Vexcalibur wrote:
Quote:
It is about whether a nation should be considered a general benefactor for all mankind just for the sake of its being there.
US isn't receiving immigrants just for the sake of being there. I'll tell you what happens:
American citizens receive a much higher pay than illegal workers. Fix this (either by making you, Americans work for less or by making illegals work for more) and it is done. US is not behaving like a "benefactor" in anyway. Your companies, your corporations are saving a big buck because illegal immigrants charge much less than citizens. It is entirely symbiotic and in fact, most likely the American employers are the ones that get the most benefit out of this.
Its a lot more than that. A US employer has to:
- pay federal minimum wage
- follow employment laws (min/max hours, overtime, etc)
- pay taxes per employee
- most of them provide healthcare plans (which cost them)
- provide paid vacation time
- liable to pay unemployment benefits.
- liable to pay worker's comp. for accidents
and a myriad of other expenses that hiring a legal employee entails.
An illegal? He/she is generally paid much less and worked more hours than a legal.. has no right to any of the above, can be fired at a moments notice, does not receive paid vacation time, cant receive benefits and what I've seen happen, the bosses generally exploit them to do unpaid work to keep their jobs or to not get reported to INS.
Technically speaking, the legal employees are competing with someone who is in a virtual state of slavery. Its just like competing with India or China markets... their employees do the same work for far,far less and no benefits or compensation pay is required from the companies who send the jobs there.
I was watching the Florida Senate debate a bill that was trying to make it law for employers to e-verify the legal status of a potential employee before being hired. A senator spoke against it and gave as an example his own business... he had a strawberry farm.
He said every year he would lose a large percentage of his crop because it could not be picked fast enough before the berries ripened. He had to turn away hundreds of applicants because they were illegal...and that if he had hired them, at the same pay rate and all as his legal workers, his farm would not be losing money.
... thats when another senator stood up and told him that he knew how much he paid his legal employees.. it was exactly the minimum wage and that he did not allow overtime nor did he have any kind of permanent or long term job relationship with his pickers. In short, his farm was set up to pay the minimum to random workers... every employee was literally expendable. In such a setup he asked the senator, how could he expect to have a sufficient, effective workforce? This other senator compared his farm to a co-op farm that was bigger than his and had a smaller workforce and yet they picked all their fruit in time.. why? co-op meant their employees had job security and worked well and hard and for better pay.
and they went on to argue about it. Anyways that was to me a perfect example of the illegal labor addiction that the US has. These farm/factory/whatever owners see only profit margins and expenses not the people they are hiring. Under such conditions, the illegal/slave labor/overseas cheap labor will always trump the most willing, sacrificing legal american job/worker every time.
04 May 2011, 5:20 pm
