Ok, so I exaggerated a bit… but inflation because of increased labor costs would be very real and very impactful, not a canard.
Also, I did manual labor jobs in high school too, heck I did them in my 30s one summer inbetween jobs. But people today don’t want to do them for low wages, that’s the bigger point. If they did, those jobs would go to Americans and we wouldn’t have openings for the immigrants… in fact many of them are going back home because their work here is drying up – especially in construction – during this recession.
You touched on it that parents don’t instill the work ethic today that used to be part of our upbringing. But you are off base saying there are plenty of “able bodied” workers here… Its not the bodies that are unwilling, its the minds. People are lazy, but we’re not talking about career wage earners who find themselves laid off, we’re talking about high schoolers and college dropouts, who would rather play video games and do X, than get a low paying job. But frankly I’d rather collect $30K from the Govt than $15K for breaking my back in the hot sun… Guess that makes me lazy also?
Can’t think of many people who would rather pick lettuce than get paid more for nothing.
[quote=meadandale]Thanks dave for posting up the same old canards of the pro illegal immigrant movement.
$14 for a head of lettuce? Please..
A head of lettuce is currently under a buck (about $0.65 last time I checked). If it is being picked by $8/hr immigrant labor and half of the cost of the lettuce is labor, let’s raise the wage of lettuce pickers (legal ones) to $24/hr. That’s a 300% increase. How many people do you think would line up to pick lettuce at $24/hr? I’d say a fair amount. And this would raise the cost of a head of lettuce to about $1.50.
Let’s see, when I was in high school, I
1) washed dishes in 3 different restaurants
2) dug trenches
3) worked as a mover
My friends worked in landscaping and as manual labor on farms and ranches. This was on the central coast of CA.
These are all jobs that are done by illegals now.
Why? For many reasons. Much of it is cultural; parents over the last 25 years have instilled a sense of entitlement in their children. Many (most) don’t even work in high school anymore or even college. If they DO work, they won’t do this ‘menial’ work because they’ve been taught it’s ‘beneath’ them by these same parents.
There is no lack of able bodied US citizens to do much of this work that we now consider ‘immigrant’ work…just look at the unemployment. But why would these people work if they can just receive a government check?
