What Does Immigration Reform Mean to You?Follow

No? Americans are perfectly capable of illegally working for under minimum wage. They have more to lose by doing so, so they're less likely to do so, but that's not the same.

As to the sanctuary city issue, yes, the city of San Francisco should be legally and financially liable for damages caused by known but unarrested and deported illegals who injure or commit a crime against citizens within its' city limits.

As for nonstandard wages, I could see defining a particular type or types of jobs being acceptable to pay considerably less than minimum or "living" wage. This would allow migrant workers to come over if they chose to for work and yet keep labor costs down for farms and certain businesses. What that pay might be would depend on what the market would or could bear. After all, even Mexicans and Guats must have some financial threshold over which even they wouldn't stoop to work. Moreover, I'd say these particularly classified jobs would then be legally protected from unionization.

After all, there is a certain point at which farmers and say meat packing plant owners want to move product and would be willing to pay people to make that happen.

Totem

If the job has such low requirements, why would you be "competing" for it in the first place? You compete in the job market as a whole by being higher skilled than the folks who would be using these visas. Employers who need higher skilled labor are going to hire you instead of someone with one of these visas. Exactly how many times in your life have you been upset because you failed to win that non-contract ditch digging job, or the fruit picking job? Ever?

The visas could include limits on what sorts of jobs could be obtained if you're that afraid that your job might be taken by an unskilled, semi-literate immigrant from Mexico unable to get a normal work visa. But the concern I have is that if we limit it too much, there'll still be sufficient motivation to work outside the rules that people will continue to choose to cross illegally to work. The objective here is to eliminate the need for otherwise honest Mexican laborers seeking work to cross the border illegally. This will make securing the border from real threats (drug and weapons smugglers) much much easier.


As long as we have a mass of people crossing the border each year illegally the problem can't be dealt with just by tightening security at the border. That's why we need to create a legal replacement which will duplicate the conditions and reasons people cross illegally today. Anything that doesn't sufficiently match up isn't going to work.

It's a hiring advantage they already have though. That's what you keep ignoring here. And it's such an advantage that it makes a life-threatening trek across the border worth doing. It's such an advantage that employers are already willing to break the law to hire them for those jobs. It's such an advantage that it drives the entire "problem" we're debating right now.

All this does is provide a way for the exact same economic reality to exist without requiring the illegal cross of the border. The question we really have to ask is whether it's the jobs being worked at below minimum wages which is the problem, or whether it's the drugs and guns (and potentially worse!) being smuggled across the border along with those workers.



Um... Not really. I already think that minimum wage laws are an infringement on the rights of employers and employees to arrive on their own at an equitable wage. If the federal government sets a lower floor (or no floor) for employees with these visas, states are free to follow suit or not, as they wish. Kinda lets each state decide the degree to which they want to participate in this, doesn't it? I guess I'm just curious why this is such a problem for you? Why not do this at the federal level and then see what happens? What's the worst case scenario that concerns you? Is it worse than the current status quo?

Those areas tend to still require at least minimum wage.

The only time I've been paid less than legal minimum wage was when I worked as a camp counselor. They deducted "room and board" and by the time they finished all the deductions, and you factored in that we were on duty 22 hours a day, we were getting paid about $2/hour.

I call that summer a character building experience when I discuss it in mixed company, but it scarred me for life and now I'm terrified of children.

The big problem in the US with skilled vs unskilled labor is that we used to have a ready supply of unskilled labor, in the form of high school dropouts and non-collegians. These days, when over half the US population has at least "some college" on their resume, there is a drastically reduced labor pool of unskilled labor, and those that are in that pool are desperately trying any way they can think of to get out of it. It's America, if you work hard you're supposed to succeed. You're not supposed to settle for picking strawberries for $1/bucket.

\
Illegally. Non-government sanctioned. Which is what you keep ignoring.


Then the visas are meaningless anyway since most states of the states with the highest levels of illegal immigration already have higher minimum wages then the federal.

So you just put a government stamp of approval for shutting American citizens out of jobs with no change to the reality. Congratulations! Excellent idea you have there.

Yes. Because such information is readily available on the internet.



I live in an area with a lot of illegal immigrants? I know people who've hired them for day labor? Heck. I've hired one (sorta). Waaaaay back about 20 someodd years ago, a friend and I decided to do a little side work over the summer moving houses. All of it was under the table, btw. We'd just rent a truck for a day, and move someone's house for them. All word of mouth, friends of friends kind of stuff. One time, we had a largish house to move, so my friend hired an illegal to help out. We paid him $50 for the day's work, which was probably about 7-8 hours total. That was well more than the minimum wage of the day.


What do you think those guys get paid by the folks who pick them up to do random yardwork and whatnot? While I'm sure sometimes it's less than minimum wage, sometimes it's going to be higher. They usually hire by the day. And it's usually some set round amount like $80 or $100 or whatever. If the work is done in 5 hours, they get paid the same. That's how day labor works. You pay by the job for the day. And since it's all tax free, they get 100% of it. It's a pretty good deal for both parties.


But hey, you're free to do the google thing if you want. It's luck of the draw work Joph. Sometimes, it's good pay. Sometimes, it's not. I think that the larger point is that it's not "zero", or even close to it. I honestly suspect that one of the reasons some people on the left so vehemently oppose any sort of normalization of the current labor situation is that it might just weaken their long held positions on wages and taxes. When tons of previously illegal workers are now working legally and they don't end out getting ripped off, or taken advantage of, and perhaps even worse, report that they like the way things are, it'll tear a bit fat hole in a largish component of the liberal labor position.

And we couldn't allow that, could we?

Semi-legal ****, Yoss? That does not sound good, my friend.

Totem