Once again, the demise of literacyFollow

Your analogy works if illegal labor is a cheap TV. Now imagine that it's a little more complex than that. Imagine that the real issue at work when someone pays $3/hour for labor is greed, and imagine that same job being incapable of attracting qualified legal canditates because $3/hour is not a lving wage in the U.S. In Mexico? Sure, $3/hour is a sweet deal.

Yes, the reason an illegal would want to do that work for a wage that a natural citizen would consider unfair is because the same job pays even less on the other side of the border, but see the supply is there because the demand is unreasonable. At the current rate I suppose a citizen of San Diego could work for the unfair wage and call TJ home, but that certainly would seem to place a burden on their pursuit of happiness.

You don't see how those jobs could be filled by legal employees easier if they paid fairly; if the employer wasn't looking to fatten their own wallet at an inflated rate? It's not that the American worker demands too much, it's that in order to live a normal life in America demands more, and therefore it's a better deal to collect welfare or unemployment. Or I guess we could start letting our unskilled laborers sleep ten deep in the back of a van, or in the crawlspace of the home they're constructing.

I certainly don't have all the answers, but doesn't it seem logical that employers at least abide but what is mandated as a minimum wage?

Or we could hire them to build a wall.

Edited, Mon Apr 3 15:10:05 2006 by Barkingturtle

Plus they have that whole "Burritos as big as your head" thing going. If I could get that out of an eggroll, I'd dig the underground immigrant tunnel to China myself.

No. Actually, my analogy works if the two TVs are exactly identical. See. If the less expensive TV was of lesser quality, then you could justify the higher price for the "better TV". But what's actually happening is that the Mexican gardener is just as good at doing his job as the US gardener. He'll just do the same job for half the price.

Raising the cost of the US gardener can't possibly do anything other then make the discrepancy *worse*. I simply can't see how anyone could think otherwise. You keep trying to argue about greed entering the equation. Greed is irrelevant though. Any employer pays his workers what his workers are willing to work for. Period. That's not greed. That's just business. If you want a higher salary, you must provide a skill for "sale" that is scarce enough that the employer will have to pay more for it. If anyone can do your job, you can't expect any more for that job then the minimum that anyone else would be willing to do the job for. Again. That's not greed. That's simply the way the supply/demand process works. It's no more greedy for an employer to seek to pay the least amount of money for the quality of work he receives then it is for you to seek to buy the best TV for the lowest price. It's amazing to me that no one questions the second motive (and most call it being a discerning consumer), but it's somehow "wrong" when applied to the purchase of labor.



Huh? Not even sure what you're trying to say here. Do you really think that illegal workers in the US commute back and forth between the US and Mexico each day? Look. I know people who work at high salary jobs (6 figure plus) and live in TJ (cause it's cheaper). At least until the border wait got too long for that to be a viable commute. But those are either US citizens, or dual citizens. The illegals aren't getting that advantage. They live in the US. Just like everyone else. They must pay the exact same cost of living as everyone else. It's not like there are specials for cheap appartments for illegals only or something.

The real fact is that it's not the jobs that American's wont do, but the salaries they are unwilling to accept. And it's not that the salaries are too low either. They just believe they should get more, but the illegals don't. They know what real poverty is, and making $4/hour in the US is not it. They know that the lie about wages told here in the US really is a lie. They know that the minimum wage is really too high. They know this because they know that those who champion continually raising that minimum are looking at the economic factors backwards. When people argue about a "living wage", or try to measure poverty, they always assume a single income supporting a family of 4. The know that the real minimum wage you can live on is the wage that 4 working people can each make and share to provide a home for all of them.


It's a matter of how you define "minimum". Here in the US, we define it as something far above the actual minimum a single person can survive on if he's willing to make some sacrifices in his life. The fact is that millions of illegals manage to not only survive on minimum wage (and often less then minimum wage), but they make enough to send a significant amount to their families back home. Kinda flies in the face of the traditional poverty line arguments made here, doesn't it?



I really don't think you understand the economics. Take four guys. Assume each makes 50 bucks a day doing day labor (pretty typical wage actually). Assume 5 days a week average work. That's $1,000/month each. Together, they have $4k a month. Even in San Diego, you can rent a pretty freaking nice place for half that. Again. Our poverty calculations in this country are based on the assumption of a single income supporting a family of 4. So making 12k a year is considered poverty. But for a single guy, sharing room and board with a few other guys, it's plenty of money. These guys are *not* starving or sleeping in crawlspaces. That's the exception, not the rule. They are carving out a comfortable life for themselves because they can do the simple math that apparently most US citizens can't do.



Certainly. But if we've already got employers violating that in order to pay 3-4 bucks an hour when minimum wage is $6/hour, what do you think will happen if you raise that minimum wage to $9/hour? How on earth can that do anything but increase the demand for illegal workers? Think about it...

Legal citizens taking legal jobs are subject to the minimum wage; illegal workers do not have to be paid quite so well.

So let's tighten the borders, deport all the illegals, then repeal minimum wage so that good homegrown American types can take the jobs them sneaky ******** have been stealin' from us. Yar.

The reason why employers are usually trying to get a job done cheaper is not primarily greed; it's because some jobs aren't WORTH minimum wage. Minimum wage is a necessary evil but it creates problems as well as solving them.

Employers and employees alike suffer from the effects of a minimum wage. For every position and worker combination that does not generate value in excess of what is being paid, another worker gets screwed.

The obvious answer is a perfect communism where everyone works to their best of their ability and receives to the level of their need. But since that'll never happen...

We outsource tasks as much as possible. India is certainly notorious for having call centers. (Traditional Indians tend to despise them, and lament how they are degrading the youth of their society.) However, it's not easy to outsource mowing your lawn. That's where illegal immigrants come in. Think of it as outsourcing a task to a contractor from another country who's only here until he's captured. That should help ease your mind.

Frankly, I love the fact that we have an influx of new blood and culture to this country, legal or not. The moment we close those borders, we will truely begin to decline in greatness and I despise the politicians who play upon the fear and greed in the mind of the common man to achieve that end. America does not close. We are open 24/7, 365. Anyone who wants to change that should leave because they are the ones who aren't real Americans. That's what I think.

Funny how this thread is titled "once again, the demise of literacy" and you've somehow gotten the idea that I'm advocating raising the minimum wage. I'm for utilizing the minimum wage in it's current form, at least.

And as for exploitation?



I just knew I knew what that word meant! Go me!

So yeah: guest worker status, pay them equally, tax them likewise, punish those who would still circumvent existing law. If the workers continue to perform as well as their American counter-parts I don't see why they wouldn't remain employed. Feels like a win-win. But allowing people to work for a wage we wouldn't accept just because they come from poverty and don't mind scraps? That's wrong. Now hold my hand as we march to capitol hill and fix this, once and for all.



Edited, Mon Apr 3 22:09:57 2006 by Barkingturtle

Except that this is already happening. The only difference is that if we legalize it, we can actually maybe control *who* crosses the border. The point being that if you don't have such a process in place, and you also don't built the aforementioned "big fence"(tm), you are creating a market for illegal border crossings. When you do that, you enable more then just those coming to work to cross the border.

If the *only* people crossing the border illegally were drug smugglers and terrorists, it would be pretty darn easy to catch them. But when those folks are hidden among a flood of people doing so with less nefarious purposes, it's a lot harder to catch them. The point of the guest worker program is to remove the need for people to cross the border illegally just to come to work, thus allowing for tougher containment of the border without looking like we're big meanies to the poor folks just looking for a job and a better life.


Do not underestimate the public perception angle to illegal immigration. Why do you think we don't just build a big fence? It's because of the perception. If we had a hostile neighbor to the south, no one would question a big fence with lots of guards. But what we have is a lot of poor people living to the south, who'd really like to live better lives. In the border states there is a *lot* of compassion for those people, and not just among latinos. A big fence, with no means to help those poor people, comes off as anti-latino. It comes off as anti-poor. It comes off as the big rich US putting the smackdown on poor Mexican's looking for a better life.

If you create some sort of guest worker program, it's not "slavery". They choose to come to work. They choose to take lower wages. They do this because it's *better* then the work they can get at home. And this is what already happens without the guest worker program anyway. The *only* significant difference is that you'll see a dramtic reduction in the number of illegal border crossings, freeing up the border patrol to actually protect us from real bad guys who might try to cross.


It's a reasonable compromise. I'm not sure I'm happy with the proposed amnesty parts, but that may simply be unavoidable.

I work in Hospitality in Boston and have done so for over 5 years.

Not a single white person works in the housekeeping department. Not in management, maids, or what we refer to as "housemen" (they do the heavy lifting, shoveling, and outside work).

English is not the native language of any of these people. They are from literelly, the four corners of the earth.

They are all Union and make about $14 dollars an hour with full benifits. Some of them are not legal.

I know this, because when the guy I referred to as Juan for 3 years became legal, he let it be known his real name is Carlos(100% true. I realize how stereotypical these names are.)

We pass out applications at the front desk. In the 5 and a half years I've been there, I have yet to see a caucasion apply for a housekeeping position.

I have come to the conclusion that these people really are doing the jobs most of us Americans do not want to do.

I realize that paying them a good wage with benifits is not a reality in most parts of the country, but someone's gotta do these jobs.

That is all.

Edited, Mon Apr 3 23:08:05 2006 by Omegavegeta