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Almost 98% of the applicants were Hispanic....some legal, some not....but almost no one white or black even inquired. And it was often impossible to tell the difference. E Verify will change that, but that’s very new development.

Also, most of those asking to be paid under the table were either inner city blacks or country boy whites.

This is why I believe what I believe...because I know what I know and I lived what I lived. why would I lie? So I can get flamed by a bunch of folks on FR who’ve never in their life had to meet a labor blue collar payroll? Dear Lord get your chicken and egg order straight.

And by the way, we paid above market. Our payroll expense was higher than is normal for the industry. It’s the welfare and EBT and other benefits that are making the wages skewed just as much as the alternative...which isn’t as cheap as you think.

All I know is the 23 years and tens of thousands of job applications I took in the contract trades....which is probably 23 years more than you and tens of thousands of applications more than you have taken. Almost 98% of the applicants were Hispanic....some legal, some not....but almost no one white or black even inquired. And it was often impossible to tell the difference. E Verify will change that, but that’s very new development.

I will take the Bureau of the Census data over your anecdotal information. How do you differentiate between an Hispanic and a white or black? Almost 50% of Hispanics self-desribe themselves as white. Do you have a one drop rule for Hispanics?

That's the precisely problem. You generalize from your own experience. It is similar to the bubbles that the elites live in on both coasts and in Inside the Beltway in DC where I lived for 36 years. Flyover country is some sort of mystery. Reminds me of the Pauline Kael quote: "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"; referring to George McGovern's loss to Richard Nixon in in the 1972 presidential election.