My Personal Eperience with Illegal Immigrants - Page 2

John1234 · 02-08-08, 05:16 PM

So basically some of you are saying that even if the Illegals roam to your city and lower the average skilled wage from $16 per hour to $8 per hour due to their illegal competition, that its just a fact of life and its my own fault for not being able to adapt?

Let me ask you this...

How many of you earn $8.00 per hour, adapted by learning a new language, and have 0 savings?
I already know the answer to that one.

So now I wonder how many of you "think" that a person can live off $8.00 an hour?
Hell i spend more than that on mountain dew and cigarettes.
$8.00 wont even cover the gas alone for driving into the city to try and learn Spanish.

Even at $16 per hour, its extremely tough to make it.
And it took me over 10 years to become a master of my trade.
I am approaching middle aged. I don't have the time left in my life to spend another decade learning a new trade.

I have already adapted from the mid set of a business man and contractor to a worker.
Now i am suppose to adapt to making an amount of money that would only allow me to share a cardboard box with 4 people in an ally?

I am not against Mexicans.
But give me a break. Adapting surely is not the answer.
This is OUR country. They should adapt here. Not us.
If i went to Mexico, then i would expect to adapt.

I will concede though, that if it was not for the housing crisis, things would not be as bad as they are.

tryreading · 02-08-08, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John1234

I am a Painting Contractor from the Pan Handle of Florida.
I had a small business that always struggled but managed to survive.
Hurricane Ivan struck our area. The majority of the country never realized how bad it was due to Katrina coming next and all of the coverage it got.
There was hardly a single dwelling in our city that was undamaged.

Before we were even finished clearing up our own properties and getting things back in order to conduct business, Illegal Mexican workers started flooding into our area by the tens of thousands.
Normally the going rate of pay for a top of the line hourly painter in our area was about $16 a hour. For contractors it was about $3.00 per square foot for a high class home (Interior).

After they were here for a few months, you just could not get any work.
They were charging so little that the only way to compete vs them was to hire them as your crew.
Most of my competition did just that. They hired on illegal Mexican workers for 7 or 8 dollars an hour. While i am paying 16 dollars an hour.

They fixed our city in about 1 year. When it should have been 4 years of really good paying work.
Ok so that helped the city I guess.
But where does it leave the construction workers that live here?

Once my business collapsed, I tried to get a job at one of the larger construction sites.
But i don't speak Spanish. You cant get a job if you don't speak Spanish.
Not even for 8 dollars an hour.
All of the foremen were Spanish.
(Keep in mind that I had never even seen a Mexican before. There are no Mexican permanent residents here.)

They had another effect.
The combination of the legal American workers, the illegal Mexican workers, and the people with destroyed homes in our area... flooded out our housing market and drove property values through the roof.
So the builders went crazy. They used the illegal work force to mass build high rises all over the place.
Now all the Mexicans have left. Along with the Legal work force that came here.
And thousands of places became vacant.
The housing crisis hits us.
So for the rest of the country the housing crisis just has a minimal impact.
For my area, we got double slammed.
Here its more like a full out Depression for the work force, instead of a recession.
Keep in mind that painters don't typically get unemployment. So we are not part of the statistics.
You can always add a few million construction workers any time you see those unemployment statistics.
We have tens of thousands of vacant units here.
Nothing to build.

-----------

I hold nothing against the Mexican people. And this is my governments fault, not theirs.
But what are people like me supposed to do?
We cant compete with their prices because we cant live on that.
Since the construction industry in the south is already mostly an unregulated cash business, they really are not that different from us, i suppose.
BUT... WE LIVE HERE.

Something has to be done so that these people at least ask for the same pay that we get.
I have mixed views on how to handle it.
But the current method does not work.

I heard President Bush say something similar to this once, "We need them because Americans dont want to do those jobs".
Man i nearly exploded.
Can he really be that dumb and detached from our society?
Or do the super elite rich just not understand?
We want the jobs very badly.
We simply can not compete with the wage they are willing to work for.
What ever happened to democracy?
Supply and Demand?
If Americans wont do a job, then the American way to handle it is to pay more.
Our system corrects itself.
If peope dont want to cut the heads off of chickens for 8 dollars an hour... then Duh!, pay 9 dollars an hour and raise the price of chicken.
Dont screw over the American people by opening the flood gates so that the rich people wont have to pay a little more for their workers.

Even if we make them citizens, its like starting the whole African American thing over again. It took us decades to balance things out with them in the work force and many still feel we have a long ways to go.
It would take us decades to balance out all of these Illegals into the work force where they are not going to be a cheaper work force than the American citizens that were already here.

Is this what they mean by competing globally?

I am too good a person to want to round them up and send them back like criminals.
Most of them are hard working good people just trying to do what they can in life.
But we must secure our borders and send at least some of them back.

I also wonder what effect it has on our housing market when millions of illegal migrant workers are roaming around the country in groups of thousands.
You see, its not only home buyers that control the housing market.
If 10 or 20 thousand people flood into an area because of a new job opportunity, granted they might live 20 to a house, but its still playing hell with the market.

I want to do the right thing by these people as a human being.
But whatever it is we are doing right now is surely not the answer.
Its going to take someone smarter than me to know what to do though, thats for sure.

Your own people screwed you over, not the Mexicans. If we don't enforce our own controls then we have created the situation where your scenario can happen. We have allowed people to come here without going through the proper steps, then we allow them to stay without any consequence.

I really don't blame the Hispanic people for coming here illegally. If I were an average Mexican or Guatamalan citizen and knew about the opportunity in the U.S., I would come here too, legally or illegally. You bet. Why not? If I get caught, what's the penalty?

RatedPanda · 02-08-08, 09:44 PM

I agree with the OP, something still needs to be done. I don't feel enough damage is done to companies who hire these illegals, and fixing that problem would probably be a much better solution then just rounding up any illegals and giving them the boot.

UtahBill · 02-08-08, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John1234

So now I wonder how many of you "think" that a person can live off $8.00 an hour?
Hell i spend more than that on mountain dew and cigarettes.
$8.00 wont even cover the gas alone for driving into the city to try and learn Spanish.

Even at $16 per hour, its extremely tough to make it.
And it took me over 10 years to become a master of my trade.
I am approaching middle aged. I don't have the time left in my life to spend another decade learning a new trade.

You had me agreeing with everything until you mentioned mountain dew and cigarettes. You can save a ton of money dropping both habits, not to mention making your long term health better. Especially the cigarettes...it will delay by about 10-15 years your need for viagra.

My son had a sugar soda habit and gained 60 pounds, and he gave it up and now is getting close to being under 200 again. He is only 5'11".
But I feel your pain, personally. I was forced out of my job at age 57, but luckily I was old enough to qualify for retirement, even tho it was a severely reduced retirement. And my wife was a teacher at the time. Good teachers don't get laid off. We also had many years of savings backing us up, and our house was paid for. A little paranoia, or conservative economic policies within the family, goes a long way toward preparing for this kind of thing. Iwent looking for another job, but who hires a 57 year old man? at a good wage? I ended up working for $8 per hour at a part time job to keep from going stir crazy. We are OK, my worries are not for people like me, or people my age who didn't prepare for an economic downturn. The REAL problem is what will our children and grandchildren do for jobs if we don't start now getting back to hiring Americans first for all our jobs. If no American will take the job, perhaps we deserve to have illegal immigrants flooding the labor market....

1069 · 02-08-08, 09:52 PM

Quote:

So now I wonder how many of you "think" that a person can live off $8.00 an hour?

I can. I have.
I've lived on less.
There's always welfare.

Quote:

Good teachers don't get laid off.

I don't know anything about teachers, but even I can see this is a potentially incendiary statement, one that can't possibly be true.

Anybody can get laid off, and it's not necessarily their fault. It doesn't mean they weren't "good".

If so, you might as well just say that everybody who has been laid off in this country deserved it; they were all bad workers and that's why it happened. The illegal aliens are apparently much better workers, so more power to them.

RatedPanda · 02-08-08, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1069

I can. I have.
I've lived on less.
There's always welfare.

Yes, welfare. Thats a good solution. Then, once all of our blue collar workers are dependent on welfare, our economy can really begin to take flight. /sarcasm

1069 · 02-08-08, 10:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RatedPanda

Yes, welfare. Thats a good solution. Then, once all of our blue collar workers are dependent on welfare, our economy can really begin to take flight. /sarcasm

Do you even live here?
I thought you said you were from Zimbabwe, or Belgium, or some damned place.
Just don't worry about it, okay?
We're rich. We can afford it.

RatedPanda · 02-08-08, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1069

Do you even live here?
I thought you said you were from Zimbabwe, or Belgium, or some damned place.
Just don't worry about it, okay?
We're rich. We can afford it.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes, I'm American, as were my parents, their parents, and their parents parents. I've also served in the US Navy as an IT aboard the USS Blue Ridge. Does my opinion count now, or am I still unworthy?

I believe it already says where my location is, Jakarta, Indonesia. I work overseas. But all that is besides the point.

And about being "rich". I'd like to see how long that happens with the economy steeping the way it is. Making suggestions of welfare as a solution won't keep anyone "rich".

UtahBill · 02-08-08, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1069

I can. I have.
I've lived on less.
There's always welfare.

I don't know anything about teachers, but even I can see this is a potentially incendiary statement, one that can't possibly be true.

Anybody can get laid off, and it's not necessarily their fault. It doesn't mean they weren't "good".

If so, you might as well just say that everybody who has been laid off in this country deserved it; they were all bad workers and that's why it happened. The illegal aliens are apparently much better workers, so more power to them.

What is bugging you? Read the news lately? There are teacher shortages almost everywhere, it is so bad that even bad teachers don't get laid off. They might get fired, but only if they get charged with inappropriate behaviour with a student. There may be rare situations where they do get laid off, like in AZ a few years back, because people were leaving an area and school enrollment went down, but that just meant that the teachers went where the students went, and worked at a different school district.
I can't speak for every state, but of all the states I have lived in, there are teacher shortages.
Sounds like you really don't know anything about teachers, like you say....

1069 · 02-08-08, 11:03 PM

Quote:

There are teacher shortages almost everywhere, it is so bad that even bad teachers don't get laid off.

Bill. Read my lips.
Anybody can get laid off.
It's got nothing to do with good or bad, really.
Back in 2000, my city's ISD had to make 7 million in budget cuts.
They laid off non-bilingual teachers.
I'm sure they weren't all "bad".
That's just how the cookie crumbles.

You're just begging, with an absolutist and value-laden statement like that, for one of your fellow forum members to come along and start yipping about how their mom/ wife/ cousin/ aunt/ friend is a good teacher who recently got laid off, and yadda yadda.
Good and bad are subjective terms anyway.

Anybody in any profession can get laid off.
There are other states besides Utah. There are other school districts besides Bill's-wife's-ISD.