available in most places.

I don't think you can legally COMPEL anyone, short of convicted prisoners to do any particular work at all.

What do you think both federal and contract wildland firefighters do? They can be gone months at a time, and know this when they sign on. The benefit that draws them, of course, is the overtime that they make while away from home. Or what about private contractors who are working in Iraq or Saudi Arabia-not exactly garden spots for your average westerner (not to mention the risk of getting your head cut off with a dull knife)?

Pay enough and they will come.

I'm not talking about people who already have good jobs, or WANT them, and are willing to go where they need to go for them. I'm talking about the chronically unemployed. They are the ones who would be doing the lower wage, less skilled jobs that the Mexican and Central American immigrants are doing. They are obviously NOT interested in them, or they would already be doing them and we wouldn't need the addiditional labor provided by the immigrants.