[quote=bewildering]Most of OPs comment seems contrived and ignores the major issue:
The negative effect of illegal immigration on “john legals” salary. Why pay 25/hour for the same work as 10/hour. Low/semi skilled workers are people that lose out most to illegal immigration.
All the academic research I have seen indicates that illegal immigration greatly benefits the wealthy, but absolutely screws the poor, especially the working poor.[/quote]
I agree with this post. But I disagree that working in a “blue collar” occupation automatically means that one will be “poor” throughout their working lives. Unfortunately, in our part of the country, wages paid to illegal immigrants for some trades (mainly construction, landscaping and manual labor) significantly lowers the wages of legal American citizens who legitimately trained in these occupations thru state-approved programs (in CA, ROP – CC) and obtained a 2-year official “journey-level certificate.” These much lower wages long after graduation often renders the worker and their families eligible for public assistance (ex: SNAP, WIC and free child care as well as rent subsidies), where, if they were being paid their union wages of yesteryear, they would be solidly “middle-class” taxpaying families off the dole.
My advice to anyone considering going into the trades in SoCal and other border cities across the nation would be to major in a trade like HVAC, Electrician or Master Plumber where they could get a well-paying job with a general contractor. Either that, or move far away from the border after graduation to ply their trade in an area which is NOT infiltrated with cheap immigrant labor. There ARE still some areas left in the nation which are not crawling with cheap immigrant labor willing to do almost anything for .20 to .40 on the dollar. SoCal is not one of them, nor is most of the state.
