Proof that Illegals Are Not Taking Jobs From Americans...

Discussion in 'Immigration' started by OldManOnFire, Sep 28, 2010.

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  1. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2010/09/27/5187033-despite-economy-americans-dont-want-farm-work

    Despite economy, Americans don't want farm work

    It's a question rekindled by the recession: Are immigrants taking jobs away from American citizens? In the heart of the nation's biggest farming state, the answer is a resounding no.

    Government data analyzed by The Associated Press show most Americans simply don't apply to harvest fruits and vegetables. And the few Americans who do usually don't stay in the fields.

    "It's just not something that most Americans are going to pack up their bags and move here to do," said farmer Steve Fortin, who pays $10.25 an hour to foreign workers to trim strawberry plants at his nursery near the Nevada border.

    The AP analysis showed that, from January to June, California farmers posted ads for 1,160 farmworker positions open to U.S. citizens and legal residents. But only 233 people in those categories applied after learning of the jobs through unemployment offices in California, Texas, Nevada and Arizona.

    One grower brought on 36. No one else hired any.

    "It surprises me, too, but we do put the information out there for the public," said Lucy Ruelas, who manages the California Employment Development Department's agricultural services unit. "If an applicant sees the reality of the job, they might change their mind."

    Sometimes, U.S. workers also will turn down the jobs because they don't want their unemployment insurance claims to be affected, or because farm labor positions do not begin for several months, and applicants prefer to be hired immediately, Ruelas said.

    Fortin spent $3,000 this year to make sure that domestic workers have first dibs on his jobs in the sparsely populated stretch of the state, advertising in newspapers and on an electronic job registry.

    But he did not get any takers, even though he followed the requirements of a little-known, little-used program to bring in foreign farmworkers the legal way — by applying for guest worker visas.

    The California figures represent only a small part of the national effort to recruit domestic workers under the H-2A Guest Worker Program, but they provide a snapshot of how hard it is to to get growers to use the program — and to attract Americans to farm labor, even in the San Joaquin Valley, where the average unemployment rate is 15.8 percent.

    The majority of farmers rely on illegal labor to harvest their crops, but they can also use the little-known H-2A visa to hire guest workers, as long as they request the workers months in advance of the harvest season and can show that no Americans want the job.

    Of the estimated 40,900 full-time farmers and ranchers in California, just 34, including Fortin, petitioned to bring in foreign farmworkers on the visas, according to government data for the first eight months of the year.

    The Labor Department did not respond to a request for comment about the findings, and state officials did not immediately provide figures showing the number of domestic workers hired in July and August.

    More than half of farmworkers in the United States are illegal immigrants, the Labor Department says. Proponents of tougher immigration laws — as well as the United Farm Workers of America — say farmers are used to a cheap, largely undocumented work force, and if growers raised wages and improved working conditions, the jobs would attract Americans.

    So far, an effort by the UFW to get Americans to take farm jobs has been more effective in attracting applicants than the official channels.

    The UFW in June launched the "Take Our Jobs Campaign," inviting people to go online and apply. About 8,600 people filled out an application form, but only seven have been placed in farm jobs, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said.

    Some U.S. workers referred for jobs at Fortin's nursery couldn't do the grueling work.

    "A few years ago when domestic workers were referred here, we saw absentee problems, and we had people asking for time off after they had just started," he said. "Some were actually planting the plants upside down."

    Asked what the agency could do to get more U.S. workers into farm jobs, California Employment Development Department spokeswoman Patti Roberts suggested the UFW could refer applicants to the state or employers, and the state could publicize the openings through public service announcements.

    Economists have long argued over whether local workers would take jobs in the field if wages rose.

    Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, said because so few farmers participate in the H-2A program, it's hard to draw national conclusions.

    "Recruitment of U.S. workers in this program doesn't work well primarily because employers have already identified who they want to bring in from abroad," Martin said. "I don't think a lot of U.S. workers are going out there looking for a seasonal job paying the minimum wage or a dollar more."

    The Labor Department collects the same data about H-2A visa applications for all 50 states but does not make it publicly available.

    In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the AP, the agency offered to provide some records for nearly $11,000 in copying fees, but it was not clear whether the information would show how many Americans had applied for farm labor jobs nationwide. The AP plans to file an administrative appeal.

    Even California officials say the guest worker program needs fixing, despite a reform effort announced in February by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis meant to put more domestic workers in crop-picking jobs.

    Benjamin Reynosa, who was picking ruby-colored grapes in 90-degree heat last week near Fowler, just south of Fresno, said he often is the only legal U.S. resident on seasonal crews. He said most people hear about the jobs through word of mouth or signs tacked outside rural stores, not the electronic registry.

    "I've been working in agriculture for 22 years, and I can tell you there are very few gringos out here," said Reynosa, 49, of Orange Cove, about 30 miles east of Fresno. "If people know English, they go to work in packinghouses or sit in an office."

    In Tulare County, where the unemployment rate is nearly 16 percent, job seekers on a recent morning crowded around computers at the job development agency.

    "We just don't advertise those kinds of farmworker jobs," said Sandi Miller, program coordinator for the county's work force investment board.

    Amid the U.S. Army flyers posted in the lobby, however, under the heading "HOT JOB LEADS," was an ad for a farmworker position, preferring someone with Spanish fluency and tractor maintenance skills.

    Miller said later it was the first she had seen such a notice. She hadn't received any applications, she said.


    OMOF: Why is this so difficult to accept??
     
    sunnyside and (deleted member) like this.
  2. anita lied

    anita lied New Member

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    You owe me $78K. And we'll be moving in with you untill you pay up.
    That's how much income our family has lost as a direct result of illegals over the last year.
    We run (ran) a specialty construction company, 10 seasonal produce stands and a house cleaning service. We now earn as of last year $ 22K and live in subsidized housing.
    Illegals have flooded the trades, caused the falure of countless businesses,
    and using a federal tax number might be sitting in YOUR desk one day.
    You only focus on low paying farm labor jobs and mention nothing of the 14 million good paying jobs in the hands of illegals at this moment. Why is that old man?
     
  3. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    He doesn't want to hear that, he's far too busy posting his propaganda meant for consumption of the gullible.
    Wages for farm work would go up if illegals weren't employed.

    $10 an hour for farm work in California?
    What do you have left after paying for gas to drive to the farm?
    And $10 in California isn't like $10 in Cleveland or Buffalo.
    Even in Buffalo Aldis pays cashiers $11 an hour.

    He doesn't comprehend market economy, the crops would get picked and the market would set the wages.
    GOOD paying jobs would be created, taxes would be paid and millions of welfare and food stamp collecting illegals would be evicted.
     
  4. Clay

    Clay New Member

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    That American citizens aren't trying to take the jobs that about 2 million illegal farm workers who actually work in the fields out of the estimated 24 plus million illegals that have broken into the US certainly doesn't prove that illegals are not taking jobs from American citizens. Left out of the statistics for illegal farm workers who work the fields is the fact that the corrupt fed gov has allowed the ag industry to become dominated by foreign, mostly mexican, workers. The illegal mexican workers don't welcome any American workers who don't speak spanish and who would be coming in to take "their" jobs. By the same token most Americans don't want to work with a bunch of illegal mexicans who are basically peon class and don't speak english. Mexican field workers are known to stop and take a dump right on the spot and then wash their butts off with their hands with water. Add this to the cheap wages that the farm owners are only willing to pay because of the plentiful supply of desperate mexicans willing to work cheap and one has a clearer picture. Now we get to the 22 plus million illegals workers who have moved up and don't work the farm fields anymore or never did and who certainly ARE taking jobs from American citizens.
     
  5. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    Not to mention the illegals that come here with little or no intention of working.
    If illegal aliens can collect welfare under false identities, you can bet that there are plenty of them collecting under multiple identities.

    I don't want these dirty illegals picking produce.
    Anyone that does has no clue about hygiene or lacks the intelligence to care what is on the food they eat.

    As I said in another post, it was shown on a video that lettuce gets package right in the fields, these same people you speak of are handling that lettuce.

    And stupid Americans are crying racism and insisting that they get their lettuce from people, who as you say, take a dump right there in the fields and wash their exit holes with their hands and water.

    These liberal fools never stop to think about what they are campaigning for!
    Apparently they WANT berry obama to guarantee this as the standard so they can continue to get their food picked by people with feces on their hands.
     
  6. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Because I'm a farmer and I have firsthand experience...not political BS.

    You will never find a legitimate source that will validate your '14 million' number you use above!

    First you can't even define 'good paying' jobs. I just had some harvest work completed and paid $15/hour...is this 'good paying'? BTW; no Americans, or white boys/girls, make themselves available to do this work. So how much income is 'good paying'?

    Second, the only way 14 million can possibly be correct is if we have 50 million illegals in the USA.

    Third, you have no idea what percentage of 'supposed' illegals actually hold green cards or worker status? What if 50% of them have worker status as provided by our government...this means they have the right to work here...in ALL jobs which sponsor green cards.

    Most illegals are unskilled so they can't possibly 'flood' the trades.

    I'd be curious to have you explain how 'they' cause countless business failures?

    Federal tax number...this is GREAT as long as they are paying. Are you complaining that they are paying taxes?
     
  7. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    At first read this post was not worth 2 seconds of time...but I changed my mind and want you to know your words show nothing but ignorance. It is this very ignorance that prevents Americans from having a rational and productive discussion on immigration.
     
  8. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    This post is worse than ignorance and again not worthy of another 2 seconds of my time...
     
  9. Clay

    Clay New Member

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    Well of course. I would have said that you're not worthy of answering my post though. Obviously you don't have any propaganda to address the fact that the unwanted, except for so called farmers like you, uninvited illegal border jumpers don't want any Americans taking their field jobs and are very unfriendly toward them as well as the fact that American farm workers don't want to work along side desperate dirty ignorant illegals who don't speak english and work for the cheap wages that so called farmers like you are only willing to pay because of the surplus of illegal farm workers that our corrupt fed gov has allowed to break in. I failed to see where you addressed this.

    The hard truth is that this so called cheap labor is only cheap to a few industries while the American taxpayers pick up the cost for the "baggage" the illegals bring with them: overcrowded, failing schools, incarceration of "criminal" illegals, loss of middle class jobs for Americans, loss of tax revenues from scumbag employers paying illegals under the table, blatant welfare abuse from illegals with false IDs, anchor baby abuse, etc.

    For over a decade now the corrupt lying fed gov has claimed that there are only 12 million unwanted uninvited border jumper and visa oversayer future democratic voters if amnestied in the country. Why would anyone believe that the same fed gov that is responsible for allowing the illegal mexican invasion in the first place can be trusted to tell the truth about how bad of a job the fed gov has done in stopping illegal immigration. The official number of illegal aliens in the US has obviously been kept very low for a long time so as to not alarm the American sheeple about how bad the illegal mexican invasion really is. If the corrupt lying fed gov says that there are 12 million illegals then there must be AT LEAST 24 million.
     
  10. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Sorry...too ignorant and reprehensible to allow an intelligent response. Don't bother with more of your stupidity because there will be zero response from me...
     
  11. SiliconMagician

    SiliconMagician Banned

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    Hey man,

    I live here in farm country. When it comes to farm labor, you are most likely correct. Americans have become to fat, lazy and spoiled to do what their grandparents were more than happy to do during the depression to stay alive.

    It's disgusting how sick our society has become. I grew up doing field work on my grandparents farm every summer for $2.50 an hour. I know what that labor is like and I just don't see fat lazy Americans coming out, even for 15 an hour(though I sure as hell would, and I'd tell those field (*)(*)(*)(*)ting mexicans to get out of my (*)(*)(*)(*) way)

    But the part about them being unskilled is only partly true. It doesn't take more than a few weeks training to hang drywall, lay carpet, paint a house, or put a roof on.

    The fact is illegal aliens have done construction work in my county for over a decade and depressed wages down to 11 bucks an hour for construction labor.

    When Sheriff Jones cracked down on the illegals, and they fled over night, contractors were desperate they raised wages to 21 bucks an hour.

    So, while it may be true that in the farm fields of Cali illegals do little to no harm.. in every other sector of the economy where they set up shop, they destroy the wages and benefits packages that companies would be more willing to offer if the Mexicans weren't there in the first place.

    You have no idea how depressing it is to go into a temp service, apply for brutal factory work and be told it's only paying $8 an hour and when you ask why you are told "That's what the Mexicans are willing to accept, so should you".

    Are you trying to say that I'm being lied to about mexicans accepting 8 bucks an hour for brutal factory work and I should be willing to accept the same?
     
  12. Clay

    Clay New Member

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    Good. Keep it that way. You were found out in the past to be just another pro illegal activist claiming to be a so called farmer with so called farmer's chores to try to get some credibility to your pro illegal propaganda.
     
  13. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    A link would be nice if you could find one. Relating to either the "good" jobs or the number of total jobs.

    That's only true if the new required wage is low enough to make it cheaper to produce something here than to import it. And, considering the amount of vegetables and manufactured goods we import already I'm thinking the result would be that the jobs would simply evaporate.

    Construction is a little different in that you can't just fly in a new skyscraper. Though at some cost the skyscraper just wouldn't get built.

    ...in other countries with cheaper labor. This has largely already happened.

    In those other countries.

    While most of your post was unsupported vitrol, I think this is the crux of why opening the tap on immegration is a bad thing.

    Creating tons of $10 and hour jobs are great for the country...if you only collect taxes and provide little in the way of services.

    However if the taxes generated from that labor are less than the services provided, as I fear is the case in our increasingly redistributive country, than it's a net loss for the country.

    The issue I have is that we can have $10 jobs open and still be paying unemployment/welfare. Even if $10 an hour is a net loss, it's better than the person being unemployed.

    Personally I think a lot of people who'd rather stay on the government dole should get gift certificate for a one way bus ticket and a listing of agri jobs instead of their usual check.
     
  14. BuckNaked

    BuckNaked New Member

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    If I offered you a job, any job, with no benefits and half the pay you would need to be living in poverty and gaurentee that you would have to apply for government subsidies for your very survival, would you take it?
     
  15. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    In this thread we're talking about jobs over the minimum wage, and since they're in farm country instead of urban areas the cost of living is going to be much lower.

    $10.50 an hour for one person full time is going to get you comfortably over the poverty threshold for a family of three, nearly enough for a family of four.

    You won't neccesarily be eligible for any government assistance directly (at least until 2014), but I think too many people don't work full time, have too many dependents, and even if you aren't getting checks you aren't paying much in taxes either, but that person would still get the benifit of police, roads, schools, and may create an impact if they declare bankruptcy if their low cost health insurance doesn't cover the bills they get (or, more likely, if they bought smokes instead of insurance in the first place).

    Frankly I'm not sure at all how much you'd have to bring in before someone becomes a net asset.
     
  16. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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  17. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Do you think we should simply increase the minimum wage to $20/hour? What effect do you believe this would have on inflation? What effect do you believe this would have on global competition? If the minimum wage is increased don't you believe all other wages will demand an equal increase? If a $10/hour wage goes to $20/hour and the $20/hour person demands $40/hour, do you believe the $20/hour employee actually gained something?
     
  18. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    You need to make a phone call to Ross Perot so he can educate you.

    Did we have an economy before nafta?
    Were you aware that nafta didn't always exist?
    Who told people like you that free trade is a given?

    Where do people like you get the idea that surrendering to this concept of competing with 3rd world slave labor is the way to go?
     
  19. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    clueless

    You must be a government employee, (aka government parasite) isolated enough from reality, to be so of touch with what $10 an hour will buy.
     
  20. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    Nothing he posts has anything to do with reality.
    He's obvious an illegal himself or a racist making ridiculous arguments in support of illegals of the same race.
     
  21. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    Look, I don't know where you're from. But I came from Iowa, the sort of state with these sorts of Jobs. Though there it was more in the packing plants, and the pay was somewhat higher than $10 an hour.

    However the point is that I rented half a house in Cedar Rapids in 2001, spacewise the equivalent of a large two bedroom apartment, for $300 a month, and that included all utilities, I just paid phone and internet. That just eats up 3,600 of 20,000.

    I knew people who worked in the plants, I was friends with their kids. They owned houses and cars, and got by. The difference between them and what I would consider middle class is that they lacked a buffer in case someone was seriously injured or something and missed work for a long while, and they lacked the ability to just pay for their childrens college education outright.


    Well NAFTA exists right now. Don't go advocating policies that require major law rewrites before seeking those law rewrites.

    In any case even banning all imports just takes you to the skyscraper situation. As the price goes up people decide they just don't feel that much like lettuce today.

    And financial isolation is no good. That's why sanctions are a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*). The way you want things to work is that people here perform high paying jobs and sell expensive tech, meds, and value added products to the rest of the world, and get the fruits of cheap manual labor back.

    The only reason it's good to have jobs like this within the US is that some portion of the population, though misfortune or choice, are unskilled. And we could use something for them to do. But the solution is not to encourage people to go that route by paying them the same as the craftsmen and college grads. Unless you want to eventually be the third world country others pity.
     
  22. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    I shouldn't support rewriting laws until I support rewriting them?
    hahaha
    Where did you learn that one at a LaRaza meeting?

    I don't know what generation you are from but there were no boycotts or slow markets on lettuce before nafta.
    That comment is flat out ridiculous and exposes you as poorly educated.

    I don't know what your area of expertise is or if you even have one, but this is not it.
    The standard of living under nafta has gone down not up.
    And that is despite the fact that today we have dual income families.
    You might not even be old enough to remember an era when for the most part American families had one income earner, and they could afford any vegetable they wanted.

    So according to your upside down thinking lower wages will save us from becoming 3rd world income earners and higher wages in the US will turn us into a 3rd world country.

    Son, there are countless forums on the internet find a topic you understand instead of writing embarrassing slop.
     
  23. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    I think you may have a distorted view of the past. I'm not arguing that their wasn't a time when American households had generally one wage earner, though they also had fewer things than we demand today. But that's a whole other discussion.

    Regarding this discussion, what I think you will not find in American history is a time when menial field laborers were getting paid, even after adjusting for inflation, $20 an hour with benifits.

    I wouldn't be surprised to find that going over $10 an hour is actually a high point.

    However if you can find some actual information to the contrary I'd be curious to see it.

    Well, lower wages could get us to being a China esque powerhouse, but I don't think our people want to drop to their standard of living.

    Anyway I think you misunderstood my post.

    Lower wages on menial unskilled labor aren't what keeps us away from a quality of life drop. It's having our people doing jobs that are worth higher wages.

    If the whole country is composed of menial laborers, than we're on par with all the other countries full of such people. But all labor is not equal in what it produces.

    Contrast the lettuce pickers with the farmers back home in Iowa, who drive around in machines they own and maintain that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, growing and harvesting quantities of corn and soybeans on their own that would require a small army of manual laborers. Or contrast them with all manner of professionals, craftsmen, small business owners and so on.

    It isn't so much that I begrudge them a high wage, and I admit that there is probably some artifical manner in which one could inflate it to whatever level one chooses through government intervention and expenditures.

    However if you make lettuce picking pay more than the wages of someone who works hard and racks up debt going through college or who learns a trade or starts a business, than you risk having people go the lettuce route instead of the others. And that's bad news for everyone.
     
  24. Whale

    Whale Banned

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    And that is exactly what is happening with open borders, a country full of low skill workers.


    I understood your post to be mental slop, and you're demonstrating I deciphered that incoherent babble 100% correct with with what you say in this one.


    We don't have a situation where all of our legal citizens possess a high skill trade. And even if that was the case we don't have the jobs to fill them under nafta free trade. Many of those jobs are gone.

    Bringing in low skill illegals displaces Americans who would normally have filled those jobs. You talk as if we have a situation where Americans are trained for high skill trades AND there are plenty of those jobs to go around.
    AND you assume that illegals will not be getting in line for those jobs themselves.

    You don't think in real world terms.

    How asinine.
    No one is talking about artificially driving wages up.
    YOU are talking about artificially subsiding foreign labor to drive wages down.

    YOU are talking about forcing American taxpayers to subsidize illegal workers through food stamps, rental and utility assistance, welfare, free obamacare, free education, free use of infrastructure that they don't pay taxes on.

    These post of yours are riddled with the contradictions of a simpleton.

    You need to go to remedial reading classes, no one other than you endorses artificial wages.
    I guess you don't understand what it means when I say keep the illegals out and let the market drive the wages.

    You want to subsidize the illegal labor, and you want to subsidize farmers through nafta. Or aren't you aware that farmers are receiving heavy subsidies as a direct result of this nafta farce?
    You're nowhere near informed enough to comment on this topic.
     
  25. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Please explain how you believe the US economy might look if we eliminate the approximately $1 trillion in annual exports?

    If you hate exports, please explain how the US economy can find significant growth?
     
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