How many times have you heard that tired old talking point?
If you truly believe that then …how many of you want to pick lettuce or harvest apples or…….well you get the point……back during Katrina my company hired 10 people for debris removal paying $10 an hour……at the end of a week we had 4 people left…all Hispanic…the Americans could lower themselves to pick up debris…….
But are they stealing jobs?
(Newser) – Odilia Chavez, a 40-year-old undocumented migrant farm worker based in California, is the first person to tell her story in a new Modern Farmer “Farm Confessional” feature, and she has a message for anyone who thinks people like her are stealing American jobs: “We’re not taking their jobs. In the 14 years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen an American working in the fields. I’ve never seen anyone work like Mexicans,” she writes. “Agriculture is dependent on undocumented workers. We need the money from the farmers, and the farmers need our hands.”
She tells her story and describes the low pay and difficult conditions that leave her exhausted by 9pm and awake again by 3am. Even so, she says, she would keep her job even if immigration reform passed. She’d be able to get a driver’s license and social security card and see her mom in Mexico for the first time since 2008, but in terms of a job, she and a lot of her fellow workers don’t know how to do anything else, don’t know how to use a computer, and never got far in school. “We can’t get a better job. They were farmworkers in Mexico and we’re going to die as farmworkers.” Her full column is worth a read.
As far as I have seen…they are not stealing jobs….but rather accepting jobs that Americans find demeaning and boring…….
Have yet to see an American in the crowd of day laborers at 5 am in the parking lot of a building supply company…….Americans want to be the CEO not the laborer…….
It doesn’t make it right but it’s my opinion that only poor hispanic immigrants are willing to put up with the hard labor and long hours that pays low wages and has no health benefits. It is also to the advantage of the farmers who hire them to keep wages low to keep costs low at the super markets. It’s essentially slave labor by American standards and that’s why you won’t see any U.S. citizens out there doing the work these immigrants do.
If these immigrants are forced to flee then you’ll see produce supplies dwindle and prices skyrocketing. Only then will most Americans learn to appreciate the contribution these people offer our economy.
wells said……
I’m from Los Angeles, so I have seen a thing or two in my time relating to immigrant workers. I’ve seen, first hand, the fields with an endless line of brown workers bent over picking strawberries. They bust their asses in a way I never could. Hispanic (with a mix of other immigrants), primarily. They are paid chump change to make sure that the groceries I buy are cheap and fresh. They are given inadequate protection from the elements and only enough water / food to keep them going. Remember, in Southern Cali, 90-100+ isn’t uncommon – try working 12+ hours in that without shade or a break. There have been plenty of stories (some legit, some questionable) about brutal conditions only a hair away literal slavery – and I’ll leave you to imagine just what happens when workers die of heatstroke on a farm which can’t legally admit he was working there.
I don’t want that job.
No thanks, I’ll just go broke and starve to death, thanks.
Their sweat is the grease in the gears of the US economy. All those Red Shirts who want them to “go home” (as if this isn’t their home) are in-fucking-sane. The economy would grind to a screeching halt. Food would quadruple in cost (+ major shortages as substantial amounts rot on the vines). Dishes would go unwashed in restaurants. Janitors across the country to vanish. Who is going to fill those jobs? You? Me? Like hell I’m going to unclog toilets for that money. That means the wage will have to increase. Which means literally every single downstream cost in the entire fucking economy will have to increase.
All the rent that they pay, all the food that they buy, all the clothes that they wear, all the phone service that they use, all the electronics that they pay for, et cetera, et cetera, would all stop cycling through the economy. Think about that, supply-sliders! “Kicking them out” is a one-way ticket to the absolute destruction of the United States economy. Massive inflation, plus shrunken demand. Yea, that’ll end well.
Out here (New York, now), I hire the occasional worker “off the line” for yard work, gutter cleaning, some heavy lifting, snow removal, et cetera. I’m not sure what “standard” wage is for a day, but I give them ~$100 for a full day + lunch. More if they kick ass, less if they slack off. It takes some effort to manage them, but I’ll tell you, it’s a great bargain. Further, they have been 100% honest and 100% reliable. It’s a great bargain for BOTH SIDES. That $100 works out to about $8-10 / hr, but considering they’re here illegally, it’s actually much better than they would normally get (so I’ve been told by some chatty workers). I had one guy insist on giving me money back because he didn’t feel he had earned so much. Image that.
But I’ll tell you, if I hired white guys to do it.. HA! Right. Maybe I could get the occasional high school / college kid, but he’d never bust his hump the way these guys do. And anyone else would charge 2x. Maybe 3x.
I think, and this could just be my wild imagination, but I think that the real fear from the anti-immigrant crowd is this: what if they start getting educated and competing for “real” jobs – jobs “real Americans” want? What happens when the current (huge) crop of immigrants has kids and those kids are natural legal US citizens by unquestionable* birthright. What happens when those kids grow up and then they start competing for “our” jobs. That’s the fear.
They don’t want “immigrant jobs.” They actually want immigrants to keep those jobs. These “real Americans” really just want to make sure that the immigrants never rise to the level of the good jobs, with living wages, health care, vacations, et cetera – that’s only for white skinned, English speaking, Judeo-Christian, NASCAR-watching, beer-drinking ‘Muricans.
[/rant]
*unquestionable, that is, unless your name is Barrack.
Mathius, thanx for sharing that…..and I have had similar experiences…..the workers I had would not take breaks, I had to force them to stop for lunch….I will hire them anytime their work ethic is far superior to the American workers I have worked with in the past….
G’Day! Lobotero,
This question may be a little off-topic, I want some numbers, I have yet to find anything saying unemployment has actually gone up. When the illegal immigration numbers too go up. I am sick of people saying they steal jobs, when there is no back up.
I’ll be back to read more next time
HI and welcome….there is a good reason because there is no good evidence that is true. Most unemployment records do not take any of this into consideration so all the naysayers have is innuendo and misinformation….I wish I could have helped….Merry Christmas…..chuq