Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilEyeFleegle
Average American here...Don't like illegal immigration. I am in favor of a strictly administered guest worker program..primarily for Ag..
As an average American, I enjoy the low produce prices and high yields that a cheap labor force gives us.
I'm also made uneasy by some whose rhetoric thinly conceals their obvious racism.
As an aside, when I was a teenager I worked the fields of California and the apple orchards of Washington...did not see a lot of white folks standing in line for those jobs..so I doubt the veracity of the "taking American Jobs" argument in the Agricultural field.
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When I was a kid, we all picked fruit and vegetables in the summer to earn cash (Rowe's Farm, Ypsilanti, MI).
The fields were full of young people (9-13) who weren't yet old enough for a real job.
When I finally reached the age of sixteen (1978) and ready for formal employment, the money I earned during that era ($13.28-$14.79/hr. when adjusted for inflation) was significantly more than is common for low-skilled labor today.
Back then, with far fewer illegal workers available, the economy operated by a different set of rules.
There was a demand for workers and work paid!
As for your static argument that illegal immigrants are not taking jobs Americans actually want, it assumes wrongly that these same jobs would pay the same low wages/commissions in the absence of illegals willing to work for practically any wage.
When fewer workers are available, wages increase.
A job that is undesirable at one wage will be desirable when it pays more.
And since the working poor spend everything they earn, a related benefit is that consumer demand will increase.
With more money going to the bottom 80% for whom it is taxable income instead of the top 1% who stash it away, income tax revenue will increase.
Of course, what is just as bad as the wealthy taking money out of the economy is illegals sending money back home where it benefits non-Americans and screws the US.
I want income earned in the US to be spent in the US and I would like as much as possible to be spent on American-made products and services.
A one-percenter putting that money into a hedge fund raises prices on produce and everything else, so why not get it into the hands of someone who will spend it instead of someone who will use it to suck the life out of the economy?
Why would you automatically assume those who want to make life better for America's working poor are motivated by racism?
Maybe your desire for cheap produce has blinded you to the fact that illegals cost us all far more than we could ever save on lettuce and cherries.
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