How has illegal immigration affected New Mexico? (Aztec: new home, unemployment rate)
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but the fact is the economy of the USA is pretty dependent on low wage immigrant labor, legal or not, just like it's become dependent on low cost Chinese manufactured goods.
Despite what Minutemen types profess, Americans won't take those low wage, hard work, seasonal jobs (Or pay more for lettuce and strawberries)..... if they would, they'd be DOING them. The " I'd pick lettuce if I needed a job" declarations are normally followed by "IF they paid a decent wage and benefits". (maybe provide filet mignon for lunch too )
Can't have it both ways, America!
Who did these hard-work jobs prior to the death of the small farmer? Americans! The small farm is dead because large agriculture companies, fueled by cheap ILLEGAL labor, consolidated the ag business, creating a system that the small farmer could not compete with. 50 years ago, the average American purcahsed food grown within 250 miles of his home. Guess what the range is now? Guess why food prices are rising....because of increased fuel costs. Food is shipped further than ever. I suggest you research the topic further.
Lora and Jamey Costner are getting a taste of what illegal alien identity theft causes. They received a nice $7,854 tax bill from the IRS for wages earned at Koch Foods for the 2005 tax year. The only problem is that neither one of them has ever worked at Koch Foods. They are the victims of the "victimless crime" of identity theft that is used by virtually every illegal alien in this country.
An illegal alien used his identity to gain employment and now the Costner's are facing the chance that the IRS could start garnishing their wages any day and removing the "owed" money straight from their bank account without warning.
The overall burden of it all is crushing us, please help," the Costners wrote in an appeal to U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. "We have done all we know to do." Mr. Costner says he realized the magnitude of the problem in July when the IRS informed him that he had failed to report approximately $30,000 in income earned at Koch Foods during 2005.
[snip]
Compounding their frustration is the fact that the crime, which occurs thousands of times a year, seldom results in a prosecution. The SSA and the IRS both recognize the magnitude of the problem, but seem powerless to stop it. The SSA contends that they simply do not have the resources to deal with the problem.
Who did these hard-work jobs prior to the death of the small farmer? Americans! The small farm is dead because large agriculture companies, fueled by cheap ILLEGAL labor, consolidated the ag business, creating a system that the small farmer could not compete with. 50 years ago, the average American purcahsed food grown within 250 miles of his home. Guess what the range is now? Guess why food prices are rising....because of increased fuel costs. Food is shipped further than ever. I suggest you research the topic further.
If you want to talk research, my friend, do a little of your own.
You'll find that Ma and Pa down on the farm hired migrant farm workers (and didn't care if they were legal or not) a looonng time ago, not just at the behest of Big Agriculture in the modern days.
I grew up (1950's) in the fruit growing belt along the west coast of Michigan and remember well that the local movie theater showed Spanish language films from early July (cherries) right on thru October (apples) for all the workers who flooded in for harvest and processing jobs. All these folks were employed by small farmers (who, by the way, have not perished) who needed far more help than rural Michigan could provide. My father, who also grew up in that area (1930's), says in his memory there were always lots of Spanish speaking people here during the long harvest season.
There are fewer migrants there now, not because red-blooded, hard workin' white Americans want the jobs, but because of automation.
Sometimes the facts don't conveniently fit the conspiracy theory.
Speaking of automation.....large farms are more economically efficient than small ones, mostly due to progress in automated tilling and harvesting with American invented and made machinery. Small farms trying to grow commodity crops (corn, wheat, soy, etc.) are unable to compete because they are inefficent and are unable to produce at a competitive cost. This is a little thing we here in the US of A like to call free enterprise....the most efficient producer is the economic winner. Kinda like evolution (research the topic).
Small farms, on the other hand, prosper and grow in areas where they can compete, such as more specialized or "niche" crops and added-value crops marketed directly (or close to it) to the consumer. There is a lot of this type of farming going on, and it's an exciting thing. Spend a little less time on websites and more out in rural America (take the blinders off) and you'll probably see what I'm talking about. It's going on all over the country and growing rapidly.
I grew up with farmers and still have many close friends in agriculture..SMALL FARMERS. They're not ready to go away (many 3rd & 4th generation), but the successful ones adapt and change with the time and the market. They're doing well, thank you, and are buying more land and planting more crops every year.
50 years ago we were pretty well limited in our food choices by transportation (road, air, and water) and all of those areas are remarkably more efficient than 5 decades ago. Check and compare the inflation adjusted prices for chickens, bananas and oranges in 1950 and now, and tell me how we're worse off for that. Food is cheaper now than it was 50 years ago, regardless of where it comes from, and transportation costs are not nearly as big a factor as you'd like us to believe, even with diesel at 4.50 per. Otherwise, why would food cost so much more (as a percentage of income) in underdeveloped, non-freeway, airport and seaport, countries? They have local food and not much else...and it COSTS MORE.
Food in America is among the cheapest in the world...far less a percentage of total income than in less developed nations. This is why a chicken costs less in the US than it does in Mexico (as of last month).
If you want to find the boogey-man behind every haystack you're gonna have to look harder. Huge corporate agriculture has serious problems, in my view, but what you're citing sounds more like nativist propaganda than serious analysis.
Lora and Jamey Costner are getting a taste of what illegal alien identity theft causes. They received a nice $7,854 tax bill from the IRS for wages earned at Koch Foods for the 2005 tax year. The only problem is that neither one of them has ever worked at Koch Foods. They are the victims of the "victimless crime" of identity theft that is used by virtually every illegal alien in this country.
An illegal alien used his identity to gain employment and now the Costner's are facing the chance that the IRS could start garnishing their wages any day and removing the "owed" money straight from their bank account without warning.
The overall burden of it all is crushing us, please help," the Costners wrote in an appeal to U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. "We have done all we know to do." Mr. Costner says he realized the magnitude of the problem in July when the IRS informed him that he had failed to report approximately $30,000 in income earned at Koch Foods during 2005.
[snip]
Compounding their frustration is the fact that the crime, which occurs thousands of times a year, seldom results in a prosecution. The SSA and the IRS both recognize the magnitude of the problem, but seem powerless to stop it. The SSA contends that they simply do not have the resources to deal with the problem.
[snip]
My wifes niece had her identity stolen almost 8 years ago..and lots of bills run up. A born n raised American citizen was arrested and convicted for the crime. I know it's a big problem.
Where is the source of your clip n paste? A source can add a lot to the perpective. Why not just post a link to your source material?
I looked myself, and found "Digger" a blogger, from whom the info came. There was more, though. It seems, despite the way the "clip" was "pasted", that a legal remedy, such as it was, has been accomplished.
Of course, this was complicated by the fact that one of the "identity" thieves had lived with Mrs. Costners sister, which kinda explains why they were chosen for this. Apparently Mrs Costners sister wasn't charged with any crime, though her choice of friends/lovers remains questionable.
It seems the Costners did not pay any of the "threatened" taxes, etc.
Some poster children aren't all they're cracked up to be, I guess. I don't pursue this to defend illegal workers, their employers or identity theft, regardless of where it comes from. But things on the Net often aren't exactly what they seem, I said earlier, and I think I'm right. This story is more apocrypha and exaggeration than fact. Towanda: I'll now shut up about this before you tell me to..
"The criminal cases involving the Newport married couple and the two illegal immigrants, who IRS records indicate worked for Koch Foods, have been resolved in the court system.
The bitter aftertaste that remains is the unpalatable possibility of having their wages garnished to pay tax bills on income they never earned at the Morristown chicken-processing plant.
"The overall burden of it all is crushing us, please help," the Costners wrote in an appeal to U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. "We have done all we know to do."
Mrs. Costner says she realized the magnitude of the problem in July when the IRS informed her that she and her husband failed to report approximately $30,000 in income they earned at Koch Foods during 2005.
... Mrs. Costner says state labor officials told her she should not be drawing workers compensation benefits through Wallace Hardware because she had returned to work at Koch Foods the previous month following another on-the-job injury.
Records indicate that someone using her maiden name — Hale — and her Social Security number had fallen off a production line at the Koch Foods deboning plant in the East Tennessee Progress Center, according to the Newport woman.
...
The interloper in Mr. Costner’s life was Douglas Valdez, according to Ellis. Ellis says Valdez avoided the identity-theft charge because a judge ruled that it was not a crime to use someone’s identity to obtain employment.
Valdez reportedly served 45 days on other charges. Mrs. Costner says her sister lived with Valdez at one time, and she’s convinced that’s how their identities were stolen.
Who did these hard-work jobs prior to the death of the small farmer? Americans! The small farm is dead because large agriculture companies, fueled by cheap ILLEGAL labor, consolidated the ag business, creating a system that the small farmer could not compete with. 50 years ago, the average American purcahsed food grown within 250 miles of his home. Guess what the range is now? Guess why food prices are rising....because of increased fuel costs. Food is shipped further than ever. I suggest you research the topic further.
Prior to the Great Depression, the grain belt farm jobs were performed by tenant farmers. As machinery costs plummeted during the early 1930s, farm landlords displaced the tenant farmers with machines, managers and a few hired hands. A large number of the displaced tenant farmers ("Okies") migrated west taking the jobs on the fruit, nut and truck farms, displacing the Mexican labor then generally in use.
When the US got sucked into WWII, the Okies mostly went into the military or took defense industry jobs, leaving a labor void in the farms. The Feds quickly put in place a guest labor program called the Bracero Program, enlisting Mexican labor for the farms. After the war, the Bracero program ended but the Okies for some reason decided to keep the good paying jobs in the cities rather than go back to farm labor... so the farms kept using immigrant labor though the use was illegal....
good post jsc, but let me add (or correct) one thing: the Bracero program didn't end until 1964. It was quite controversial, even back in those days, largely due to the exploitation of workers by contractors, farmers and Mexican officials. I know this to be true, as the father of a good friend of mine was a Bracero and was forced to return to Mexico without a large percentage of his wages, which were "withheld" (apparently so he wouldn't spend it all on booze n broads) and were supposedly to be paid at the end of service. Don Emiliano and thousands of the workers who harvested US crops never saw a dime when the got the bum's rush back across the border. The upside for him was that he took the opportunity while in the US to learn English, which served him well later in life.
A couple links to more info. America on the Move | Opportunity or Exploitation: The Bracero Program The Bracero Program The Border | 1942 Mexican Immigrant Labor History
Every country should, if it wishes ,allow limited immigration.
No country can go on with massive & unlimited illegal immigration.
The sovereignty of this nation is seriously threatened.
good post jsc, but let me add (or correct) one thing: the Bracero program didn't end until 1964. It was quite controversial, even back in those days, largely due to the exploitation of workers by contractors, farmers and Mexican officials. I know this to be true, as the father of a good friend of mine was a Bracero and was forced to return to Mexico without a large percentage of his wages, which were "withheld" (apparently so he wouldn't spend it all on booze n broads) and were supposedly to be paid at the end of service. Don Emiliano and thousands of the workers who harvested US crops never saw a dime when the got the bum's rush back across the border. The upside for him was that he took the opportunity while in the US to learn English, which served him well later in life.
A couple links to more info. America on the Move | Opportunity or Exploitation: The Bracero Program The Bracero Program The Border | 1942 Mexican Immigrant Labor History
Thanks for the fill in Tecpatl, I was hoping someone would. I seem to recall a 50 year plus lawsuit trying to get back wages for Braceros.... another odd tidbit of this story, obliquely tied to the Bracero Program: the Mexican Air Force (not to be confused w/Flaco Jimenez' Free Mexican Air Force) 201st Tactical Fighter Squadron fought with US forces in the Philipines in 1944-45. Known as the Aztec Eagles, they flew several hundred ground support missions, losing 5 pilots in combat. Additionally, Mexican forces provided anti-submarine forces in the Gulf of Mexico, sinking at least one U-Boat.
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Never Mind.....
