Bugs, those concrete guys were an exception. I know they were paid well. My experience is working with a small builder, and to my knowledge, only the roofers and drywallers were illegals. They were skilled laborers, so I assume they were paid good wages.

How can you get someone for $8/hr to build a house? What kind of training would that person have? If they were skilled laborers, they could command higher wages, or not? Yikes, I wonder if I want to buy a house built by someone earning $9/hour. It makes me question their qualifications/training/experience.

About the illegals, I think it is a humanitarian abuse to take their SS taxes, and not guarantee them a SS payout at retirement. What will they do at age 65? Our government is knowingly taking advantage of poor people with little prospects, just to keep our inflation down. We take advantage of their cheap labor, hard work, and when they are old and tired, let them be homeless or send them back home? There will be no social security or medicare payouts if they’ve used a wrong SS all along. And we claim to be a country that abhors atroctities? Caring for our elderly population is a necessity of a civilized society. And this is related to housing and the economy, because I see that the quest for keeping inflation low is causing us to take advantage of the poor.