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Old 02-08-2010, 08:22 PM
 
64 posts, read 53,891 times
Reputation: 28

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Quote:
Originally Posted by tallrick View Post
The excuse comes up repeatedly, we need illegals to do the jobs "nobody wants". Doesn't anyone believe that automation and increased efficiency would reduce the number of low-paid laborer work? I would think that a country like the United States could develop robotic vegetable and fruit pickers than can work 24 hours, and better ways of conducting business. All the jobs I see Latin American immigrants doing today were done by other types of people in years past.
In general tall rick you are right.

However if I have a med size family farm that requires more than myself to pick fruit, I would have to spend 150,000 minimum just to buy a machine, then i would have to spend another 300,000 just to fully automate the process. for a large scale agricultural farm machines CAN be better SOMETIMES.

Imagine I just spent 1/2 million dollars on machine to pick my fruit, well if the machine breaks down, there goes my invesment. Now if the price of fruit goes down, then how will I pay back my machine? I will owe money and I will lose the machine and my farm, and I will be out of a job not just mexicans.

Now when the economy goes down, I can lay off all my workers if the price of fruit is low enough and wait till prices go back up next year and hire again. But if I buy a machine and can't make payments I go broke, its a huge risk to automate your farm if your not rich basically.

As for jobs americans won't do, well I can't find americans to do jobs to pick fruits, they say thats beneath them, and they complain tooo much they want $18 an hour instead of $9/hr, they want more breaks + benefits, they want healthcare they say the work is too hard and quit in 1 week, or they would often rather play video games in their parents basement, and these are unemployed 20 y/os.

No american wants their kid to grow up to be a farm hand, so yes there are jobs americans won't do. I could pay people $18 an hr to pick fruit, but your not going to buy apples for $5 a piece are you? No, your going to buy the cheap foreign apples.
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Old 02-08-2010, 08:41 PM
 
14,306 posts, read 13,273,381 times
Reputation: 2136
Quote:
Originally Posted by nottigurl View Post
In general tall rick you are right.

However if I have a med size family farm that requires more than myself to pick fruit, I would have to spend 150,000 minimum just to buy a machine, then i would have to spend another 300,000 just to fully automate the process. for a large scale agricultural farm machines CAN be better SOMETIMES.

Imagine I just spent 1/2 million dollars on machine to pick my fruit, well if the machine breaks down, there goes my invesment. Now if the price of fruit goes down, then how will I pay back my machine? I will owe money and I will lose the machine and my farm, and I will be out of a job not just mexicans.

Now when the economy goes down, I can lay off all my workers if the price of fruit is low enough and wait till prices go back up next year and hire again. But if I buy a machine and can't make payments I go broke, its a huge risk to automate your farm if your not rich basically.

As for jobs americans won't do, well I can't find americans to do jobs to pick fruits, they say thats beneath them, and they complain tooo much they want $18 an hour instead of $9/hr, they want more breaks + benefits, they want healthcare they say the work is too hard and quit in 1 week, or they would often rather play video games in their parents basement, and these are unemployed 20 y/os.

No american wants their kid to grow up to be a farm hand, so yes there are jobs americans won't do. I could pay people $18 an hr to pick fruit, but your not going to buy apples for $5 a piece are you? No, your going to buy the cheap foreign apples.
How about all the visas available to import legal immigrant workers?
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Old 02-09-2010, 12:02 AM
 
64 posts, read 53,891 times
Reputation: 28
You mean all those visas like the h1b visa where they run out of those visas the first day they are available- those visas?

realize there is significant cost and time in obtaining such a visa. If I have to wait 2-3 years because uscis makes me have to prove I can't find a us citizen to pick tomatoes am I suppose to not work for 2-3 years?

Really they take months just to process the visa, and then they can come back and say after I spent thousands on lawyers, to run some ads in the paper for 6 months. well in 6months all my crops will rot in the ground.

Now cost, so I should spend $$$ on lawyers, $$$ filling out forms, $$ to employee benefits, mind you do you think a mexican fruit picker knows how to fill out an immigration form? Nope, probably not even literate in spanish, so then I would basically have to fill out 10-20 forms by myself with no guarantee of approval.

I can come to no other conclusion except that the gov't wants farmers to employ illegal aliens. They purposely slow down the legal immigration process, make it hard to get approval, they know there are 20 million illegal people who they let come here and if I don't employ they wil probably steal my food in the night anyways if they can't get a job anywhere.

Bill gates moved his factories on the west coast to romania b/c the gov't purposely slows down the legal migrant worker programs to the point that companies lose money because they are just waiting on immigration.

Some might say just employ legal americans already here, I can't speak for bill gates, but all the legal americans I know are not wiling to work for $9/hr add in benefits and its more like $14/hr. You would think young people would work for that but they are all stuck up. They are either like my parents are rich, I don't have to work on no farm with my hands, I can play computers all day, or they are poor and for some reason I can't figure out they look down on farm work. I went to the high school and post jobs, no one signed up.
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Old 02-09-2010, 06:50 AM
 
12,867 posts, read 14,862,099 times
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i will agree that the government does slow down every process imaginable, but i seriously doubt that bill gates was "losing money" and had to move to romania. i think a more likely explanation is that bill gates wanted to increase his profit margin.....
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Old 02-09-2010, 12:52 PM
 
23,988 posts, read 10,350,367 times
Reputation: 45859
Quote:
Originally Posted by nottigurl View Post
You mean all those visas like the h1b visa where they run out of those visas the first day they are available- those visas?

realize there is significant cost and time in obtaining such a visa. If I have to wait 2-3 years because uscis makes me have to prove I can't find a us citizen to pick tomatoes am I suppose to not work for 2-3 years?

Really they take months just to process the visa, and then they can come back and say after I spent thousands on lawyers, to run some ads in the paper for 6 months. well in 6months all my crops will rot in the ground.

Now cost, so I should spend $$$ on lawyers, $$$ filling out forms, $$ to employee benefits, mind you do you think a mexican fruit picker knows how to fill out an immigration form? Nope, probably not even literate in spanish, so then I would basically have to fill out 10-20 forms by myself with no guarantee of approval.

I can come to no other conclusion except that the gov't wants farmers to employ illegal aliens. They purposely slow down the legal immigration process, make it hard to get approval, they know there are 20 million illegal people who they let come here and if I don't employ they wil probably steal my food in the night anyways if they can't get a job anywhere.

Bill gates moved his factories on the west coast to romania b/c the gov't purposely slows down the legal migrant worker programs to the point that companies lose money because they are just waiting on immigration.

Some might say just employ legal americans already here, I can't speak for bill gates, but all the legal americans I know are not wiling to work for $9/hr add in benefits and its more like $14/hr. You would think young people would work for that but they are all stuck up. They are either like my parents are rich, I don't have to work on no farm with my hands, I can play computers all day, or they are poor and for some reason I can't figure out they look down on farm work. I went to the high school and post jobs, no one signed up.
Try H2A :>)
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Old 02-09-2010, 01:00 PM
 
14,306 posts, read 13,273,381 times
Reputation: 2136
Quote:
Originally Posted by nottigurl View Post
You mean all those visas like the h1b visa where they run out of those visas the first day they are available- those visas?

realize there is significant cost and time in obtaining such a visa. If I have to wait 2-3 years because uscis makes me have to prove I can't find a us citizen to pick tomatoes am I suppose to not work for 2-3 years?

Really they take months just to process the visa, and then they can come back and say after I spent thousands on lawyers, to run some ads in the paper for 6 months. well in 6months all my crops will rot in the ground.

Now cost, so I should spend $$$ on lawyers, $$$ filling out forms, $$ to employee benefits, mind you do you think a mexican fruit picker knows how to fill out an immigration form? Nope, probably not even literate in spanish, so then I would basically have to fill out 10-20 forms by myself with no guarantee of approval.

I can come to no other conclusion except that the gov't wants farmers to employ illegal aliens. They purposely slow down the legal immigration process, make it hard to get approval, they know there are 20 million illegal people who they let come here and if I don't employ they wil probably steal my food in the night anyways if they can't get a job anywhere.

Bill gates moved his factories on the west coast to romania b/c the gov't purposely slows down the legal migrant worker programs to the point that companies lose money because they are just waiting on immigration.

Some might say just employ legal americans already here, I can't speak for bill gates, but all the legal americans I know are not wiling to work for $9/hr add in benefits and its more like $14/hr. You would think young people would work for that but they are all stuck up. They are either like my parents are rich, I don't have to work on no farm with my hands, I can play computers all day, or they are poor and for some reason I can't figure out they look down on farm work. I went to the high school and post jobs, no one signed up.
I doubt that gaining legal immigrant workers is that hard or takes that long. I know of someone who claims there are unlimited H-2A visas for farm workers and I hope to be able to get that information for you. But let's just say you are right for the sake of argument. Why don't you get out of the farming business then? I mean if I were a business owner and I couldn't find workers for my business I would seriously consider something else rather than starving to death or resorting to circumventiing our laws to make a living.
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Old 02-09-2010, 02:15 PM
 
Location: ...at a 3AM epiphany
2,205 posts, read 2,528,561 times
Reputation: 453
Quote:
Originally Posted by chicagonut View Post
I doubt that gaining legal immigrant workers is that hard or takes that long. I know of someone who claims there are unlimited H-2A visas for farm workers and I hope to be able to get that information for you. But let's just say you are right for the sake of argument. Why don't you get out of the farming business then? I mean if I were a business owner and I couldn't find workers for my business I would seriously consider something else rather than starving to death or resorting to circumventiing our laws to make a living.
And there you go. A very common sense solution. Thank you chicagonut.
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Old 02-09-2010, 02:21 PM
 
Location: SW Missouri
15,853 posts, read 35,020,721 times
Reputation: 22693
Quote:
Originally Posted by tallrick View Post
The excuse comes up repeatedly, we need illegals to do the jobs "nobody wants". Doesn't anyone believe that automation and increased efficiency would reduce the number of low-paid laborer work? I would think that a country like the United States could develop robotic vegetable and fruit pickers than can work 24 hours, and better ways of conducting business. All the jobs I see Latin American immigrants doing today were done by other types of people in years past.
Oh, I would LOVE to see a strawberry picked by a robot. Of course, just like corn and other crops, sooner or later Monsanto will develop a strain of strawberry that will be as tough as rubber, LOL. Nevertheless, there are SOME jobs that robots will never be able to do effectively.

Personally, robotics is usually a poor substitute. Have you been to a automatic car wash lately? It does a lousy job on the undercarriage and the wheels. Even if you can develop a robot to clean toilets, chances are that the final results are not going to be good enough for "discriminating" customers. Even dishwashers are sub-par if you ask me. I cannot count the times (back when I had one), that I had to re-wash dishes because food was stuck on them, or they did not get clean enough, or there were horrible water spots.

20yrsinBranson
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Old 02-09-2010, 03:50 PM
 
14,306 posts, read 13,273,381 times
Reputation: 2136
Quote:
Originally Posted by 20yrsinBranson View Post
Oh, I would LOVE to see a strawberry picked by a robot. Of course, just like corn and other crops, sooner or later Monsanto will develop a strain of strawberry that will be as tough as rubber, LOL. Nevertheless, there are SOME jobs that robots will never be able to do effectively.

Personally, robotics is usually a poor substitute. Have you been to a automatic car wash lately? It does a lousy job on the undercarriage and the wheels. Even if you can develop a robot to clean toilets, chances are that the final results are not going to be good enough for "discriminating" customers. Even dishwashers are sub-par if you ask me. I cannot count the times (back when I had one), that I had to re-wash dishes because food was stuck on them, or they did not get clean enough, or there were horrible water spots.

20yrsinBranson
Agreed, however all of the above does not justify hiring illegal workers.
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Old 02-09-2010, 07:46 PM
 
64 posts, read 53,891 times
Reputation: 28
@Florida, well why would you build a plant if you had no intent to hire people? I know bill gates wants money, but so do i and yo and everyone else.
At the very least the gov'ts action are hurting americans by sending good jobs and spin off jobs away to forign countries by limiting workers. How do you think outsourcing to india came about. Gov't limited visas to indians, so companies said ok, well we will go to india then. I'd prefer that indians come to america and work so we can atleast get the construction, and services jobs that temp. workers demand.

There are only 30,000 h2a visas available that is a joke, for a nation of 300 million and one of the largest agricultural producers in the world. I'd imagine that those would run out even faster.
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