Friday, October 12, 2007

Illegal immigration - half of the solution here

Crackdown of illegal immigrants on a NY slaughterhouse that employs 5500 has left them 1100 people short.

Now, that's one half of the illegal immigration problem. Now you need to fine the business for having hired illegals in the first place. You do that, and suddenly it becomes affordable to hire citizens.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hm. This leads you to a funny spot in several industries though, in that the wages they pay are not competetive enough to lure citizens into the work, in general. The agricultural industry, for example, is notoroious for being under minimum wage in Washington State for standing about picking fruit in the Very Hot Weather all day. This is not a job folks are lining up to get, by and large.

More thoughts on that later. It's early and teh coffees has not kicked in.

John Hummel said...

@Poet/Ninja: Something I think that Bill Maher said is appropriate:

It's not that American's won't do the work. They just won't get ripped off doing it.

For people in agriculture, the choice is either a) hire illegal immigrants, or b) pay an American do to the job for $8 - $10 an hour (at least). If they do the latter, people scream that the cost of food will rise.

As a nation, then, we have a choice. Personally, I wouldn't mind taking a look at the Farm Bills - they are in place not to give the American Farmer a Chance^TM, but to ensure that in time of war/world catastrophe, the US has the ability to feed its people. Therefore, some aid in assisting farmers - provided they include proof that their workers are all legal - may be in order.

It's a thorny issue all around, but either way, I am in *full* favor of hitting businesses that hire illegal immigrants hard. It is the businesses - not the immigrants - that are at fault in this whole scheme.

Anonymous said...

I really can't argue that response as a whole, in fact, it hits points I really should have covered in the inital comment. Just kind of lost in the "no coffee" haze there, I guess.

As for the farm bills: yeah, those aren't remotely doing the things they pretended to in the first place, now. It's probably worth rethinking those. (There's some water rights stuff out here in Washington that's horrifically misused, but that's a complete tangent).

Anyhow, I'd really commented in the first place to point back at it being a larger issue. I should have known you were already on top of that. *grin*