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The AZ Immigration Law Has Been Decided

Again, you keep saying "below market value" when that is just some idiocy you invented.
A carpenter in Chicago CURRENTLY has a market value of $28.50 per. Are you arguing that during the boom the cost was LOWER?
 
Quite a few if as you claim you paid them $10-$15. Duh.

I only paid that to unskilled laborers. At most, I'd have one of them on the job and they were usually fresh off the boat and looking to learn the trade. The other four guys made a minimum of $25 an hour.

****, In 2006 I was the lowest paid guy on the crew at 40K.
 
Again, you keep saying "below market value" when that is just some idiocy you invented.

I believe that he is not entirely wrong. Do you think there is a glut of us "wood welders" (carpenters) in south TX? I see DAILY the situation on residential carpentry jobs. Residential new/remodel work is booming in TX yet many entire carpentry crews getting the work are speaking ONLY spanish and working CHEAP, forcing the rest of us to either sit it out or work for far less. I know you think that this is just "free market" fairness but I must, respectfully, disagree. I am now making bids at material cost x2, down from x2.5 only two years ago, just to get ANY work. Ten years ago bids of material cost x3 would get plenty of work. I just got tired of wasting my time by working up too many losing bids.
 
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I only paid that to unskilled laborers. At most, I'd have one of them on the job and they were usually fresh off the boat and looking to learn the trade. The other four guys made a minimum of $25 an hour.

****, In 2006 I was the lowest paid guy on the crew at 40K.
Fresh off the boat...and legal too!

Again, you were not willing to pay prevailing wages for Chicago. You wanted to pay unskilled wages for skilled workers in one of the highest COL areas in the nation. No wonder you got out of that line.
 
Justice Scalia remarks:
The Mexicans have already wrecked their own country, now they are in the process of wrecking ours. Let them choose some other country as their pinata.
 
I believe that he is not entirely wrong. Do you think there is a glut of us "wood welders" (carpenters) in south TX? I see DAILY the situation on residential carpentry jobs. Residential new/remodel work is booming in TX yet many entire carpentry crews getting the work are speaking ONLY spanish and working CHEAP, forcing the rest of us to sit it out or work for far less. I know you think that this is just "free market" fairness but I must, respectfully, disagree. I am now making bids at material cost x2, down from x2.5 only two years ago, just to get ANY work. Ten years ago bids of material cost x3 would get plenty of work. I just got tired of wastin my time by working up too many losing bids.

That's actually about what it is like here. I still do some side jobs now and again, but I don't make nearly as much as I did 5 or 6 years ago. Basically, I do them for about $10 an hour profit. As a side income, it's fine, but I wouldn't be able to live off of it.

The last year I had my company going, I was underbid on a job by so much that I couldn't have profited on it even if I had only paid my guys $7 an hour (I actually sat down and calculated how much I would have had to pay to match the price just to break even). My theory is that the guy had to be stealing some of his materials and paying jack**** to pull a profit.

That last year, I even took a few jobs where I was just breaking even in order to keep my guys working (part of the reason I made the least amount of money that year).

So I probably understand the frustration you feel better than most. I don't think that illegal immigration is the cause of this, though. I also don't believe cheap foreign labor is the cause of outsourcing, though.

Ultimately, I blame the consumer.
 
His policy is to concentrate the limited resources available to deport criminals.

If MY job was threatened by unskilled laborers who could barely speak the language I would rethink my career choice.
Instead, you can get a job threatened by educated cheap labor allowed to legally come here from India. The bosses you worship won't keep anyone immune from this invasion except their own children. The rewards for being a flunkie of economic traitors last only long enough for them to get around to your kind too.
 
Fresh off the boat...and legal too!

Yep. In fact, some of them were technically natural born citizens that were raised in Ireland.

Again, you were not willing to pay prevailing wages for Chicago.

Again, you don't know what the **** you are talking about.

You wanted to pay unskilled wages for skilled workers in one of the highest COL areas in the nation.

Again, knowing what you are talking about would actually make you say fewer stupid things. You failed at the line of bull**** claiming I paid less than 50K a year, so now you start a new line of bull**** pretending I didn't pay enough even though I paid more than the median income in one of the highest CoL area in the country.

Of course, don't let your complete and utter lack of knowledge on the subject get in the way of your opinions.

No wonder you got out of that line.

I actually got out of that line in part due to the economic collapse, in part due to the fact that my business partner (my father) suffered a traumatic brain injury and required full time care, which is what I am doing right now.

but again, do not allow your astounding ignorance of the subject matter get in the way of your opinions. Lord knows those do not have to be derived from an intelligent informed foundation.
 
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The problem with your assessment is the flawed assumption that it's just illegal immigrants that drive down the cost of labor. Legal immigrants, the people I typically hired, were twice the employee for half the cost as a natural born US citizen was.

Illegal immigrants aren't the problem (and they never have been, despite decades of whining by the anti-illegal crowd), lazy Americans are the problem. Personally I'd rather deport the no-skill-having, overpriced, arrogant Natural-born citizens that are nothing more than a victim-mentality drain in the economy than the hard working, talented, workers that just happen to be here illegally.
you shure talk a big game about the LAZY americans at least they aren't law breaking scumbags.
 

I don't know what that is based on, but I am 100% certain that it is not the reality of what the market value of pay a residential carpenter could expect here in Chicago. Absolutely, positively certain. It looks more like the amount that each employee cost the employer to employ.

****, union carpenters do not make 41 an hour here. I'm not sure what you have found, but it's not a realistic picture of what people get paid to do carpentry.
 
That's actually about what it is like here. I still do some side jobs now and again, but I don't make nearly as much as I did 5 or 6 years ago. Basically, I do them for about $10 an hour profit. As a side income, it's fine, but I wouldn't be able to live off of it.

The last year I had my company going, I was underbid on a job by so much that I couldn't have profited on it even if I had only paid my guys $7 an hour (I actually sat down and calculated how much I would have had to pay to match the price just to break even). My theory is that the guy had to be stealing some of his materials and paying jack**** to pull a profit.

That last year, I even took a few jobs where I was just breaking even in order to keep my guys working (part of the reason I made the least amount of money that year).

So I probably understand the frustration you feel better than most. I don't think that illegal immigration is the cause of this, though. I also don't believe cheap foreign labor is the cause of outsourcing, though.

Ultimately, I blame the consumer.

Blame the consumer? Are you kidding me? If I, as a consumer, want a very modest deck built, I put out bids; I get 3 independent bids as follows $1,200, $1,500 and $3,000, I then check what Lowe's and Home Depot would charge, they both say about $2,000 - OK which bid do I, the consumer, pick?

The same is true of "outsourcing", I can buy a Chinese made tool, say a circular saw, for $100 or I can buy a U.S. made EQUIVALENT for $169; which saw do I, as the consumer, buy?
 
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No, I mean they priced themselves out of the market. I ran a construction company (and I only hired legal workers, by the way). Natural-born American citizens think they are too good to work for the wages immigrants will work for. On top of that, they weren't as good of employees.


If we Americans would stand up to our conceited self-appointed Masters, we would fire them by saying that they wage-cut their way out of the market and out of their property, which we created the value of. Some people think they are too good for the low profits they'd make if anyone but themselves evaluated their contribution to the American economy.
 
Blame the consumer? Are you kidding me? If I, as a consumer, want a very modest deck built, I put out bids; I get 3 independent bids as follows $1,200, $1,500 and $3,000, I then check what Lowe's and Home Depot would charge they both say about $2,000 - OK which bid do I, the consumer, pick?

If you truly care about your fellow Americans, you do more than just ask the price.

The same is true of "outsourcing", I can buy a Chinese made tool, say a circualr saw, for $100 or I can bu a U.S. made EQUIVALENT for $169; which saw do I, as the consumer, buy?

See, here's the real irony of our debate. I always buy American made products if I can, even though they cost more. I don't care if it's immigrants or American citizens doing the work, but I do care if my money goes toward helping the US economy or if it goes to help the Chinese economy.

The consumer is ultimately responsible because they are shortsighted and unwilling to sacrifice for the greater good. If they did this, many of our problems would not exist.
 
I don't know what that is based on, but I am 100% certain that it is not the reality of what the market value of pay a residential carpenter could expect here in Chicago. Absolutely, positively certain. It looks more like the amount that each employee cost the employer to employ.

****, union carpenters do not make 41 an hour here. I'm not sure what you have found, but it's not a realistic picture of what people get paid to do carpentry.
Sure....yeah....you are the expert (socialist!!) and these documents are LYING!!!!!

Pegged.
 
If we Americans would stand up to our conceited self-appointed Masters, we would fire them by saying that they wage-cut their way out of the market and out of their property, which we created the value of. Some people think they are too good for the low profits they'd make if anyone but themselves evaluated their contribution to the American economy.

This would only relate to me if I ever made obscene profits, which I didn't. In fact, my profits were really quite meager, considering the fact that I also strapped on a tool belt each day. Just barely enough to justify having the business rather than simply working for someone else most years.

But again, I paid well, despite gimmesometruth's imaginary claims.
 
I said I couldn't. Past tense. When the construction industry died (along with familial issues), I closed down the company. In 2005, you couldn't find an American construction worker willing to work for $25 an hour. Today you can, because there are no jobs and people have become more humble. The problem is that equally skilled immigrants will do the same work for $10.



It's not my fault you ignored my use of the past tense. :shrug:
If you love foreigners so much, you should be deported. And if these people were such great workers, their own economies would be booming and they wouldn't be coming here.
 
Sure....yeah....you are the expert (socialist!!) and these documents are LYING!!!!!

No, the documents aren't lying, you just don't know what the **** they are saying.

Using the bureau of labor and statistics information:

Carpenters

If you scroll down, you will see that the mean hourly wage for Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL Metropolitan Division is $25.37

Mean, meaning the average.

The fact that I have experience was enough for me to know that you didn't have a ****ing clue about what you are saying. The above is simply verification from an outside source that you are, indeed, clueless.
 
I have no idea, but the police are free to do it as often as they want, for merely being suspect, not actually doing some suspicious. The stop is based on how they look.
You keep saying this. I do not believe it is true. Would you point out in the law where it says the police are free to do as they want? It should be easy for you to do as you are so completely invested in the idea. Thank you in advance.
 
If you love foreigners so much, you should be deported.

Oh, then allow me to really piss you off by letting you know that my father was an illegal immigrant in the 70's. He's a citizen now, but I'm practically an anchor baby! :lol:


And if these people were such great workers, their own economies would be booming and they wouldn't be coming here.

The one's who leave, leave in order to find opportunities to work. If Americans spent more time looking for work, rather than looking for jobs, we'd be in a better place. :shrug:
 
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