War Liberal

One reason that illegal immigrants take lower wages is because they operate in an underground economy and don't pay federal income, state income, of social security taxes. Their gross pay is better than a lot of people's net pay after taxes.

If you look at it that way. But they don't get health insurance, or social security or medicare if they live and stay that long. And they do pay sales taxes, which in many states (including Alabama) are the largest share of state taxes. Where it's not sales taxes it's often property taxes.

And most people don't pay a whole lot in Federal income taxes anyway. People below the poverty line generally don't pay any, and in fact get the EITC.

Some of these jobs are above board, even if those doing them are not. I don't know if anyone has figures (although I'd be interested in them, even if they were just rough gueses), but many illegal aliens pay social security and tax witholdings using stolen and/or falsified SSNs... and, of course, their employers pay the payroll taxes. Whatever this amounts to is, of course, a net gain to the "system" since the benefits/refunds earned are uncollectible. Now that I think about it, I did read something not too long ago that quantified this to some extent. I will try to find it, but I'm not sure how much luck I'll have.

"Their gross pay is better than a lot of people's net pay after taxes."

Yeah, Latino immigrants in Hoover have it made. You can tell by the way they buy their clothes from garage sales and either drive piece of sh*t cars or walk everywhere. Who needs some cushy job in an air-conditioned office when you've got the American dream already?

No, I'm aware it's not as simple as that. Language barriers present certain obstacles as well. I don't believe they're choosing sh*t jobs solely because they're making out like bandits in an underground economy, though (plenty of native citizens--some I reluctantly claim as family--are paid off the books to avoid taxes, by the way). And as Mac points out, these guys pay the most substantial tax our state levies in the form of sales taxes.

w/r/t corporate responsibility: I was told by family in Cullman (though I can find nothing to substantiate it online) that some immigrants working at the Marshall Durbin plant up there were rounded up--at home, not at the plant--and deported. Two weeks later, Marshall Durbin sends a truck to Mexico to procure more workers. The fact is that companies (aside from the Wal-Mart incident) aren't having to answer for employing illegal immigrants. The immigrant workers, on the other hand, are barely acknowledged as human in all this (for example, the dismantling of families during the deportation process is not a consideration).

I think this is the article I remembered. It's more geared toward general identity theft issues, but talks a lot about illegal immigrants using stolen SSNs with their own names to get jobs. The Social Security money is actually held in a special account. I don't think it address what happens with the personal income and other taxes paid/witheld go. There are some attempts to quantify what part of this is truly illegal immigrant workers, as opposed to just errors in filing, but they're not very precise.

Note - my comments are based on memory and a quick skim of it just now. I may have missed some specifics.

Ultimately, the only reason they take substandard wages is that even poverty in the US is better than the standard of living back home.

The simple fact is that a large portion of the American economy (especially in the agricultural and maintenance fields) is dependent upon cheap, and often illegal, immigrant labor.

Quite frankly, if the government were to take a Michelle Malkin/Lou Dobbs close-the-borders-NOW stance then the U.S. economy would probably go into a tail spin. It wouldn't be pretty.

Pretty much, Michael. The Powers that Be don't want to give up their maids and gardeners, though, so that sort of thing is unlikely to happen unless a Pat Buchanan type somehow came to power in the GOP. Not that I'd put that past the Republican primary electorate. It would have to be the Republicans, because the Democrats wouldn't have a prayer without the Latino vote.

Mac and friends-
Taking this from another angle, forget President Buchanan, domestic help for the wealthy and ICE officers working quadruple overtime to deport illegals.

Would you be willing to pay more for anything and everything if it meant that higher wages were being paid to Americans and legal immigrants?

I like to think I would. It would mean a lot of sacrifice and me learning how to stuff I currently hire out to contractors. But I would think it would be better for us here.

I'd like to leave the topic of whether there are sufficient numbers of Americans and legals to fill the fruit picking and janitor jobs at any wage, separate.

I choose Publix over Wal-Mart because of Wal-Mart's practices as an employer and corporate citizen and I don't buy from Gap and Old Navy (which are inexpensive) anymore because of their sweatshop-made products.

Whether I'd be willing/able to do this on a much larger scale (paying much higher prices) I can't speak to for certain, of course. But, like you, I'd like to think I would.

Mac mentioned that the illegals don't get health insurance (just as a lot of legal workers don't), but that does present a special problem for them when they need care. If they go to a regular doctor or hospital, the care is expensive and they risk deportation. If they go to some unlicensed medic working out of his house, they get care, but probably bad care. There are at least three solutions. They can stay in Mexico, because it's their decision to come here without medical care. The taxpayers of the U.S. can start to cover them, but I'm not ready for more government care like in Canada. Or, we can do nothing. I do nothing when I'm not sure what to do.

Someone else mentioned that a lot of illegals do have taxes taken out but use phony S/S #s. One of my clients in the landscaping business regularly has the IRS sending back W-2's with wrong or duplicate numbers. You're right. That money goes back into the pot for someone.

Also, my client will drive from Atlanta to the B'ham airport (which they use because Soutwest is cheaper), because he wants to get them back to work immediately after their Mexican visits. I will say that his workers are paid very well, but they earn it.

Overall, I would prefer for Mexico to end the corruption in its government and put its economy back together so that we wouldn't have to absorb their unemployed.

Obviously, the Republicans will have to be very careful in the way they use this issue.

In future elections Republicans will publicly say diversity and immigration are fine. Of course, behind the backs of hispanics, the MSM, and moderate voters right wing groups (with the blessing of thugs like Rove) will tell rednecks across the country that they have to get out and vote for the Republicans because if the Democrats have their way filthy brown people who can't speak English will flood into their neighborhoods and take over their children's schools. (Remember folks, immigration isn't a hot issue on the right because of economics, it is an issue because of race)

Of course, the Republicans already do something similar to this in a little publicized way. Publicly, politically-active evangelicals embrace Catholics and Jews, but at evangelical churches on Sundays many preachers will tell their congregations about how the Jews are going to hell because they won't accept Jesus and the Catholics are going to the same place because they worship the pope.

Isn't the fruit-growing industry, and indeed most US agriculture, completely dependent on immigrant pickers? Eric Schlosser's "Reefer Madness" gave us an inside look at the California strawberry industry. It's been a while since I read the book but I believe that if farmers paid these guys even minimum wage for the back-breaking work they do, produce would become a luxury unaffordable for many folks.

Race is the resent behind the immigration issue, but it is economics that gets people to act.

A lot of the paleocons are Conservative Roman Catholics and the impression I get from reading them is that they couch their moral arguments in generic Christian language so they can get the evangelical rubes to go along.

It plays both ways.

I think the real problem is that there aren't enough Americans willing to do the unskilled labor. I never did understand those people; I spent my summers as a teen hoeing weeds out of bean fields for $2.00 an hour, and used the money to buy computer equipment. It took all summer, but I was able to afford a 48k memory card for my Vic-20 at the end of it, after the bills were paid.

Do I have the precious "moral authority" to oppose illegal immigration, given that history?

It took all summer, but I was able to afford a 48k memory card for my Vic-20

Wow... you were a power user back in the day, eh?

I almost always vote Republican, and neither I nor any of my Republican friends view illegal immigration in terms of racial attitudes. I think that too many liberal get all of their information from other liberals who either don't have a clue or just want to make the other side look bad--but, probably both. Most of us just want laws enforced instead of ignored, and the reasons that we have those laws have been debated and voted on in Congress. I suspect that the Democrats only want more illegal immigrants because it provides a new class of voters for them to exploit and use to push their vote tallies.

Anecdotally, while I was visiting Hawaii last year, taro growers were offering something like $12-13 an hour to pick taro. Good wage, ugly work. The state has pretty high unemployment, but not enough people signed on.

It would take some kind of complicated econometric and sociological study to get an idea if there is some wage to get enough Americans to do grunt labor. Maybe someone has already. I'm asking if you would be willing to pay that price, if it existed.

If we could get enough Americans and legal immigrants to do the work, enforcing the immigration law is not so difficult as there likely wouldn't be as many illegals around.

Herman, I don't know what island you were on. Hawai'i has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and has had for over a year. It varies from Molokai (high) to Oahu (v. low), but overall we're at 4% unemployment.

As to taro pickers, I don't know the wages, but I agree it's hard hard stoop labor, and in a wetland to boot.

Linkmeister-
Really? I thought unemployment was high because I saw lots of closed businesses and (non-tourist) people just sitting around all day. But I admit to not looking at figures, so I stand corrected.

I was on Kauai.

Closed businesses certainly throw the people who worked there out of work, but they close for a lot of different reasons (unfortunately, we can't seem to keep a good NY-style deli open out here). The Yum Yum Tree restaurant (national or regional? Can't remember) just closed its last location in one of our mid-level malls because it lost its lease. It did a good business, but apparently not enough to justify paying a large increase.

We have a peculiar system of landholding out here, with over half the land held by a relatively small number of large holders, principally estates. When leases expire (and they're usually long-term), rents go way up in an attempt to recoup all those years of low income.

You're probably already aware that the Community Shield sweeps were targeted at the violent Mara Salvatrucha group.

You may be interested in an article I wrote about the origins of MS-13 (Machete 13) and their connection to Al Qaeda. They are not a gang at all but an insurgent group operating within the United States.

http://organicwarfare.blogspot.com

Wow, that comment spam blog troll software is getting good.