Immigration = waves of democratic voters

[Laize]

What I got from the article is not the same thing you got from it.

You see it as an example of jobs Americans will not do and only illegals will do it. I see an example of a system where illegals have been used to artificially drag down the prevailing wages to such an extreme that no one in their right mind would do them.

Just look at the first page. "For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits." If they won't work for minimum wage, then I guess the job is worth more than minimum wage. You have a pretty fucked up prevailing wage when they want you to bust your ass for a wage so low most can't live on.

I repeat my point, you showed me a job where they couldn't find Americans willing to work for them and I can actually point at that job as an example of a job that refuses to pay what the work is worth. The point still stands.

And just about every industry they also mentioned suffered the same fate, they had used illegals to force prevailing wage below what the job is worth so that even the most desperate of Americans would not work for them except to qualify for welfare or cover to explain income from an illegal source. I mean do you honestly think people should bust their asses for minimum wage or close to it and not even be able to survive. When I was healthy even I would refuse to do that. Now if the job paid a decent wage for the work, hell yes, but what they offered for the work, you are better off selling drugs and have a better shot at life that way too which is sad.

Edit: The people in the area refuse to accept the fact that they don't pay enough and instead of accepting that fact and increasing the pay of their workers, they complain that legal people refuse to do the job when more then enough would gladly do it if the pay was worth it.

Asking minimum wage for many of these jobs is like asking for a Masters Degree for a job that only pays 22k a year salary and no benefits. No one in their right mind would take that so long as they have a choice.

Incorrect.

The farmers cannot simply raise wages. It's not that easy for them. They are already a subsidized industry which means American farmers are already not profitable on their own. If you want the wages increased, you need to increase the subsidy. And fuck that noise.

[Kokolums]

It's a pretty sad day when;

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. "

is seen as "liberal Democrat rhetoric", rather than a fundamentally American ethic.

Its not a fundamentally American ethic.

When America was founded, the country was all about white anglo-saxon protestants. If you were anything else: black, asian, native american, italian, polish, russian, catholic.....you were often treated as a second class citizen. Its just that the world didn't CARE because America was not a super power, but some backwater fledging nation out in some wilderness an ocean away from civilization.

You can EASILY find xenophobic comments from the founding fathers of America to disprove the "give me your tired, your poor" ethic.

Benjamin Franklin loudly voiced concern over an "immigration problem"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/op...avis.html?_r=0

A PROMINENT American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

This sentiment did not emerge from the rancorous debate over the immigration bill defeated last week in the Senate. It was not the lament of some guest of Lou Dobbs or a Republican candidate intent on wooing bedrock conservative votes. Guess again.

Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin. And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the “most stupid of their nation.”

"give me your tired, your poor" is a nice sounding phrase, but its pretty much never been true in the United States. Xenophobia has always existed in America. Its always existed in every country really. Its an ideal, not a reality.

[Fugus]

Incorrect.

The farmers cannot simply raise wages. It's not that easy for them. They are already a subsidized industry which means American farmers are already not profitable on their own. If you want the wages increased, you need to increase the subsidy. And fuck that noise.

Incorrect.

The farmers aren't subsidized because they don't make enough, they are subsidized to keep the supply and demand steady and avoid massive fluctuation where the market is flooded and the prices drop to nothing or nearly empty of certain things and they go for a kings ransom. They even pay them NOT to grow food to control that at times. They are more than profitable on their own though. I live in North Carolina near a lot of the fields and my mother lives in Minnesota where I get to see and hear plenty of it when I am there. Although up there they have had a case where companies have been buying out farmers or so I was told.

And the increased price of labor would not drastically increase the price of the goods as that is not the major cost sink in it. What you are asking for is for them to use illegals to avoid paying proper wages. Doubling wages doesn't mean doubling prices.

[Laize]

Incorrect.

The farmers aren't subsidized because they don't make enough, they are subsidized to keep the supply and demand steady and avoid massive fluctuation where the market is flooded and the prices drop to nothing or nearly empty of certain things and they go for a kings ransom. They even pay them NOT to grow food to control that at times. They are more than profitable on their own though. I live in North Carolina near a lot of the fields and my mother lives in Minnesota where I get to see and hear plenty of it when I am there. Although up there they have had a case where companies have been buying out farmers or so I was told.

And the increased price of labor would not drastically increase the price of the goods as that is not the major cost sink in it. What you are asking for is for them to use illegals to avoid paying proper wages. Doubling wages doesn't mean doubling prices.

Um... Subsidies aren't to control supply and demand... The entire point of subsidies and tariffs is to keep American companies competitive with cheaper foreign competitors. Why do you think the US forces consumers to pay higher prices with auto industry tariffs? Why do you think the US steel and oil companies receive subsidies?

Subsidies exist for farms for the same reason. It's not to control supply and demand (Quotas haven't been a thing since the Dust Bowl). It's to keep American farmers competitive with foreign farmers.

[Felya]

The farmers aren't subsidized because they don't make enough, they are subsidized to keep the supply and demand steady and avoid massive fluctuation where the market is flooded and the prices drop to nothing or nearly empty of certain things and they go for a kings ransom.

How did that work for corn? How easy was it to find products with no high fructose corn syrup in the 80s compared to now?



Sugar doesn't sell for a king's ransom...

They even pay them NOT to grow food to control that at times. They are more than profitable on their own though.

That's because the crop is not being profitable. They get paid to grow corn instead, far more often than anything else.

And the increased price of labor would not drastically increase the price of the goods as that is not the major cost sink in it. What you are asking for is for them to use illegals to avoid paying proper wages. Doubling wages doesn't mean doubling prices.

It's not that they should be using illegals, it's that the price of our agriculture depend on it. You wouldn't just need to pump their pay, but bump it to the point where people would be willing to do the labor. The cost increase would be exponential, because I'd bet the HR costs to cover those employees would exceed their current cumulative pay.

[Fugus]

You are trying to tell me it isn't profitable when the US agriculture industry just made over 122 BILLION dollars in 2012.

As for the thing about corn, I hate the corn subsidize and how they want to put it in everything. But not anything I have control over. Would rather see that space used for other things.

If they are using the corn for more damn sugar substitutes then they need to go fuck themselves and actually use something else.
If they are using the corn for ethanol than they need to go fuck themselves and use switchgrass instead and get a much higher yield for a much easier and faster growing crop.

[Wildtree]

It's not that they should be using illegals, it's that the price of our agriculture depend on it. You wouldn't just need to pump their pay, but bump it to the point where people would be willing to do the labor. The cost increase would be exponential, because I'd bet the HR costs to cover those employees would exceed their current cumulative pay.

I have a question, or two about this...

How do the wages compare to the improvement on farming efficiency over time?
How do the prices of agricultural goods look over time as well?

I am absolutely buying into the small farmer being stuck between a rock and a hard place. But I am reluctant to buy into industrialized agricultural business being in the same situation. Yet I do believe that the vast amount of labor is used by those and not the small one family size farms.