I find the real disconnect is with corporate America. In my experience so many restaurants “mom/pop” are filled with 95%+ foreigners getting paid $15 cash and corporate establishments like chipotle pay $9-10 on books and filled with women. American male labour either choose no work/work in paying business and women get stuck in pay gap serving an exploited burrito. Enjoy America
4
I'm confused. So the Democrats want open borders, lots of legal (and illegal) immigration, and an amnesty or at least path to citizenship for the people already here? And this is the party that supports working Americans? You know, the ones at the bottom of the ladder who compete directly with unskilled labor? Did anyone in the Democratic party take an economics class - you know, about supply and demand? Increase the supply of labor and push down its price. Seems to me like the wealthy elite - in both parties - wants lots of immigration, either for cheap labor or for new pro-Government voters (or both). The elite is very happy with the status quo up to and including quotes like "Americans don't want these jobs" and "Immigrants don't push down the wage rate."
9
This piece describes what I tell those who believe illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from citizens-no red-blooded citizen is willing to perform these jobs, jobs in produce fields and fruit orchards, roofing, concrete masonry and many more.
However, on the other hand I would like to see Trump and his minions deport these workers just to see the reaction from those who rely on those workers and the economic fallout.
But, on the other hand, who knows if these illegal immigrants are not drug dealers while cleaning rooms and performing landscape work at Bedminster.
1
perhaps there are many able bodied usa citizens that are capable of working yet chose not to be fully employed. It does not do the economy any good to be supporting those people on the taxpayer dime, and having undocumented taking those jobs and also not fully supporting the economy. Answer target the companies (employers) of the nonlegal workers, and hugely $ fine them with really huge penalties, and deport the workers.
5
People love say to we live in a "nation of laws" but this is obviously not true. Eight million working, or more, another 8 million children attending schools at a cost of at least $20,000 per child per year plus the American citizen children of the illegal children. Billions of dollars in medical costs to take care of these people with Medicaid. Social Welfare costs for Americans who don't earn enough to survive and receive supplemental benefits which would not be necessary if their wages were higher. So if breaking immigration law is ok, what other laws is it ok to break? Credit card fraud? Benefits fraud? The same people who are calling for the impeachment of the President of the United States for paying off a black mailer are telling me that tens of millions of people breaking the law is ok. I just don't understand the rules. When is it ok to break the law and when is it bad to break the law? How can I tell? The whole thing seems rather arbitrary and self serving.
8
Americans will do any job if it pays enough. The problem is that employers are greedy and don't want to pay. Deportations will force employers to increase salaries or they won't have a business.
7
@Jim Tagley First, citizens will not do any job if it pays enough. Work in the produce fields? Work as a concrete or brick mason?
No, deportations will do nothing other than, as the piece describes, contract the economy.
1
U.S. immigration laws benefit corporations. Corporations control government at levels. It's not about putting U.S. citizens to work, it's about corporations getting a cheap and compliant work force.
14
Why for decades has the United States been unable to figure out how to do a work permit program for otherwise law abiding 'illegals' who are needed and contributing to the US economy through their labor? It's just plain stupid that we don't seem to be able to set up a decent program to do this. Other countries, notably Switzerland, have figured it out.
14
If illegals were out and there were entry level jobs, Americans would take them, for more money. It would help many to get off drugs and welfare. Furthermore, health costs, education costs, policing costs, housing costs and traffic would likely decline. In that scenario, I would gladly pay more for lettuce, grapes, pork, Big Macs, etc.
10
In an ironic, and sad, sort of way this is truly the "free market" at work. Despite the illegality (ie undocumentation) of these workers, the majority of which are migrants, neither side argues that they don't indeed do work; that's essentially why they're here, despite the structural hurdles they've had to overcome to get into the US. And, due to the existing laws that don't recognize these workers in a legal fashion (guest worker or otherwise), they're not afforded the wage protections (ie minimum wage) and benefits that would be afforded an otherwise "legal" employee. This benefits the employer, large or small, with a portion of the resultant savings passed to the consumer, who benefits from lower costs. Thus the status quo benefits the public at the expense of these workers, which really isn't unexpected. The issue of legal, able-bodied Americans available to do these jobs is, in aggregate, simply a fallacy propagated for political gain. It is an unfortunate reality that, in this segment of the population, due to poor choices and/or circumstances, there are a swath of Americans that have been displaced by non-Americans that are more able/willing to do the work.
7
Well, they're not all from the the south. A good number of the people who built Mar-A-Lago came from Quebec - paid under the table; one of them them told me he spent days on end never hearing a word of English. And, just so you know, the bathrooms there are real nice.
6
Immigrants/migrants come to the US in large part because of available employment. There is available employment in large part because our welfare system is easy to take advantage of. If we can somehow put our employable native workforce back to work migration/immigration to US soil will naturally become less attractive.
5
Neither white nor black people will do jobs in fields that get dirt under their fingernails. One caveat to that, if wages were doubled for that work from $12/hour to $24 you'd get some white and black applicants. But their productivity in field work would be half that of a hispanic worker, so their effective hourly rate for the same production would be closer to $48/hour compared to the $12/hour we currently pay indirectly for fruits and vegetables in our grocery stores.
3
Republicans must oppose asylum-seekers & undocumented immigrants as these groups tend to vote Democratic (when they become eligible for the franchise) and they are over-whelmingly non-white (which threatens the Republicans majority-white base). The Republicans know full well that these immigrants do jobs that don’t threaten but rather enable the American ways of life.
There is no such thing as a US citizen unwilling to do the work. It comes down to pay. If custodial work at Trump’s golf club paid $75,000 per year plus healthcare and other benefits, there would lines of American citizens willing to take those jobs. The same would be true for back breaking farm migrant labor. As long as the worker is paid enough you can get US citizens to line up in droves. Americans will do any job as long as it pays what they want to work it.
22
If immigrant labor is, indeed, required for the American economy to prosper, the answer is not undocumented immigrant labor. It is fully documented, legally sanctioned immigrant labor. That is, increase the number of valid work visas available for foreign individuals looking to work in the United States. While increasing and supporting legal immigration, continue to enforce our immigration laws. If you enter the country illegally, you should be deported.
14
How likely is it that we would find unemployed white collar workers toiling in a sun-baked field in the San Joaquin Valley? What about an unemployed lawyer or an out of work architect caring for your grandmother, or mowing your lawn, or cleaning your swimming pool, or vacuuming your living room?
It might happen, but it's doubtful that any of them would be willing to work as hard, without complaining, as our immigrant workforce.
4
To the Author:
I live in California, the Bay Area and Sacramento - Mid State. There are thousands upon thousands of homeless persons 'living' here. Due to recent extreme Fires , we now have 15,000 families without regular housing. According to new calculations, the real number of homeless just in the Bay Area alone is an estimated 25,951 people. "That’s over 6,000 more than were officially counted by HUD " Read the Mercury News today.
The Yale study states that there are 22 million illegal aliens in the United States. SEE
"https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates"
California is maxed-out with persons without documentation. They do take jobs from Americans. They are underpaid, but receive in our state full benefits as that of given or provided to any lawful resident Californian.
If the undocumented persons were to immediately leave California, there would be a negative impact. But that will never happen.
I deplored the attempt of persons crashing the border wall purportedly to escape Honduras and enter the US because they lied: they don't want to come to the US. They wanted and still want only to come to California and join the many undocumented people living here already. It's safety in numbers.
California has an acute housing crisis. We cannot suffer more people needing housing. California cannot provide housing for refugees let alone our million or more homeless.
18
In 2017, more than 70,000 "citizens" legal and native-born (a majority of them) died or killed themselves in 2017 due to opioid or fentanyl abuse and about the same number is on track for 2018. Ten times that number is unavailable or unable or unwilling to participate in the labor force at whatever level of wages. Think about it!
1
So let me get this straight- we need 3rd world labor to do jobs that Americans don't want to do.. So what will happen when Mexico and the rest of Central America finally get their acts together and start creating livable societies with stable governments?
Over time, would that not have the same net affect as blocking illegal immigration?
As liberals, shouldn't we hope and work towards that goal; rather than relying on 3rd world nations to supply us with cheap labor?
6
As long as we're being fairly open about the costs and benefits of illegal "immigration", shall we talk about tax fraud?
https://www.wthr.com/article/tax-loophole-costs-billions
NYT, this would be a good article for you to do. Follow up with the IRS and see just how large this problem has become.
11
There may indeed be farming or other extremely low skilled blue collar jobs that Americans are reluctant to do, but I don't believe that construction or electrical work are those kind of jobs.
The Times did a story perhaps a year ago about a highly skilled, licensed African-American construction worker here in NY who was also homeless. She made a high hourly rate when she worked, as stipulated by her union contact and skill level - but doesn't work often enough to keep a roof over her head. Now, imagine how much more she would work if we threw the book at construction employers undermining her earning power by hiring undocumented immigrants (with likely far lower skill levels).
There are ways to address any possible labor shortage - like having a robust guest workers program - without encouraging undocumented immigrants to ignore our laws.
The other problem with these economists' argument is that it ignores the stress that undocumented workers add to other aspects of our economic ecosystem - like the expanded demand for affordable housing, etc.
We're building tons of housing here in New York for oligarchs seeking to launder their money, but rather little for ordinary Americans who play by the rules, and are increasingly being squeezed out of metropolitan areas.
While I am not unsympathetic to the plight of migrants, we must first address the plight of the ordinary American - lest more of them become frustrated enough to vote for the next Donald Trump.
14
"The economy has come to rely on them(undocumented workers)". The economy has come to rely on them because employers can pay them less, and treat them worse, than American citizens.
11
Nobody really wants immigrants legal or other to go anywhere. Especially Republicans. Pass a law that makes anyone who hires a non-citizen criminally liable with steep fines and jail time and poof those who are here would leave and those that want to come and work here won't. That of course would would be disaster for our economy and would eliminate a rally point for conservatives.
18
@HPM That's what I've always thought. If you really want to end illegal immigration, jail those who are hiring the illegal immigrants. They only come here because they know they will find work, & even if it's not well paid, it's more than they can make in the countries they come from. There should be a path to citizenship for them, which their employers shouldn't object to if they're paying minimum wage or better. And no one should be working for less than that, not just for their sake, but for the sake of American workers. They whole wage scale falls, when people are working for less than they should be. And employers who pay less than minimum wage, should be jailed.
7
In the construction trades they hire a contractor who subs out the work. The contractor has legal status to work and is a 1099 employee. That's the only one the employer has to verify. He then is free to circumvent the verification process if he chooses which is why you see so many undocumented Latin Americans in the trades. This is how they get away with it.
7
As noted in other comments, there are unemployed and underemployed US citizens and legal immigrants who would fill at least some of the jobs currently done by unauthorized workers if the wages were increased. Whether or not a significant number of jobs would remain unfilled if illegal laborers magically became unavailable is uncertain. Unauthorized immmigrants in particular demonstrate a very strong work ethic matched by some Americans working in the same jobs but not by some other Americans who would be expected to fill those jobs vacated by unauthorized immigrants. Low wages and work ethic are both push factors that motivate employers to hire workers with dodgy-looking Social Security cards.
The status quo of up to 11 million mostly low-wage unauthorized workers, many of whom have US citizen children who rely on food stamps and other federal means-tested benefits for many years, is unacceptable. A business that needs hardworking adult employees yet can not afford to pay enough for them to support a small household is not a sustainable business and should not be subsidized indirectly by tax-funded benefits paid to employee households.
The US needs to come clean and create an employment visa for manual laborers. Theses and other employment visas would be owned by the workers, not employers, to discourage exploitation. BLS data would be used to determine the number of visas issued annually.
45
@Jan Allen
The current employment visa system for manual labor is minuscule. Democrats won't support it because labor doesn't like it and these immigrants will never be able to vote. Trump and his supporters don't want any legal immigrants either, because it's not about jobs for them, it's about racial purity. Only business supports it, and that's not enough to overcome both the fear of them taking jobs and the racism.
6
@Jan Allen
No Guest Worker program until we join the rest of the developed world and get rid of the lunacy of Birthright Citizenship.
13
@Jan Allen What about the tax payers subsidising the health insurance industry (directly), & wealthy individuals & corporations less directly. I'd much rather help to feed low income adults & their children.
3
When undocumented migrants are legalized do they keep doing same jobs ?
Do migrants who enter legally in US accept to do same jobs than the undocumented migrants ?
If both answers are no then I agree, the US wealth relies on undocumented and exploited migrants.
22
Great piece. Relevant. I can not speak for other states of the Union. Home remodeling, house keeping, lawn maintenance and landscaping, city sanitation, food service like restaurant and fast food chain, car care service, health care services, nursing home and elderly care, ad nauseam rely on these undocumented but industrious immigrants. If you visit Manhattan, the Uber/Lyft driver, hotel custodian, restaurant service and fast food chain attendant ad nauseam again are likely to be a documented or undocumented immigrant.
13
Even if the expulsion of immigrants created job openings in agriculture, unemployed urban residents are not going to leave family and friends in Detroit, say, for the alien environment of strawberry beds in California.
The problem with many of the accounts of (the reality of) "jobs" is that they do not take into account social and geographical, among other, factors.
18
By being undocumented, much of their earnings are sent out of the country or hoarded. Imagine the economic benefits of suddenly legalizing 8 or 10 million workers-it would create a boom in housing and associated spending and investment as this wealth and the opportunity to contribute legally where allowed to remain in the country.
Or, as discussed, if they were eliminated, entire economic sectors would be devastated. We uppity elites in New England are used to paying premium for local and organic but most folks would go into shock paying for produce etc at prevailing wages. Farms would need to relocate outside of the country. etc.
11
The United States should use funds to expand its seasonal guest worker program and pattern it after Canada's that's been up and running with Mexico for decades.
Provide workers' decent housing, wages and even an employer-employee pension program where employers can pay a pension to workers after 20 years.
People would be screened, fingerprinted and processed and charged a fee for all these services to be paid monthly from their earnings.
The program would last three to four months. Workers can go back to Mexico or countries of origin and return every year.
Employees register every year and be allowed to chose where they want to go work. Employers would have to provide transportation. Wages would be taxed and workers would be required to buy temporary medical insurance while in U.S.
If a worker does not register, he or she will be permanently excluded from the program.
People will be able to go home to their families and use the money they earn in the U.S. to help them. This will also cut down on the number of people coming to U.S. illegally and pump up foreign economies, creating jobs there.
16
@Raul Hernandez This is so sensible and fair to all parties involved it almost pains me that the US hasn't figured out to do exactly as you have stated.
It is
a) fair
b) accountable
c) safe
d) respectful
Thank you for your post, Raul.
1
@Raul Hernandez, I don't know what percentage of undocumented immigrants are involved in seasonal work, but I don't think it's the majority. Throughout the year, beds at Trump resorts (and other hotels and motels) must be made, cows must be milked and cleaned up after, and the very young and the very old need to be cared for. The Canadian solution sounds good, but it will only solve a small portion of the problems.
3
America's addiction to cheap labour started with the slaves from Africa to the prison chain gangs, and now to the millions of undocumented workers from Mexico, Central America, etc.
And of course Americans "won't take these jobs" so long as the wages and benefits remain so low. But if employers were constrained to hiring only legal workers, they would be forced to offer higher wages and benefits. And the wages would rise until the jobs were filled.
Consumers would have to pay more for fruits, vegetables, their nannies, maids, landscapers, etc. But that's a worthy price for living in a civilized country that ensures greater opportunities for its country's lower income citizens and legal residents to obtain employment at living wages.
So much talk about American corporate greed, but rarely any criticism pertaining to the vast consumer greed via the frenzied save-a-buck mentality at the expense of its poorest residents.
Very selfish indeed.
18
And at least 2 at a hotel owned by ... The Donald!
We need responsible immigration reform. But why do you continue to use the term undocumented immigrants? The correct term is illegal immigrant. The right word to use is illegal simply because they're illegally in the USA. I know progressives want to stop others from using the term illegal immigrant, often invoking the idea that no human being is illegal, but that's nonsense. The term is accurate. It's not a semantic discussion. I think, when the left hears illegal, they decided, well, let's just change the word & we'll be done with it. Is there something about illegal immigrant per se that is so dehumanizing that it can't be used in polite discourse for people who are trying to have an honest conversation & aren't trying to spin it?
We need to speak clearly so we define what's at stake. Undocumented seems to imply that some people forgot to fill out the correct paper work when crossing the border. That's not what happened. They entered the U.S. knowing they were breaking the law. They're here in the U.S illegally. That's why it's an issue. Can the left admit that the large number of illegal immigrants in the US, many of whom are relatively unskilled, gives rise to economic competition that harms job & wage prospects for voters who live here? Can they admit that one can have concerns about illegal immigration without being racist? That there may be a rational reason for being wary of a lax approach to this problem? If these questions aren't answered we can't solve this issue.
7
An how many are Irish?
2
This entire discussion is irrelevant. Job #1: fix the borders, make them impenetrable. Job #2: have an effective system to keep track of all not permanent residents (incl. tourists). Then we can move on to decide how to solve the current crisis.
6
“The more you tighten your grip the more will slip through your fingers.”
1
@MB Your catchy quote is innacurate. E.g., all communist countries had hermetically closed borders, even between each other (with the exception of some periods of instability such as the 1956 Hungarian uprising).
1
My quote was accurate. “The more you tighten your grip the more will slip through your fingers.” I had put in to make it generic, but the NYT computer deleted that text. And as for those hermetically closed borders, it seems the referenced political system that wanted them, went away ... for some reason.
My husband just retired after 40 years as a tree climber and foreman. He worked on countless estates in Far Hills, Basking Ridge and Mendham, well-off areas of NJ.
He saw first hand how many of his co-workers in the last 20 years hired were Spanish speaking without trying to assimilate into our culture.
He also saw their photographs of their homes back home in Mexico and Central America, their big trucks and cars, and their large families. They had no interest in this country, only working to send the money back, they said. They never intended to make a life here, just make their cash and get out to retire comfortably back 'home'. Whether they used fake IDs, he was never told.
This is not immigration, this is something else, and it's not good.
13
Big cars and trucks. I’ve seen a few here. Sending money back home. Have you seen their homes? I have.
2
@mainesummers
Don't feel guilty about stating those facts. In California PG&E hires illegal aliens to cut back trees and those guys don't know anything about being an arborist or they have absolutely no training on how to cut a tree.
The private tree cutters have one man who speaks English and the rest speak Spanish only and have no licenses whatsoever, and lie about having a permit to cut trees.
In Menlo Park, California a set of undocumented workers were caught killing trees and lied to a police officer. They produced fake papers to the Police.
Can you arrest a foreigner without documents for producing falsified documents?
Our jails are maxed out with illegal aliens. It costs us so much that California has had to reduce the efficacy of its penal codes in order to make room for the more violent amoung them in the jails.
7
If we don't let them in- our economy will collapse! Barf! The liberals have been floating that canard for years- If anything it would be a boon for our domestic economy.
11
@Aaron
And so, which 'Merikans are going to do back-breaking labor for pennies on the dollar?
You call it a boon. You must run some sort of business that relies on cheap, illegal labor.
1
Low-skill jobs such as farming, construction and child care?
Really?
I could teach a farmer to report. I could teach a construction worker to ask questions.
Good luck teaching a reporter to farm, or to build. God forbid to oversee a roomful of needy infants.
Try not to be too blindly elite, NYTers; it doesn’t behoove you.
5
@Tomas
The author did not do any research on her facts.
As a note, in Mexico farm labor is paid 0.30 an hour to pick produce. In California, farm labor is paid $11.00 in Sac County ( if they have more than or equal to one hundred employees). Next year it will be $11.75.
Our farmers cannot keep up. Mexico produces horrible produce.
Where would you go to pick fruit, if the only thing you can do is to pick fruit?
1
So according to a Yale, MIT study there are over 20 Million illegal's in the US, yet only 8 Million are working? What are the remaining 12 million doing? Welfare?
10
@jaco
Working under the table.
3
@jaco This story states that 8 million out of 11 million undocumented immigrants are in the labor force. I'd guess a large number of the 3 million not working are children. Undocumented immigrants are not entitled to the few available public benefits, which almost exclusively go to women with young children (with odious requirements). "Welfare" ended with the Clintons.
1
@migriffin
The story under-represents the number of illegals residing in the US. I believe the Yale, MIT numbers, you don't?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201193
4
Undocumented workers clearly benefit the wealthy by reducing their labor costs. They clearly harm the lowest paid legal workers by increasing the supply of those willing to work for the lowest wages. There is no job that Americans are unwilling to do if the wages for that job are high enough. America has too many working poor. Destroying jobs that pay poverty wages for full time work benefits the country as a whole, and the jobs that remain will be those jobs which pay a living wage.
13
I keep hearing how the undocumented will work undesirable jobs for relatively low wages but consider that you can buy a house in Guatemala for $10,000 and while you're here you can enjoy free medical, courtesy of our emergency rooms and there is no recourse if they run you over or burn your house down while remodeling your kitchen. They remain unmarried so that the mothers can get snap and health insurance for their children and a free education that's the envy of the free world. If you offered them a path to citizenship they would say "no thanks". Why pay taxes, pay for medical insurance and have to suffer the legal consequences of reckless behavior in exchange for citizenship?
19
It's true there might be shortages in the short run, but in the long term, higher wages would attract more workers to any profession. Look at coal mining, it is performed predominantly by native-born American citizens. It is dirty, backbreaking work, but it pays well and there are plenty of people willing to do it.
A few decades, you could make a decent middle-class living working construction. Now it's dominated by undocumented workers willing to work at much lower wages.
It is puzzling that "economists", steeped as they are in the law of supply and demand, are so certain that in this single case, it simply doesn't apply.
18
The article is confusing because it states that I legal immigrants take low paying jobs that Americans don't want. Then it quotes an immigrant saying she makes 15.00 an hour picking grapes and 20.00 an hour cleaning people's homes. Is that really considered low pay? Immigrants seem to have a stronger work ethic than Americans and don't feel physical labor is beneath them.
5
People who are worried that illegal immigrants will grow old and rely on government for their care are the same people who don't believe in climate change. So, I ask, what difference does it make if we don't care about sustaining life on this planet? There will be less people anyway. No need to worry about illegal immigrants!
4
How can this article say undocumented workers make up 5% of the workers and then in the next paragraph say their absence could trigger a recession?
There are plenty of Americans who could take many of these jobs, especially the service jobs. They just need the chance to work in an environment where they don't feel like an outcast because they don't speak Spanish.
I'd like to see people come into this country like my great grandparents did, following the rules, learning the language, keeping their money here instead of sending it out, assimilating,
and not forcing the rest of the country to pay the tabs on medical, bi-lingual classes and the rest of it.
17
@cedar What they are telling you is that if these folks were suddenly gone, construction, food processing and service, hospitality, landscaping and so many other fields requiring physical labor would likely not survive the labor crunch.
I managed restaurants for 40 years. White kids eat in restaurants, but they do not work in the back-of-house. Heck, I couldn’t get MY kids to consider a job in food service! If we had not had access to incredibly hard-working Mexican men and women, no one would have been able to eat. As hard as my people worked for me, there is no way we asked them to work like the ones in the fields bringing in the harvest. I have no idea what it would take for the average white 20-something to do that job for two weeks, much less two seasons.
I know that in many cases, society was unwelcoming to folks like your great-grandparents, and they had to assimilate or starve. They made it. Our country benefited greatly. None of us need to repeat that level of mean-spiritedness. Cheap labor makes what is left of the American dream possible. At a minimum, we can make it possible for those men and women to work and live with dignity so we can buy chicken at $5 a pound at Walmart instead of $8 or $10.
4
@Tom Daniels
What did your kids do for spending money. Did you give them an allowance? This white guy worked in the fields and worse. Have we genetically degenerated in the 40 years since? I doubt it. What it would take for white 20 year olds to do that work is what it took for me to do it: necessity.
4
Very good arguments from both sides. The problem with social sciences is that policies have to be put in place before results are known. If could only ask these 8 millions souls to please stop working and searching for jobs for 12 months, then you would find out for sure whether young Americans will flock from Uber to Roofing...……….
What if an illegal immigrant, hard worker, best vegetable picker who supports a family of 6 was caught beating a stray dog? Do we deport him? Just curious to see how far the liberal left bends..
7
One important reason it is so difficult to get unemployed Americans to do some of the jobs is that they're not where the jobs are. With the bulk of the population residing on the coasts, that is likely to be where the majority of unemployed are. But jobs in agriculture are far removed from the cities. And I doubt the number of unemployed in any farming community is enough to offset the loss of the undocumented immigrants.
As this relates to personal care, a large number of our elderly are cared for by undocumented immigrants. As an American, would you want to give someone a bath or help them with toileting, especially if the person has Alzheimer's and is violent? If you aren't, don't talk to me about the hard-working immigrants taking jobs away from the rest of us.
Immigrants, documented or not, bring business to the community. They have to eat, pay rent, buy clothes. The money they're paid is recirculated in the community. They pay taxes and get no benefits in return.
This is an important issue and deserves careful consideration.
5
@Carolyn
Untrue. Most of the "valley" farming in California is in proximity to Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, and so on. These are major cities.
2
Young Americans have gone their entire lives being told that they wouldn't be given respect or dignity if they did anything outside of getting a college education.
"Stay in school, or you'll end up like them" "You don't want work like this! Stay in school!" "Stay in school! Stay in school! Stay in school!"
Don't deride the "youth" for responding (appropriately) to this prolific and blatant messaging. Even now, with the wording of the comments and the article, the signal of "we do not respect these people's profession" continues, as you scratch your heads at the mystery. Their work is skilled work. Their work and safety is undervalued. This is not a new phenomenon, and certainly is not a product of some imagined "lazy generation."
(I'm also frustrated that work performed in high school, such as AP classes, volunteering, research, etc. is not considered 'real work.' It's dismissive and removed from reality that colleges have never been more selective and scholarships more scarce than ever before. Work is work, no matter the nature.)
1
Farming, construction (particularly roofing and insulation), nursing homes, food service, tree planting after clearcut logging, landscaping, etc ad nauseam--whatever.
When we reflect on Trump's campaign and later, his Nuremburg rallies, the missing factor here is simple.
Most of the jobs mentioned here are held by brown people. Some light brown, some dark brown, and some very very dark brown.
That's it in a nutshell.
The haters don't really care about the jobs, which they won't take or couldn't do even in an emergency. There is another issue barely under the surface, and this deserves more discussion--er--confrontation.
4
What would competitive wage rates be if we did not have 22 million undocumented aliens in America?
What would the deficit be if the vast majority of those 22 million were not on Medicaid and SNAP?
Those are the real questions.
14
Of course Americans don't want to work---they never worked as children and adolescents.
Boys don't go door to door asking to mow lawns. They are no longer are paper"boys." 15 years ago high school senior boys and girls were night managers at many fast food restaurants.
My father-in-law can't get boys to help him put up hay. Pays well. It used to be routine.
Now? They would rather play videogames and text their friends.
8
@Dan
I think it will take higher pay and elimination of the illegal "immigrants" that have transformed the nature of low end work. Analyze your own thinking. If someone came by your house and offered to wash your car whenever you wanted for $10, would you ever wash your car again? Would your son or daughter do it? If someone would mow your lawn for $15, would you do it or have someone else do it? Would your son or daughter do it for $15 when all the neighbors had Hispanic gardeners doing it?
6
@Kurfco
Nonsense. Kids won't do hard work--they have no experience with it. My father in law was in an area with no immigrants, legal or illegal. That wasn't the reason kids wouldn't put up hay--it was because they just "don't do that!"
So, yes, I'm sure someone would mow my lawn for $100.
We live in an area where we can't get someone to clean our house or mow our lawn, unless it is a "lawn service" that costs astronomical amounts. We have never had a kid stop by to ask--we'd pay him $20 an hour. Where are they? Playing videogames, that's where.
It isn't because of cheaper labor that kids don't work. It is that kids won't work, so immigrants will.
Kids these days are lazy. They don't exercise or move as much as they once did--the research clearly shows this.
They are much more sedentary. Illegal immigrants didn't cause this--they merely stepped into the void left by American children and adolescents who got lazy, spoiled, and addicted to their iphones.
2
@Dan Well, Dan, you have an alternative. Mow your own lawn. Wash your own car. Clean your own house. Baby-sit your own kids. Stop going out to eat and make your own meals. Grow your own vegetables. Do your own repairs. Take care of your own elderly ailing parents, in any case make sure they live with you till they die. Make sure your kids take you in when you're too old to work. What? You don't have time? It's too much work? You have a bad back? You can afford to pay someone else to do it? I thought so. Lazy is as lazy does.
2
“Very few of the jobs these immigrants have would be taken by these Americans,” Mr. Peri said. “The ones who are not employed have complicated circumstances like drug addiction, alcohol addiction or criminal records.”
These are the very people we need to help find jobs and get back into the mainstream of society. Employers will never hire them as long as there is an unlimited supply of illegal immigrants who will work hard for low wages. In many cities, there are large groups of uneducated young men who have nothing to do but hang around and get into trouble with the law. They need to be hooked up with jobs they can do, and it will not be easy.
12
"There are many jobs that Americans do not want to do" is the familiar trope. What's closer to the truth is that there are many jobs that Americans do not want to do at the wages that employers want to pay. And it's not just an economic issue. It's cultural as well. Our culture, expressed through many institutions (government, industry, etc.) has decided that labor work is just not worth very much. So wages are kept low. I guarantee you that if the wages were high enough, Americans would do jobs as meat packers, fruit pickers of anything else. We might not like paying more to fruit pickers than college professors but we would. Heed this, while immigrants are willing to do these labor jobs at low wages, their American born children will not.
17
@JFC
In the free market I grew up in, an employer would pay whatever it took to get a legal worker. That's how truck drivers working the oil fields in North Dakota ended up making much more than a school teacher. Did the work require more education? Clearly not. It required a willingness to do a hard job, under harsh conditions. Pay rose until the jobs were filled.
9
@JFC, that's kind of a silly simplification. College professor's salary averages out to about $114,000 a year. So, who's going to pay fruit pickers $57 an hour? And tell me how many apples a week you're prepared to buy when they top $10 apiece?
Americans were represented by unions for meat packing jobs so the wages were higher in the 70s.
5
Hard to tell where the number 8 million comes from. Apparently down from over 12 in 2007, and over 10 two years ago.
Apparently the exodus is accelerating.
1
What happens when these 8M people grow too old? who's going to support their retirement? We're going to just keep turning a blind eye and let more people come in illegally?
I've asked two friends if their use of likely illegal household cleaners is actually a good thing? Almost everyone I know with kids is not happy about the ever increasing number of ESL students in the public schools -- so much so that one of my friend's parents are now funding their granddaughter to go to a private school starting in kindergarten?! Doing this forever more is not sustainable. If the businesses are so fond of it, let them fund their employees' health care as they should. Let extra business taxes fund additional educational costs as opposed to just property taxes. There are costs to illegal immigration and it is breaking the social contract.
18
@Me
there a few alternatives to hiring non documented workers.
Well buckaroos if you raise the wages you get all the folks you need. The low wage is predicated on using illegals. Use the documented worker rate and their benefits will be paid for
4
@Me Most of them are contributing to SSA and everything else--just like you--because their employers are taking the deductions.
@Rocky L. R.
Rocky, but everyone says they are contributing but won't be able to benefit from Social Security and everyone I know who will be able to collect SS is worried about there being anything left to collect by the time they're eligible. My point isn't to demonize -- just saying that this all doesn't net out especially if relying on depending on a neverending source of cheap labor. If they work, they should get health care and they children should get education but the cost should be borne by the companies profiting off them. Also, the taxes paid in -- I don't think it's anywhere close to the services received if you count just education alone.
3
In 2009, a hailstorm in Georgia cracked our roof and but golf ball sized holes in our siding. The average bid to repair everything was $10,500-12,000, which "amazingly" close to the insurance estimate of $12,500.
One contractor bid $7,500 with the enticement that then we could keep the balance, since what does the insurer care? They cut the check and move on. When asked if he was using legal or illegal labor, the man laughed and said, "Come on. How could I offer this price if I was using legal labor?" We didn't use him. And, interestingly enough, he was an American born Hispanic. I'm not sure if he was exploiting his distant relatives or just Mexicans/Central Americans.
It isn't just white, "Christian" males exploiting illegal labor as an earlier poster or two alleged. There's a lot of affinity exploitation going on in all ethnic and racial groups.
27
@Adrienne
There is a business model in use all over this country. Anglo boss hires bi lingual Spanish speaking foreman who hires an entirely illegal work force. The Anglo boss sells the work. The bi lingual foreman supervises the work, but is "presentable" enough to interface with the customer. The illegal workers do the job.
In your case, your contact probably played both the boss man and foreman roles.
15
My relatives always tell me the number of 5 million was widely overstated! Instead it’s 8 million working! Amazing. And they always tell me they only deal in facts.
2
@Shamrock
MIT/Harvard study recently released 18 to 22 million illegal immigrants
6
@rgengel
My liberal relatives missed it by that much. They have always claimed that conservatives spread lies by overstating the number of undocumented. Now I can show them the Harvard/MIT says it’s higher than even conservatives were saying.
@Martin Alexander
How is life treating you in Berkeley, California? I'd guess fairly well. Your comment doesn't reveal any compassion for immigrants. They are taking great risks to leave their homes in Central and South America seeking better lives. I'm sure you've seen pictures of their home countries. Most are very poor and live in squalor. I know it's a complicated subject. But at the very least, we Americans should express some understanding for their plight and why they seek a better life in America; the land of opportunity. Unless you're Native American, you too are a descendent of immigrants.
5
I do share your compassion but shortsighted compassion is just as negligent and dangerous as blind xenophobia. I can’t afford to buy a house in the Bay Area because housing demand is too high, almost everyone I grew up with is in the same boat. Most of us struggle with rent. A large portion of poor people here are being forced to relocate away from the community they know and grew up with because more and more people have flooded in and it’s become too expensive. The town I was raised in is nearly unrecognizable because of overdevelopment. Any farm or open land was turned into more and more housing with higher and higher density. Many of these cities weren’t planned to be built for so many people meaning commuting is insane and when all open space and nature is removed; it might as well be another urban hellhole. Look, Central America isn’t just magically backwards, much of their instability is a result of US intervention. And their instability and depressed wages directly enriches America’s wealth via trade agreements. I’m all for bettering the lives in other countries but we need to first take care of our own citizens first, redistribute the wealth and ensure that our own most vulnerable members of our society are not being displaced and their wages depressed. We need to have a stable/sustainable economy and population and look towards long term strategies. We need to realize that happiness, stability and our environment are more important than economic advancement
4
I started my first job in 1967 at the Price-Pfister plumbing fixture factory in the San Fernando Valley.
It was a minimum wage job ($2 per hour), but many of the hundreds of workers earned considerably more.
The job I held was very physically demanding and left me exhausted when the shift ended.
Almost all of the workers were Mexican immigrants. Many of them told me they were undocumented and commuted 20 miles or more to work.
Residents of the surrounding area wanted no part of Price-Pfister work.
It had a well-deserved reputation as a sweat shop.
There were a handful of non-immigrant workers, but they did not last long.
The immigrants stayed on the job for years.
For them, the factory offered a career.
5
We have stayed in the Southwestern area of the US over winter a few times and are aware of rich Republican farm owners who employ only illegal migrant workers. If one can speak English, he is paid about 8 to $10 to be a crew leader and the rest are paid about 4 to $5 as crew laborers. More money in the pockets of rich republican farmers since they pay no where near minimum wage o their workers.
12
The wages paid to illegals are less than a living wage. Their lives are entirely subsidized by our failing social safety net. Employers are delighted to avoid payment of health insurance, disability, social security, and retirement plans. it saves them 35% over paying the exact same minimum wage to a citizen.
Illegals work in cash based economy, thereby evading the taxes that support them. In the case of our southern border, the average illegal lacks the skills and education to escape poverty.
As we are now starting to see, employers are citing a skill gap between their needs and the current labor pool. The low skills of these illegals limits their economic mobilty and viability.
The pool of low skill jobs for illiterate is finite, new and existing are now having trouble finding work. They have saturated the market.
Meanwhile, employers cry about jobs they cannot fill. This is effective proof of the truth of these points.
11
@Bongo Unfortunately, for your argument, employers do NOT avoid payroll expenses like SSA when hiring illegal immigrants because many immigrants use fake IDs and other people's Social Security numbers. So the undocumented are paying into the system and many will never withdraw a dime.
5
So the NYT repeatedly reports that there are at least 20 million illegal Mexicans in our country.
If 8 million are working, who is supporting the majority 12 million?
BTW, I have great respect for ALL hard-working immigrants, and would like to see them succeed and become citizens. Why can't we come up with solutions that work for all?
In the meantime, we must enforce our borders or we will be flooded with immigrants and be unable to support our own. So, build the wall but also initiate a policy that welcomes and rewards those who want to contribute and become tax paying, productive citizens of the US.
5
@Anne
You've got it wrong. Those "flooding immigrants" pick the crops at subsistence wages that allow you to purchase a head of lettuce at $1 instead of $8. If all of these jobs were done at what legals want to be paid, i.e., union scale, you would essentially starve to death.
2
@Anne
The status quo will remain because it perfectly suits an array of industries.
We are almost three years into the Trump regime and construction of the wall is yet to start.
The truth is, it will never be built.
3
@DrG
The NYT ran a good article on this subject a few years ago. It was written by an ag economist at UC Davis, as prestigious an ag school as there is. It's still a good read and refutes your argument.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms-survive-without-illegal-labor/the-costs-and-benefits-of-a-raise-for-field-workers
4
One problem is we have a phony like Trump saying he'll solve immigration with his idiotic wall.
Trump Tower was built with illegals.
Trump saying, "China is killing us", while having his and daughter's products made there.
And the draft dodger himself kicking people out of the military.
One thing's for sure. It will take someone other than a hypocrite to solve complex problems.
6
Illegal is illegal for every one. All illegal aliens should be deported, they are criminals. And, all who employ illegal aliens should be fined or jailed, they are criminals.
13
@TED338
Yes, and all tax cheaters should be punished, speeders ticketed and every single law breaker caught and prosecuted.
But you know the reality.
Ditto for undocumented immigration.
2
@TED338
Alas, you are wrong. Employers hire illegal workers every day without breaking any laws at all. The only thing employers are required to do under Federal law is look at a "work authorizing document", like a Social Security card, and get a completed I-9 form. Most employers can pull the records and show you a photocopy of the former and the employers copy of the latter. Illegal "immigrants" supply Social Security cards as good as yours and commit perjury to complete the I-9 form. So, this is why you can audit an employer, find many of the employees are illegal, and the employer skates. They have broken no laws.
We need mandatory eVerify. Republicans have been pushing for it. In deep blue California, the Democrats passed a law forbidding any municipal ordinances to make it mandatory.
7
@TED338
I absolutely adore and respect simplistic solutions to complex problems.
Did you get the part where they are "working"? Doesn't that normally mean they are contributing to the economy just by being here? I suspect that many American "citizens" put a far larger drain on our economy and resources than these people do.
The illegal immigration "problem" is not that they come here, it's that we don't deal with the situation for what it is ... a "useful" political pander to fringe sectors of the electorate on either side of the spectrum.
It's not an either or situation. There are satisfactory and humane answers to this situation, we just need to stop letting the politicians use it as a convenient prop for their election campaigns.
7
Trump has won. So many comments are focused on fear. Fear will tear you apart and continue to tear the country apart.
1
You know, Central Americans are desperate, but if we're going to justify hiring illegal workers, I'll bet we could find some even more desperate, willing to work for even less. Why, if we imported Bangadeshi's or Somali's or perhaps Namibians, we could make even lower value added businesses profitable. Think of all the jobs we could create if we had a labor force that was willing to work for minimum wage taking care of homeless people. If the labor cost was low enough, we could assign every homeless person a valet.
The fact that illegal "immigrants" work and have been made part of a business scofflaw ecosystem is not justification. Low labor cost makes low value added businesses profitable that in many cases shouldn't exist.
And if Democrats foam at the mouth about Wal-Mart employees on entitlements, they should really get riled up about illegal "immigration". I just ran the numbers on the SNAP food stamp program in California. Every single congressional district in the state has more Hispanics getting SNAP than not. And 60% of the non elderly enrollees on Medicaid/Medi-Cal in the state are Hispanic. This is the social cost of the employer's private benefit.
32
I find articles like this extremely frustrating. In America we have an overpopulation problem and a massive pollution problem. We as a country produce more greenhouse gas per person than any other country by far. People regularly quote that our country could sustain more people and that our economy would benefit and grow because of new people. This line of thinking would work if we lived in a planet with infinite land and infinite resources but we don’t. We can’t keep growing our population, consuming all resources on earth till there is nothing left. We can’t keep destroying nature to build more housing. We know that if everyone in the world ate like Americans, the amount of cattle needed would be unrealistic. This is not a matter of xenophobia, this is a matter of what kind of world we want to live. As our population grows, land prices will continue to sky rocket, the price of goods we consider standard today would only be afforded by the wealthiest individuals. Do we want a world where only the richest people can afford their own house and eat real meat while the majority of Americans are relegated to 2 bedroom apartments and lab grown meat. Let’s have a real conversation about creating a stable population and a sustainable economy not based on growth. Btw, deporting undocumented people in America without cause is disgusting and most illegal immigrants already in America should be immediately granted amnesty for coming here illegally and citizenship.
4
That you live in Berkeley and write what you do (and yes, I’m making a judgment based solely on that) means that you’re not kidding; So if you can get here by whatever means, one should be rewarded with amnesty for your trouble, then you get to stay (no matter what) and a US passport as well? Do you find no value in US citizenship at all? Our state and country already hands out driving licenses like candy - so why not (worthless) citizenships as well? Are you able now to see how Trump grabbed the Oval Office in tandem with Hillary’s snatching a defeat from the jaws of victory?
This is what open borders sounds like.
5
I’m suggesting the opposite of open borders. We can’t let everyone in, overpopulation lowers are quality of life in ways that cannot be corrected via technology. As more people immigrate here it raises the cost of land, rent etc and displaces the poorest people from where they grew up. It also lowers wages in the short term, putting our poorest population at risk of financial catastrophe. And destroying nature through furthering infrastructure is not an option. We need to protect our most vulnerable populations first then work to assist those in other countries. I added that last comment because ripping apart families by deporting immigrants who have been steadily employed for the last 10 years because of an 15 year old pot charge is cruel. I also specifically said “without cause” because obviously some people are being deported for good reasons.
@Martin Alexander your suggested amnesty and citizenship will only invite more to follow, will it not?
One “caravan” after another and rewards for doing so is indeed open borders.
4
Most farm work in fruit and vegetables is seasonal. Hispanics have developed networked communities and farmworkers are mobile. They know all the farms, areas, crops and seasons and they have relatives all over the farm areas, so they can put together a pretty decent, though admittedly tough, kind of career. Anyone outside their networks will have a lot of trouble finding work anything close to year-round, at least for a long time.
The area where I live, Tri-Cities, WA has a very large Latino community and there has been steady job growth here for years. Lots of people, most of them white, move here for work. The notion that illegals hurt the economy is clearly wrong.
2
Who pays for their healthcare? We do.
15
This is precisely why the Immigration debate is a lie on both sides of the political isle. The United States is exploiting these people for work, political support, while rejecting their outright desires to come to the Unites States to live a better life. There should be a comprehensive plan to make these folks citizens. There is no reason someone who's been in the United States for years, working hard, and law abiding, can't go to an office with paystubs and a law enforcement check if necessary and become a citizen immediately. Our economy depends on them. They're not going to stop coming. How about a compromise. Congress approved over a billion dollars to border support last year. Build the fence if you must but in return streamline the citizenship process for Dreamers & illegals who are here doing nothing more than working hard to live a better life. I have to ask....If these illegal immigrants looked European would we have made provisions for them to be US citizens already?
5
Can you please fact check the $50 dollars an hour claim. That's $100,000 dollars a year. The job is probably very specialized with unique skill requirements.
He's have trouble filling $10 dollars an hour jobs
2
Americans like cheap veggies, cheap child care, cheap senior care, cheap housekeeping.... right?
but they won't to those jobs for the minimum wage.
8
@Think bout it you’re aware that agribusiness is exempted from minimum wage leases, correct?
1
@Levon
I know that. Mayor grocery companies pay 1 cent per pound of tomato picked!
So when "Americans" will stop whining about undocumented people coming to STEAL their jobs!!!!! WHEN!!!!!
1
The bigger question.....
Where are the illegal residents who AREN'T working and who is supporting them?
6
So give such workers a legal status that allows them to stay in the community where they are working and contributing to its economy. It really is that easy. The pathway to citizenship needs a tweak, not a ban.
4
What is the solution? Our economy relies on a class of workers that perform services for sub wages and sub conditions. If we legitimized all these workers by granting citizenship or appropriate visas, they could demand higher wages and better conditions--or go work at better jobs that pay more-- and, consequently, the price of goods and services would rise significantly. Americans don't want to pay the true cost of what we consume. That's the dirty secret.
10
Ok. I'm a liberal and a libertarian around borders. But I'm also someone who spent sixteen years roofing in Florida. And regardless of what an "expert" tells you Americans would roof for appropriate wages.
I'm not sure why the fundamentals of economics break apart when it deals with toilets or roofs.
Roofing used to be a trade that paid very well before a tremendous influx of highly skilled illegal immigrants artificially drove wages down.
I worked with these guys. They were great workers, good people, and their immigration status left them ripe for exploitation that led to being paid LESS in 2006 than I was in 1993.
There are many excellent arguments for allowing immigration including violence caused by American drug prohibition.
But we do ourselves zero favors by making patently ridiculous arguments like this.
Every job ever can be filled for the right wage. People will smuggle, murder, clean septic tanks.
And there's no social stigma in construction. If anything the American construction worker is lionized like a Soviet era painting. If roofing paid today what it paid in 1975 you'd have no shortage of Americans willing to do the job.
ONE of the reasons it doesn't is illegal immigration and unscrupulous employers.
At a time when the facts are less and less important I'd like the times to do better.
77
@Brent
Excellent point. And it is still the case that when you get to areas of the US that haven't been overrun with illegal "immigrants", you find American still doing jobs "Americans won't do". Illegal "immigrants" absolutely displace American workers and debase entire occupations in the process.
15
@Brent That was America then .....this is America now. We can now longer be 5% of the world and consume 25% of its resources. We can no longer steal oil at $2 barrel. Colonization made Britain great, not so much any more - and you can't go back to that era.
What is more American than working hard and competing to get ahead? We need to value value more and we need to value humans more. Corporations are not ...well, they are not human.
2
@Brent workers don’t set wages. Employers do. Don’t blame the workers, blame the employers for reducing previously good wages.
3
It seems to me there _is_ a solution. We can have tight borders, and allow for people from Mexico to get the legal right to work here. We just need to allow more green cards and streamline the application process. How hard would that be?
3
Simply put, they do the jobs Americans don’t want to do.
3
Simple - and too simple. Had minimum wage been adjusted only for inflation, it would be over $20 per hour. The workers doing this work are exploited, which hardly seems to bother those that present your argument.
Not so simple now, is it?
2
“These workers are often long-tenured and skilled,” . “They are nothing short of vital to farms, businesses, and rural economies.”
Thanks for stating the obvious. We desperately need more skilled, motivated workers, and it is NOT a matter of raising wages.
There are simply not enough Americans willing to milk cows, hoe cabbage, tend our elderly, change dirty sheets, climb ladders or roofs, work in uncomfortable weather, cut up chicken, and then come back again tomorrow on time and reliably do it again.
We need a higher level of competition to force American workers to rise to the productivity and reliability level of immigrants, to exhibit an equal work ethic, motivation and attitude.
Everyone plays tennis better against a skilled opponent - American businesses and American employees need the incentive and drive of such a workforce.
We don't need policies and barriers to keep immigrants out.
We need policies that provides the most reliable, skilled and motivated workforce possible to our businesses.
For this - we need immigrants.
We need the competition and motivation that immigrants bring to a labor force.
4
@organic farmer
You seem to be under the impression that "immigrants" are doing these jobs. They are "illegal immigrants" doing them. And they are doing them, not because they are "immigrants", but because they are "illegal".
Fact: after the misbegotten Reagan amnesty of 1986, over half of the amnestied illegal immigrants fled their jobs and went into ones that paid better and were easier. They were only doing jobs "Americans won't do" because they were illegal and had few choices. Once they were legal, they were gone.
What we are talking about in this country is not businesses founded on and dependent on immigrant labor. We are talking about an entire scofflaw ecosystem that has grown up around illegal immigrant labor.
9
There are many reasons why you don't find legal workers in some jobs. For starters, jobs that come to be thought of as "illegal immigrant" work, where you must speak Spanish to converse with co-workers, will be hard to fill with English speaking legal workers. But the biggest reason is that the jobs are too hard for the pay offered. Illegal "immigrants" will work under harsher conditions for less money than legal workers. Why? Because they come from third world countries and are desperate for any kind of work.
One would think Democrats would be against that. I guess it must be that if people want to be exploited, the Democrats are more than happy to help.
22
"Like undocumented workers across the country, the former Bedminster employees interviewed by The New York Times said they used counterfeit Social Security and green cards to get hired."
And don't forget that in addition to using forged ID, they also committed perjury to complete their I-9 form to get hired.
12
@Kurfco So? More underage kids use fake ID’s to but alcohol and tobacco and get into discos... at least those immigrants work and pay payroll taxes.
3
Watching immigrants vacuum, wipe down, and hand dry my Mercedes as I read this. Not a white face to be seen working at this Mister Car wash in my upscale neighborhood. This is hard physical labor and immigrants deserve our respect for sustaining the American way of life.
5
Here is a story for you of how long this has been going on. Some years ago, I met a pastor who had been involved in the Postville Iowa immigration raid, when about 400 Guatemalans were deported back to Guatemala. It turned out he had spent some time here in palm beach county, as an undocumented immigrant, in the 1980's. He had worked construction on some of the big gated communities in our area. (Later went on to seminary, got his papers, etc.). But that is 30 years now that undocumented workers have been doing a lot of construction in south Florida.
4
So let me get this straight. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi say we don't need a border wall. They won't vote for one, even if it that means a government shutdown, and yet we have 8 million illegal workers in the US.
Wages are up 3.1% over last year, we need to keep that momentum. Cheap labor suppresses wages, especially for those who can least afford it.
Where are the Democratic proposals for border security? Income security? Raise minimum wages? Then companies will hire more illegal immigrants, fire more Americans and more people will find themselves on social assistance, which becomes untenable. France has 9% unemployment, Spain 15%, Greece 19%. Then they become bankrupt.
And it is not just about a "dead end job" I worked those "dead end jobs" while I got my bachelors. Then my employer paid for my masters because of a tight labor market.
Build that wall
14
@James Sorry James, the wall does nothing but waste more tax payer money. The GOP has been in control for 2 yrs and done nothing. Even s few of the weakling GOP Trump acolytes know it is a stupid 15th century idea.
As Ronald Reagan said "Tear Down that Wall!"
8
As a counterpoint, I would like to know if the reporters spent any time looking for under employed local American workers in some of these areas. Then we might look at what the employers are doing that might discourage American workers. Talking to employers of illegal immigrants will likely result in the same, tired canned responses about how Americans won't do the work or are not good workers, I think it would take an independent view to know if that is really true. After all, I remember a time when hotel staff was not uniformly Hispanic, there was some diversity - so how did that happen to go away?
19
Years ago, the author Molly Ivens put forth a simple and (procedurally) easy course of action to eliminate the entire 'undocumented worker' issue: 1) Go to a Fortune 100 company, and find an 'illegal' (hint: look for mops or a broom); 2) arrest their supervisor for breaking the immigrant labor laws, and give them a bargain of a suspended sentence in exchange for testimony against THEIR supervisor; 3) repeat until you have arrested people in the C-suites, at which point you prosecute them all, and only send the C-suite occupants to prison.
Rinse and repeat - going through the Fortune 100 until a sufficiently powerful CEO calls up their congress-critters to get the laws changed.
The net result of all this turmoil would be an increase in support for all of our laws, and improved wages for every worker in America, as the corporations would no longer have cheap and easily intimidated labor to drive down wages.
43
@Bob from Sperry Are you crazy !! The people in the C-suite don't want an end to immigration, illegal or not. They run the country and it is not for your benefit. Immigration benefits them and it is here to stay....unless you sensibly reform immigration, healthcare, labor laws, etc etc etc.
Wait til more immigration comes from climate refugees. The caravans from the middle of central America will be enormous. Nothing will stop them.
4
@Bob from Sperry
You are absolutely right. All fat cats, whether Republicans or Democrats, want cheap labor.
There used to be a legal, seasonal worker program through which Mexican workers came every year and returned home at the end of the season. They had to be paid higher wages as they were legal. That program was allowed to lapse because employers want illegal workers so they can be intimidated and paid less.
So many migrants from Central America come here because US has interfered in the political process there. US supports the autocratic, corrupt regimes in these countries so long as they are biddable. If US promoted socially responsible govts in those countries, the people would not come. No one is happy to become a migrant, it is the choice of last resort.
4
@Louis J You are correct - the C-suites do NOT want immigration ended.
Because they are not threatened by prosecution for breaking the (existing) immigration laws.
Heck, they even enjoy taxpayer-funded ICE agents instead of having to pay for Pinkertons to dissuade their employees for organizing.
“These workers are often long-tenured and skilled. They are nothing short of vital to farms, businesses, and rural economies.”
Thank you for finally stating the obvious. There simply are not enough Americans willing to do many essential jobs - milk cows, hoe cabbage, pick apples etc.
This is not a matter of raising wages - it is the fact that most Americans, including most unemployed ones, do not want to (or can't) perform manual labor, endure uncomfortable weather, climb roofs or ladders, tend elderly, change dirty sheets, and be back to work tomorrow on time.
There are good reasons why some are still unemployed. We desperately need more skilled and motivated workers willing to do manual labor with a good work ethic . . . because 'our' un/under-employed won't.
America has always thrived with immigrants. They should be welcomed and put to work - not only will it fill needed jobs, but it will also raise the competition level - everyone plays tennis better against a more skilled player.
It would be very healthy for our economy/business if Americans workers were forced to compete against a more highly motivated, disciplined workforce with a strong work ethic.
THAT would make America great again, instituting policies that do not reward mediocrity or reduce competition in our workforce, but instead, provide a sufficient number of the very most motivated employees.
And though it is politically unpopular to say, to accomplish that - - - we need immigrants.
2
@organic farmer: I can tell you first hand that there are almost no "white" farm workers in the Hudson Valley...unless they own the farms. There are very few "black" farm workers unless you include all the seasonal Farm workers from the Caribbean islands who pick all the orchard fruits in the fall. The traditional farms will be sold off as soon as the current owners die....their children are not going to continue the rigors of farming, whether agricultural or dairy. It's a fact of life. ICE continues to roust and arrest Hispanic workers in the area, and this will ultimately be the death knell of farming in NY State. Let these people work towards a goal of citizenship...there is no alternative.
They are not going away!
1
Employers are the key to ending illegal immigration. No access to work would put an end to visa overstays, illegal border crossings and the waste millions on border security.
Cracking down on employers would also put a stop to the abuse of the H1B visa program.
Company demand for H1B visa immigrants and undocumented workers is about cheap wages.
23
“Undocumented immigrants are overrepresented in low-skilled jobs such as farming, construction and child care.”
This sentence is revealing. Why are these jobs described as low-skilled? Anyone who has cared for children, produced food or built anything can attest that these are among the most challenging, skillful and important types of work that human beings do.
These jobs are low in STATUS, not low in skill requirements. A crucial requirement for all three is physical stamina, a skill we too often denigrate. Hard-working immigrants do these jobs, in part, because they have skills many Americans lack. The low pay rates for such jobs reflect the low value we place upon them. To our peril we degrade and demonize those who provide our basic needs: food, shelter and care for the next generation.
9
As long as there are millions of good-paying jobs available to illegal immigrants they will figure out ways to go around, over and under border barriers. The $5,000,000,000 wall funding would be far better spent on cracking down on the companies and people who offer jobs to illegals.
Make it a Federal crime to employ illegals and slap heavy punishments on companies who violate the law. In the 21st Century we have the technology to easily verify social security cards etc. No excuse exists for hiring someone with false documents or stolen identities. It should be a punishable offense.
Eliminate the jobs, and the illegal immigrants will stop coming. No wall necessary.
17
Employers prefer illegal alien labor because they are much easier to exploit than legal Americans. An illegal immigrant's status hinders his ability to demand higher wages, better working conditions and overtime pay due the alien. The advantage is thus with the employer. The argument that we can't live without the illegals and their labor discount is false as Americans did these jobs in the past at higher real wages.
This system of illegal immigration is essentially one of quasi serfdom that fuels inequality. Not mentioned in this article are the negative social costs of mass illegal immigration. Exhibit A - the election of Donald Trump.
13
The US needs foreign workers but it needs legal foreign workers. This article is a total whitewash. We have to have illegal workers because there is no other alternative? Really? How about a thoughtful and rational immigration policy that rewards people for legally entering the US? That increases the number of legal immigrants? That allows for temporary work visas for workers in critically needed fields? But we won't get one.
Why not? Because the American public was fooled once by "immigration reform" and they are not inclined to be fooled again. In 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli 'fixed' immigration and granted amnesty to many of the 3.2 million illegal immigrants living in the US. Except it didn't fix it. Now we have between 11 and 22 million people living here illegally. Give them all amnesty again and it will be 50 million more in 2046.
The majority of Americans want the laws obeyed. They want their borders secure. They even want a liberal immigration policy that admits willing workers at sustainable levels. They aren't getting any of that. They see cheaters jumping the line and being allowed to stay while honest people wait their turn. They see cities and states protect these cheaters. It offends their sense of fairness.
BTW the last time I checked identity theft was a felony. Felons should be deported.
25
My previous comment was incomplete.
There is a disconnect between articles appearing in the NY Times.
On the one hand, an article in today's paper discusses evidence that the Arctic Ocean ice is melting over time, which evidence for global warming. This global warming is expected to have devastating climate consequences in the long run.
The primary cause of global warming is population growth. World population has doubled since about 1970. It seems unrealistic to fight climate change without also cutting the rate of population growth to zero.
The effect of using electric cars instead of gas-powered vehicles is overwhelmed by the pressure in the third world to achieve American living standards. 1.3 billion in India, 1.4 billion in China, 1.2 billion in Africa are increasing their use of coal and other nonrenewable resources in an attempt to achieve the American life they see on television.
Population growth overwhelms the efforts to cut pollution by exactly extra taxes on carbon, for example.
Population growth is also the primary cause of illegal immigration. The immigration helps the wealthy by providing cheaper food, low cost construction work. But it takes jobs from the poor and increases the disparity between rich and poor.
And increases the rate of incarceration. The US has 14 times the incarceration rate of Japan. About 6 million Americans are in prison, on probation or on parole.
Miriam Jordan is wrong---the costs of illegal immigration are enormous.
19
The New York Times published facts about the Yale Study, THIS year that stated there are more than 20 million illegal aliens in the USA.
It is false that the prohibition of employers from hiring undocumented persons would cause the country to suffer.
It is NOT true that if the extensive practice of hiring under the table hirees: tree cutters, toxic land fill removers, handy men, hotel maids, and the myriad of other businesses that pay in "cash" or even digital cash would cause any kind of economic damage.
Contractors and their laborers who are legitimate in their experience, training, education, and certification have been under cut by the illegal labor force in construction.
What would happen is that more Americans (of every type, women included) would be on the jobs on the highways, in the forests (small), in residential properties, making repairs, cutting trees - like Oaks, fixing roads, fixing electrical units, and all the types of jobs we characterize as "manual labor" but do require a great deal of skill and supervision.
The NYTimes conjures falsehoods that the people who scam California's systems are victims. It is propaganda to write that the undocumented's take over of job types entitles them to be in the US and it is
If an American other than Hispanic tries to get employed at a stop gap job say in a restaurant, they will be deterred because the entire work staff is Spanish speaking only or Latin in origin.
17
The hate mongering by this president is directed at people who he describes as folks who don't look like him and his base. It's racially intended and poitically influenced by his effort(s) to MAGA by the standard of a certain complexion of people. He's pathetic; all efforts to diffuse this tyrant must continue.
Its not the menial jobs that had/have an impact on the labor market, its the trades. We have income stagnation across the country due to an excess of workers willing to do the work for a lower wage. Nowhere is that more evident than the trades. Jobs that were once solid middle class were overtaken by a massive influx of illegal immigrates who were willing to do the same work for a fraction of the cost. They halved the market and people and builders got used to a cheaper price... This cannot be under estimated when one looks at the overall effect of millions of people flooding the market. It also divided the economy creating a larger gap between those who have and those who do not, all while making it prohibitively expensive to build with anything but cheap labor.
33
It drives me, an EXTREME liberal crazy that this must be patiently explained over and over to our Exeter/Harvard/Yale overlords.
I feel solidarity with the illegal guys I worked with in the trades. We were both being exploited.
Making patently false obviously counter intuitive arguments doesn't change the fact that construction workers DID have their wages crushed by illegal immigration.
I went to college and CHOSE the trades because my grandfather and father were union men and their was honor in the work. Didn't account for me making half what they did for the same job.
This simply is not a winning issue for Democrats or leftists. Because it's absurd on its face. Advocate for a fair system, point out the suffering the drug war has wrought on these people but stop talking down to workers and tut tutting the loss of their livelihoods.
The left has lost a generation of workers by parroting the arguments of management in an effort to appear inclusive. Donald Trump is the result of this strategy.
13
We are fortunate to have them in this country and we should do more to show respect and dignity for their value.
4
As a professor convincingly argued to me in the 1980s, if you really wanted to end undocumented workers coming to the US, the solution is simple: Hold employers of undocumented aliens personally responsible (in civil or criminal court) for hiring them on behalf of their company. If the owner of a family-run enterprise or CEO of a publicly traded company were personally responsible, the hiring would stop immediately. (And today, unlike the 1980s, the use of e-Verify could become a defense to such allegations -- essentially making its use mandatory.)
The question, as this article points out, is do we really want to suffer the economic effects of stopping the flow of undocumented workers? (And look to the detrimental effects of Alabama's draconian HB 56 on that state's agricultural economy.)
Instead we have a certain political figure whose companies, golf clubs, and restaurants benefit from their labor while bashing these same people who are taking jobs few US citizens want, under conditions few would put up with, with pay that few Americans think adequate. If he really wanted to end this supposed scourge, he would make employers like himself personally responsible. . . .
26
@Stephen
The solution would be simple if the laws were changed. Right now, with eVerify generally voluntary, most employers of illegal workers haven't broken any laws. They can show you a copy of a Social Security card and I-9 form for every employee. That is all they are obligated to do. The lawbreaking is entirely on the part of the illegal "immigrant" with the forged Social Security card that perjured themselves to complete their I-9 form.
We need mandatory eVerify. Republicans, yes Republicans, have attempted to pass legislation to make it mandatory. If you look at the states where it is mandatory, they are Red states. Here's a map. Look for yourself:
https://www.lawlogix.com/e-verify-map/
Deep Blue California went the opposite direction. When some cities passed ordinances to make the use of eVerify mandatory, California's monolithically Democratic state government passed a law forbidding any such ordinances anyplace in the state.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/16/local/la-me-e-verify-20111017
4
"They (Americans) might prefer to make a low wage working inside an Amazon distribution center to putting shingles on a roof.
A survey conducted in late 2017 by the Associated Contractors of America found that 70 percent of construction companies were having difficulty hiring roofers, bricklayers and electricians, among others.
The accommodation and food services sector reported a record number of vacancies this October."
So...do they or don't they?
2
If you think undocumented workers are driving down wages, remember that we have outsourced a significant portion of our manufacturing and other production systems to other countries because they pay low wages. Corporate America focuses on profits, wages will go down one way or another. The answer to creating high paying jobs is not to eliminate immigrants. As an example, there is a shortage of physicians in this country and a significant percentage of the current physicians are going to retire in the next decade. A very high percentage (25%?) of the physicians here are immigrants. If Americans aren't willing to do the work required to be a physician, don't send the immigrants away, support more incentives and training for Americans. The point of this article is that sending immigrants away will not solve our economic problems, only make them worse.
6
@Eero
Nobody is talking about sending "immigrants" away. This article, this comment thread, the national debate, is entirely about illegal "immigrants". Do you know any illegal "immigrant" doctors?
3
For decades, decades!, businesses throughout our country have had to rely on workers who migrate across our southern border. For farmers and ranchers, it is a successful, time- tested process they rely on for survival, where workers move from location to location-seasonly, as fields are tended, crops planted, then harvested.
It starts in the spring months on the west coast, then the southwest, then onto the deep south and finishes-up in the cooler months in the northeast, for example, in New York State with the harvesting of apples, pumpkins and squashes.
Drug dealers and the drugs they smuggle into our country are not a part of the equation that brings workers into our country to work in fields and on ranches. They have nothing to do with the honest, hardworking migrant workers who break their backs getting produce to market. We we simply cannot do without these families who flock to our country to work.
We simply do not have the hundreds of thousands of citizen-workers needed to get fruits and vegetables from fields and processing plants to our local markets and to our microwave ovens and dinner tables by filling our supermarket shelves.
There just aren't enough locals living in rural towns to do what was once called 'stoop labor', nor individuals that want, plain and simply, to do that kind of work. And I have not even mentioned the tens of thousands of hard working migrants who work in our meat-packing plants, our hotels, and the bodegas in our cities.
7
I take issue with a machinist or bricklayer who says "I'm offering $10/hour for a job that requires skill and I keep wondering why I cant find anyone to fill the position"
I have 3-words for you.... "raise your pay"
We are currently in an economy that demands higher wages yet, at the bottom, wages are stagnant. This is directly a result of an illegal labor market. You cant live in this country for $10/hour and those that try, live in poverty and need subsidies...we are perpetually creating the problems we are trying to fix. I genuinely believe that hiring only legal immigrants would encourage wages to rise from the bottom for those that are in this country legally and are making low pay now because of a saturated illegal labor market.
Yes I do agree that entire industries would struggle and be forced to pay their employees more but lets let capitalism reign here and say.... "if I cant find a machinist/bricklayer for $10/hr, I should advertise for $15/hr and then charge the customer more to reflect market conditions"
If we adopt this solution macro economically and let the free market force a rise in wages from the bottom, minimum wage requirements will become a thing of the past and in turn result in less strain on our social benefits programs. I strongly believe in providing a livable wage for people this will only work if we enforce strict legal immigration policies.
31
@Tom
You don't mind offering up the advice to a business owner to just "raise your pay" but how about when it comes to him raising his price? Didn't think so.
1
@Tom
Such a solution needs aggressive antitrust enforcement to ensure that a single, or few, employers don't control the market for jobs and their product or service. Something we no longer have.
@kurt
absolutely they should raise the price! In this economy, we should be paying more for a gallon of milk and an hour of work alike as they should both cost more.
If it costs $8 to make a widget and labor rates rise, the cost of that widget should also increase that’s Econ 101 as profits must be protected. We SHOULD be able to afford that cost hike.
Really that’s what it comes down to, a truly great economy should be judged by the difference in the cost to produce something and the price a free market is willing to pay for it.
I now have doctoral level education and earn a living sitting indoors but was born poor in a working family and had to labor to pay for that education. No one was giving it to me and debt was unacceptable.
I have done farm labor, cleaned sewers, spread asphalt, flagged construction traffic, roofed, did carpentry, and drove a truck among other “menial” jobs. All honest honorable work. We now have record low unemployment among those looking for work and record high numbers of working age men not working or looking for work. We don’t have an illegal alien problem, we have an American labor problem. I see too problems.
We wrongly disrespect some of the most essential jobs in America as unworthy.
Somebody somewhere is enabling sloth by feeding people who don’t work. Bleeding heart social activists, government agencies, or family members who feed the slothful are enablers of sloth and responsible for the secondary ills that result, including the illegal immigration problem.
When those millions of Americans who are too good for labor have to labor in order to live, they will do so. There is nothing anyone can do to make this happen other than stop to doing things that enable them to avoid it. This helping by not doing is the best thing we could do for idle souls trapped in addictions and meaninglessness.
8
We don't need illegal immigration to boost the economy or bolster the workforce. We can increase legal immigration anytime we want by increasing legal immigration quotas. Millions are waiting in line.
We are often told America would starve without unauthorized immigrants who work on U.S. farms. It is true that unauthorized immigrants make up 26 percent of U.S. farm workers, but according to the Pew Research Center, only 4 percent of unauthorized immigrants are farm workers, So we could deport 96 percent of the nation’s 11 million immigrants without hurting farms. Most Americans who oppose illegal immigration would accept a compromise that lets 4 percent of illegal immigrants stay in exchange for the deportation of the other 96 percent.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/11/03/occupations-of-unauthorized-immigrant-workers/
13
I don't believe it, sorry. It's such a lie that "American employers can't find American citizens to perform jobs."
With respect to farming, perhaps. But the construction field has A LOT of workers who are unemployed, both for skilled and unskilled trades. Illegal immigrants take jobs from legal citizens in this field, particularly in the area of residential construction. Dishonest employers make profits by hiring illegal immigrants and dodge having to pay payroll taxes. Everyone in the construction field, from developers to general contractors to architects to contractors know about, but everyone turns a blind eye.
50
We should specify (legal or illegal) immigrants have always been required to do the manual labor jobs to drive the U.S. economic train. Their children who are driven to succeed develop many life saving products and services. Some say it drives American wages down or Americans do not have the skills to do these labor intensive jobs. Well both are wrong. American wages are dictated by corporate CEOs and shareholders nothing to do with the person flipping the hamburger. Although some labor skills are complex it isn't rocket science, Americans know how to do hard labor. But we don't tell our children to become a crop laborer, we tell them to design the next rocket. Generally, the next generation of Americans prosper because they get out of the low skilled labor jobs. True, one day robots will do this skill even flipping a hamburger. Good I say, humans can then progress to the next level. But we will still need immigrants to help the elderly in senior homes, the robot touch won't be enough there. Humans will always need another human to lean on or to be productive at work.
What we need is a comprehensive immigration plan that will account for the upcoming migration from climate variations and from automating the workplace. This requires leaders with vision and intelligence. We have none at the moment.
7
@amrcitizen16 wrote “We should specify (legal or illegal) immigrants have always been required to do the manual labor jobs to drive the U.S. economic train.”
I drive on the Capital Beltway every day. It was built by white and black Americans who were paid a living wage. White and black Americans are still with us; living wages for that kind of work are not.
13
Seems to be a little know fact that net immigration over our southern border has been negative - going south - since 2009. We've been losing our undocumented workers. The main reasons are family reunification and better jobs, often auto-related factory jobs.
These undocumented workers are more law abiding than US citizens and they're harder working, work for less, do not complain, and pay Billions more into the Treasury than they receive back.
They do the difficult, dirty, and dangerous jobs Americans do not want. If you hear some Trumpster going on about how the take away their jobs just ask them if they want to harvest lettuce, or clean motel rooms, or do hot tar roofing.
Our undocumented workers are not only the backbone of our economy - they are far more responsible for our GDP than Trump - but they send their dollars back to their families, a form of globalism that contributes to international stability far more than our foreign aid (which is primarily designed to subsidize and enrich those in power by loaning money to multinationals and resource extractors).
Furthermore, the US is under its population replacement rate by 16%. We've been below since 1971 and fertility continues to drop. We need our immigrants and millions more just like them.
That's why I firmly believe in The Wall - we need to keep them from escaping.
7
I worked day labor in Minneapolis for about 2-1/2 years, often with workers from Mexico who did not speak English. I don't know how much they made (I was paid minimum wage), but I got the feeling that many companies preferred them to locals like myself. The reason was simple: the workers from Mexico tolerated a lot of abuse from their bosses, and they didn't (or couldn't) complain. It was easy for management to engage in some awful employment practices.
People say that immigrant labor does work that U.S. Nationals won't. That's probably true when there's abusive management. But every morning, when I showed up for work at the day labor company, only about 1/4 of the people found work on any given day. The U.S. Nationals seemed to do the same amount and quality of work as the Mexican immigrants.
Personally, I'm okay with undocumented workers so long as our own Government does not prevent me from working abroad.
6
Beyond the effects of mass illegal migration on wages and social costs, why should we accept an entire class of residents that live and work outside a long list of laws besides residency status?
Citizens are prosecuted for tax evasion, ID fraud, benefit fraud, and a whole host of other required costs, from which illegal migrants are seemingly exempt largely for political reasons. That is abject corruption and social injustice.
Beyond the destruction of social cohesion from arbitrary negotiable law enforcement, how do we raise citizens wages, make any progress on the widening income gap or get universal healthcare if we have a free flow of illegal migrants.
36
@CNNNNC Your comment is very well put. I am a liberal, and cannot comprehend why the Democratic party fails to appreciate the legitimate concerns people have about illegal immigration. Yet to even mention these concerns results in the accusation of being a racist.
The Democrats can't turn a blind eye to this anymore. Doing nothing allows Republicans to claim they support "open borders" migration. People are sick of being held to the letter of the law when others are not. As you say, it appears this may be designed to garner Hispanic votes.
13
When workers use fake green cards, they usually have taxes withheld from their wages. However, because the cards are forgeries, they usually won't take the risk of applying for benefits or sometimes even of seeking a tax refund. This is another facet of he US's dependency on undocumented workers: they're usually taxpayers, but rarely recipients of benefits.
1
If these workers were not illegal their recourse would be to join a union and fight the fight. This is the plight of the illegal workforce.
6
"Like undocumented workers across the country... they used counterfeit Social Security and green cards to get hired." Counterfeit Social Security and green cards often use stolen identification numbers stolen. This is identity theft. The legitimate owners of those numbers often run into problems because the identity theft. The IRS comes after them for not paying taxes on income they never earned. Crimes committed by the illegal green card holders can be credited to the legitimate holders, putting their residency in the US at risk. American poor economically suffer because of the dominance of illegal aliens in some jobs. 40 years ago many low skilled occupations such as construction, gardening, roofing, and child care, were dominated by African Americans and others at the bottom of the economic ladder. However, employers discovered they could hire undocumented workers for much less. Even better, employers could commit labor violations against the undocumented workers, such as wage theft with little or no consequence. Unlike a legal resident, the undocumented fear going to the authorities because they don't want to be deported. Employers came to prefer hiring the undocumented, forcing wages and working conditions down to the point where those jobs were no longer viable for legal residents. Within a generation many entry level occupations once dominated by African Americans disappeared. Call them 'illegal' or 'undocumented' workers, our poor foot the bill.
46
This idea that there is rampant fraud by undocumented immigrants involving actual SSNs is simply not true. Here is what actually happens: The immense majority of employers do NOT check the validity of SSNs (and the ones that hire undocumented labor are among the least likely to do so--go ahead and imagine a farm owner getting into E-Verify and seeing his labor force vanish in seconds) so there is practically zero incentive to use a stolen SSN. Instead, the majority of employers do the bare minimum, which is see if there is an SSN card and a green card they can plausibly deny knowing were fake, and put stick it in a file somewhere for the rare chance they get audited. As to "tax fraud," here's what actually happens: a person uses a made-up SSN, gets a W-2 from their employer (showing plenty of withheld taxes), and then submits an income tax return with an ITIN (you would not believe how many immigrants file tax returns because they think it may someday be useful to show they did so in order to get "legal"). In fact, a large amount of the SSA surplus is from such "unreconciled" collections which cannot be attributed to actual beneficiaries. In the event a real SSN was fraudulently used, the real account holder is actually likely to find out their SSA benefits are greater than they should have been due to these earnings that were taxed and never actually earned by him or her.
2
The comfort of the very rich has always depended upon an abundant supply of the very poor.
52
It's pretty simple - we are addicted to slave labor.
To defend the position that we should have undocumented immigrants working low wage, high risk jobs without labor protections is simply unjust and immoral. Liberals have managed to contort themselves into some vague defense of the American dream for new immigrants. Meanwhile, they remain ambivalent about the death of labor unions which ensured that dream for working class people for decades.
It's pure racism to defend this system that maintains an ethnic underclass. Migrant labor is fine, but it must be legal if the workers are going to enjoy any standard of living in this country.
31
@Ted
Órale, Ted. "It's pure racism." Shame on the U.S.
Sheila
3
@Ted Blunt but true. How can democrats claim they care about minimum wage, labor protection, unions and welfare while they accept we pretty much are using slaves who don't enjoy any of these protection?
5
I'm an old white guy, veteran, a union member and supporter.
I think everyone deserves a living wage, decent healthcare, and safety protections.
As a young fellow in the '70's, I did 'farm work', and multiple other rural economy jobs.
Demographically, there simply aren't enough 'white Americans' to fill these jobs at any wage.
And even at any wage, there are only some people who can physically do the work.
Or have the skills. Trim my trees wrong, I get no crop next fall.
As the farmer, I can't pay you to sit in the shade and sip water. This isn't fooling around in the garden for a couple hours. Fields need planting when they need planting. A crop is ready when it is ready. And you plant til it is planted and you pick until it is harvested.
Somebody wants to work?
Welcome to America!
7
If we convicted all the employers on Felony counts and then revoked their right to vote forever, as the GOP thinks is appropriate, wouldn't that be a good thing? There'd pretty much be no GOP left able to vote.
6
@Paul
As you may know, 8 U.S.C. section 1324(3) states: "Any person who, during any 12-month period, knowingly hires for employment at least 10 individuals with actual knowledge that the individuals are aliens [brought into the US for this purpose] shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both."
So, Trump (or some of his managers) could go to jail, as could many other employers in this country. Why aren't the "law and order" Republicans beating down doors to make sure this criminal law is strictly enforced?
1
@AM
The key word is "knowingly". Most employers can show you a copy of an employee's Social Security card and the I-9 they filled out. That's all an employer is obligated to do under the law. eVerify is generally voluntary (except in about 10 Red States) and employers are under no obligation to question the authenticity of the documents on file. In fact, lawyers tell employers they should not check, lest they be sued for discrimination.
1
We have absorbed but at what cost to existing workers?
Simple math: If denominator (labor pool) increases, wages ($/hr) drops.
Democrats wants additional voters, Republicans wants cheap labors, and so illegal immigration continues and will do so.
While low-income, low-skill citizens of our country suffer. Competition for their jobs increase pushing them further into poverty, their school districts get saddled with kids who need extra ESL support. These are struggling districts to begin with.
But liberals can talk a good compassionate game, and country club Republicans happily take cheap labor.
We need a third party.
30
There used to be a program called the Bracero program which was oriented towards workers in Agriculture. Some of the features of the program was that a portion of the wages were withheld and only paid when the worker returned to Mexico. Bracero work was seasonal and workers did not stay in the US all years nor were they allowed to bring families. They worked only during the growing, harvesting season. Usually the employer provided some form of living accommodations.
I forget which stupid Congressman insisted on ending the program. But now that machines are coming which can do most of the work (some machines have such a delicate touch they they can pick strawberries), agricultural workers are not needed so much. The government should be insisting that robots be used so that illegal workers can not hired, We must do everything possible to automate work so that jobs for illegal aliens do not exist.
6
Who does the dirty and dangerous work of coal mining in the US?
Do the mine workers have a relatively strong union?
3
There is a strange disconnect between articles appearing in the NY Times. On the one hand, there is new evidence that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is declining, which is attributed to global warming.
On the other hand, we have articles like this, which say there is no use to planning for change, because it is unlikely, and the economy would suffer if we actually stopped illegal immigration.
Global warming is primarily due to population growth. Even as Americans buy Teslas so that they can stop using oil, 1.3 billion people in India, 1.4 billion in China and 1.2 billion in Africa increase their use of coal because it is needed to pull their citizens out of poverty. People in the third world want what they see on TV, a condo, a personal car, vacations and air travel to remote places.
Controlling global warming is impossible without also controlling population growth.
And it is population growth in third world countries, first Mexico and more recently Guatemala, which feeds illegal immigration into the US.
But don't worry be happy. We need cheap labor, this article opines.
Yet that immigration has fueled an increase in disparity between rich and poor.
And now the political parties need the poor to be elected.
So Democrats regard the poor whites as racists and bigots while the poor whit
26
You know if the country had 1/2 a brain they would open the floodgates to anyone who wanted to come in.
We are an aging society who needs workers. They want to work...
Keep this up and we will look like Japan...
3
Not to mention the social security taxes paid by immigrants, who will go home when they get older, and will not collect benefits therefrom.
You right wingers, if your grandson needs a job, send him over to the farm, and your granddaughter, to the nursing home or hotel to make up rooms for the next guest. Oh, that would be too much like work, would it? Hmmm....
5
The bottom line seems to be we need immigrants because we can pay them less.
This has been the American story forever. Each new wave of immigrants ensured a new cheap labor source for America. Then after WWI and a law that seriously curtailed immigration (albeit a method we don't want to repeat), Black Americans finally got their chance at work other than sharecropping. They moved North and thanks to the strengthening labor movement -- a result of a tighter labor supply -- were ready to take the expanding industrial jobs. Progressive legislation through the New Deal, and improving wages and benefits marked the 1930s to the 1970s.
With the immigration act of 1965 immigration increased and American wages fell. Of course, is was more complex than this, but the value and strength of labor depends on the supply, and that is left our or dismissed in most discussion on immigration.
59
Although lower wages is a factor, the article also specifically mentioned that many jobs are difficult to fill with American workers. We don't like to do the hard, messy jobs.
4
@random Coal mining is hard and dirty and not good for your health and Americans do that work.
4
Many of these jobs are hard labor jobs. These jobs require workers to "find a pace" in order to survive. The push of the boss, and the pull of the worker is a delicate balance in making these jobs livable and acceptable. At one time, American workers had some protections, from unions, to make sure there was a reasonable balance. The current working force has altered that balance, which includes under the table, cash pay. If you want to know who benefits, look at the very top and the very bottom. If you want to know who losses, look who has been squeezed out of the middle. This is America today.
38
@Ned Scott,
Ever watch a TV show called "Dirty Jobs"?
Americans will do any job, no matter how dirty or difficult, if it pays well enough. As a job becomes riskier, or dirtier, or physically more demanding, those jobs become less desirable. Potential employees rightfully insist of being pay more to take on those jobs. Potential employers need to offer incentives sufficient to attract workers to those jobs. Undocumented immigrants change the equation. They will work for lower wages under less desirable working conditions than legal residents because it beats what they had back in their country of origin. $200 a month goes a lot further in Mexico or Guatemala than it does anywhere in the US. And what is so bad about paying forcing employers to pay living wage regardless of the occupation?
13
@Godzilla De Tukwila: There's a major exception to what you've stated. Men will not do "women's work" such as nursing no matter what the pay. They'd rather sit home and collect welfare. Millions of are doing so, refusing to retrain for jobs that actually exist.
4
There is an obvious solution to this problem: fix the visa system for temporary workers! These workers are coming to the US because there are jobs available. They are coming illegally because they generally cannot get visas to come legally. The H1A visa system does not work for either employers or employees. If the system worked, both employers and immigrants would be happy to be legal. The problem is that it is politically unpopular to admit that our economy needs immigrant labor to fill the jobs, particularly those that do not require formal schooling and do require manual labor.
We also need to admit that many of these jobs are not actually low-skill - they require a set of skills that is not based in academics, but must still be learned. People in rural areas of low-income countries learn farming, cooking, housekeeping, construction, childcare as children. American children often do not learn these skills, particularly if they grow up in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods. If we want American young people to be able to fill the manual labor jobs, we need to provide skills training in the cities, and then build connections between the skills training programs and the employers.
54
This story makes no mention of a key fact in agricultural areas: because of industrial scale farming and the economics involved in big farm operations, a lot of rural America has been denuded of the population who once lived there. You can't take a farm labor job if you live 200 miles away and you can't afford to move to the countryside on the wages being paid. The rise of undocumented workers went right along with the rise of industrial scale farming. More workers from outside, mainly Mexico, rushed to fill the void.
This news story says the following: "...wage rates are not the main issue, some economists say, because there still would not be enough Americans willing to do blue-collar jobs."
How does anyone, including economists, know that native Americans won't take these dirty jobs? This is a proposition that has never been tested. What if the wages were doubled and working conditions monitored to insure that workers were not being abused? What if there were decent housing and good school available in rural areas instead of the downward spiral these parts of the nation have endured?
Another factor seldom mentioned that discourages young people from taking low paying jobs is that many now refuse temporary employment because it won't help them build a resume for college admission. Many are determined only to add credits that will assist in getting into a good college. They pass over one of the most important aspects in adjusting to adult life, employment.
46
@Doug Terry Immigrants are mobile, while Americans want a job delivered to their front door. Amazon, and others have seized the day, and are getting the tax breaks for doing just that
3
@Doug Terry,
I agree. Anybody how doesn't should watch "Dirty Jobs".
5
There is no job an American won't do, only one she is not being paid enough to do.
I can not believe the intellectually gymnastics the economists cited here deploy. The labor force participation rate is 63%, if employers could not hire illegal immigrants, then they would be forced to raise wages and lure more people into the workforce. That's econ 101.
America's discontents are many, and probably incurable, but fulfilling the promise of employing its citizens, with the added benefit of higher wages across the board, should be an easy win.
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@Arturo
There might not be any job that an American won't do for the right pay, but there are certainly products, particularly foodstuffs, that Americans won't buy if they're too expensive—and that's what would happen if you hire Americans at the requisite many multiples of the cost of illegal labor.
You can't significantly increase the costs of production without any gains in efficiency while consumer demand remains constant and expect farms that are already skating by on razor thin margins to continue to exist. That's also Econ 101.
The best shot at agricultural jobs, for example, being held primarily by Americans will be when field work became fully automated, to which this article alludes. The related jobs would require substantial education—coding farming software, mapping land and crops, maintaining computers and machinery, etc. The jobs would be high-paying, but the farms would be able to maintain profitability through the efficiencies created by robots that could theoretically pick oranges or grapes much faster than a staff of humans.
15
@AGuyInBrooklyn
I've often wondered at the economics of robotization. If I was a farmer, I'd much rather pay a minimum wage worker than invest in coders and maintenance and electricity and updates for cotton-picking robots. Robots are expensive, you'd have to capitalize them over decades.
They also do not pay taxes into the Treasury or recycle pay into the local economy. Seems like robots are mostly only good for transferring wealth into the offshore accounts of the robot companies and their owners.
13
@Arturo
Have you tried laboring in the fields under a hot sun all day? Have you tried working on a roof under a summer sun in Florida or Georgia? Most "Americans", whatever the pay, couldn't do it. I tried when I was a younger man and was not physically able to withstand the heat and I soon quit.
Many of these immigrants seem able to withstand the heat and the hard labor for whatever the reason, previous assimilation, genetics, resilience that are not common in many Americans
23
“Ending illegal immigration, say many of those who have studied the issue, could mean that American workers would lose their jobs, companies would close and the economy would contract.”
Robots are taking over agriculture. It is an evolution and progress long artificially delayed by the presence of nearly free, illegal alien manual labor.
Service companies presently exploiting illegal alien slave labor will close, but the economy won’t contract. Instead, newer, more scrupulous companies will immediately fill in the vacuum. Sure, they will charge more for the services of their employees (Americans and foreigners legitimately working in our country). That cost will be passed on to the country clubs, restaurants, and resorts, which, in turn will pass it on to their clientele. I doubt that anyone at a high-end resort is going to choke on his caviar and cucumber sandwiches when they see the bill.
The end result will be that Americans will return to the labor force, be paid a fair wage and have safe working conditions, and they, in turn, will spend their paycheck in the local economy — not remit it to somewhere south of the border — and we will have a virtuous cycle of work and investment in America and Americans.
31
@NorthernVirginia
The “high-end resort” clientele may be willing to pay the (much) higher prices this proposal would entail, but the necessarily higher costs of restaurant meals and motel accommodations would significantly reduce demand for those services.
3
@jaime s.
. . . and what happens to the price when the demand drops for a good or service? It goes down. It will drop to a point where marginal cost meets marginal revenue.
. . . and what happens if the cost is still too high? Substitute goods.
. . . and what if there ARE no substitute goods? Then we have either arrived at a point of Malthusian collapse, or we are in Venezuela.
3
@NorthernVirginia
When the price drops because demand has fallen off, and the business is no longer profitable, it will have to close. What will then happen to the newly unemployed? Their excess supply will depress wages.
So what goods or services will be substituted for the labor that owners can no longer afford, until the cost of labor declines?
The illegal immigrant discussion is racism and only racism. 99% of illegal immigrants will leave if we quit paying them to stay. Who is paying them: white, conservative, christian, male "job creators". Want to clear out illegal immigrants, start throwing CEOs in prison with 100% civil asset forfeiture to pay the alleged costs of all those illegal immigrants.
Conservatives are as well-informed and sane as anyone else. This is how you know it is all bigotry. The solution is obvious. Yet, nobody discusses actually effectively hurting corporate profits.
I can't imagine anything more terrifying to conservatives than actually ending illegal immigration. A huge part of their talking points and scapegoat-directed rage would have to find a new target.
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@DanH
There are no laws whatsoever supporting what you say. Most major employers who end up hiring illegal workers don't do so knowingly and hire them completely legally. All the law requires an employer to do is look at a "work authorizing document", like a Social Security card and get a completed I-9. Illegal "immigrants" supply forged Social Security cards as good as yours and perjure themselves to complete their I-9.
That's why when the Feds audit a workplace, they find many illegal workers but the employers have complete files on all of them and have broken no laws.
If you want to be helpful in this discussion, get on the side of those who are pushing to make eVerify use mandatory. Then there will be something more auditable, more enforceable against employers with illegal workers.
4
Very sorry, I will be speaking bluntly. In my opinion, most people who are opposed to undocumented workers right to be here legally are afraid of demographic shift which very likely to result to favor Democrats. Economy, crimes etc is not exactly their priorities. Speaking of crimes committed by undocumented person are but a very tiny fractions of the crimes committed in this country. I watch Crime stories on YouTube during my long commute to and from work. By and large, vast majority of these people are honest and hard (very) working people who care about the well being of their families here or back home. Not sure why anti-immigrants are so afraid of a person who cuts their grass, serve them food, build their houses?, prue hard work that many in the US are unwilling to do. Please have some heart and let them work and feed their families i
n Mexico and other places where corruption from the bottom to the top level leaves them no other option but to migrate and find a place to work in anywhere in the World created by good Lord.
6
@AB Nope sorry, you're wrong at least with respect to me. I'm worried about jobs and my kids being able to attend public school. Their zoned public school is 80% non-English speaking.
13
@AB They should be challenging their own laws at home rather than our laws. Why are you so determined to import an underclass? And why are some people so determined to have a large family they can only support with subsidies from the rest of us?
Wages below are flat or declining below the 75th percentile; ie. the top 25% of earners are the only ones seeing any shred of income growth with the majority of wage gains going to the top 10%.
Purchasing power is declining for all but the top because of increased costs and taxes.
The steep climb in illegal immigrants over the past 25 years is partly to blame for both particularly for working and middle class workers; depressing wages, taking jobs that used to pay a living wage, not paying legal income taxes as a citizen would yet getting free healthcare. The majority live in households that get welfare benefits.
Just because this mass grift has been normalized doesn't mean we should tolerate it.
38
Part of the solution to having 5% of our workforce undocumented, would be to provide these workers that our economy relies on with legal documents. What would be the harm of granting, say, a worker from El Salvador who has toiled away here for twenty years some legal status that would allow them to travel back to see their family? Now these workers cannot go home for a visit or they will not be allowed back to their jobs and lives here. The constant anxiety and stress these workers experience from being in danger of deportation at any moment is needless suffering that should be alleviated, as a country we would all be better off if we treated our workers with the respect (and legal protections) they deserve.
10
@Liz
What would be the harm in immediately deporting all illegal aliens from our country? They would be free of all of the worry and uncertainty. They would be back in the loving embrace of their kin and their countrymen. No more needless suffering.
10
@NorthernVirginia
"What would be the harm in immediately deporting all illegal aliens from our country?"
Our economy would nosedive and the Treasury would lose Billions in tax receipts. Housing prices would decline and local economies would suffer. Many businesses would go our of business, and prices would increase for everyone.
1
@Fourteen Our economy is hardly dependent on the minuscule contributions of low skilled foreign nationals. They earn little and pay even less in taxes. Housing prices mean that people might actually be able to afford a house. Business owners might have to pay a living wage.