But you weren't 40 yrs ago. If the "Americans" building pools got your same pay increases, they'd still be building pools and making a living wage, as they were back then. That's why most of the unions were busted and illegals allowed to flood the labor force. People like you don't think hard working "Americans" deserve the same pay increases you got. They're not worthy of just compensation for busting their hump on a roof where it's 130F and they earn a living by the sweat of their brow. They're not worthy cuz they didn't go to college ...blah blah....
Gee, Bob, I don't know. I was a "working man", starting my own welding business, and turned it into a steel erection contractor business. I worked offshore oilfield, doing 24, 36, and 48 hour gigs. I have worked 12-16 hours a day for months at a time. I've stayed at sea for months at a time. I owned businesses, and corporations. I have a total of maybe 12 hours of college. Trade school - welding. In house training for various companies I worked for. Union trade classes. I don't consider myself anything special as far as the working class is concerned. Today, I got up at 0530, and at
0600 started working with my helper on my construction project on my own property, rather than hire it out. Steel work. Welding. I'm 62, had a five way bypass and have an artificial heart valve. I'm on my third 18 year old helper, drove two of them into the ground because they couldn't keep up with me.
You wanna join me in a chorus of Working Class Hero? I don't get your point, and think you have me confused with someone else.
Big deal, I wrote a book about my heart surgery. Anyone with high school English can do the same thing.
Being stupid in life can be temporary or permanent, everyone has the right to do what they want. Sean Hannity used to be a dishwasher.
You make a good point and it's a point that has a great deal of support. But consider...
The illegal alien is illegal because the government says he is. He can't become a "legal" alien because of all the hoops, waiting time, quotas, and bureacracy.
Frankly, he is the kind of immigrant we should be glad to have. He's demonstrated he's not afraid to take risks, work hard, provide for his family, and is generally quite law-abiding.
I don't have an answer to the immigration problems, but I do believe the individual illegal alien is not the one at fault
No, he/she is illegal because he/she circumvented the procedure to enter the US legally. There IS a procedure, you know, and many follow it. ______________
Why reward an illegal act? How is that fair to those who follow the procedure to enter legally? ______________________
Risk taking, work hard are generally true but "law abiding" is a bit more iffy. I would agree that most of the initial illegals themselves are relatively law abiding but there is getting to be a very large problem with their offspring. They tend to associate with each other - la raza - and many wind up in hispanic gangs such as sur trece (Sur-13). Check prison population records.
As far as the original illegals go, it is true that they aren't generally out there sticking up convenience stores or committing other overt crimes save, with some frequency, those related to drugs. However, they frequently ignore laws/regulations that are inconvenient to them...things like having auto insurance...zoning laws...noise ordinances...et cetera.
Part of the reason for that is lack of knowledge and part cultural. Almost of the illegals will have less than a 9th grade education. Most will have less than a primary education. Many will have none. Very few are literate in English; a large percentage are functionally illiterate in Spanish.
In the US, many of our laws/ordinances are designed to prevent someone from infringing on the rights of others. I don't know if latin american countries have similar or not but if so I can definitely tell you they are not enforced; consequently, if someone wants to have a party at 3AM and blare salsa through loud speakers, they do so. It never even occurs to them that they might be disturbing their neighbors.
If they want to come to the US, let them go through the legal procedures; let them assimilate into the US society rather than create barrios; let them learn to at least read English and speak it well enough to get along in it.
Following the accepted procedures demands a fifteen-year wait! If I were a Mexican with the above desires and ambitions, I'd look hard at the alternatives.
(Sorry for the direct reply, HeyBub- this new version of Tbird rearranged the 'reply to' choices, and I haven't got used to it yet.)
I'd be curious about the demographics of 'most' of the illegals. If I was 20-something, with spouse and kids to feed, and there was no legal work 'back home', well, waiting 15 years isn't much of an option. Your kid is hungry, you do what you gotta do. Yeah, you probably should have not had the kid in the first place, but that isn't the kid's fault.
Mebbe if NAFTA hadn't made US Megafarm food so cheap in Mexico that the local farmers can't make a living (so the newspapers claim), some of the field workers could find jobs closer to home. As long as there are no paying jobs down there, people will travel to where the jobs are. Throw in a government that has lost control of much of the country, and the Long Walk looks pretty inviting.
Well, subsistence farming won't cut it for Mexico; they haven't been self-sufficient in food supplies since in forever. Mexico City is 21M; for comparison NYC is 19. All those mouths have to have food and they're certainly not farming.
In light of the recent other thread the devolved into similar claims re: corn I have done quite a bit of looking into the Mexican farm economy and US exports and simply don't see that they're the root cause of the problems; w/o them Mexico would be starving for sure.
It appears the root cause is the last item you named before; the loss of government stability and growth in local economies other than the (relative) handful provided by manufacturing and related owing (mostly) also to NAFTA in the border area manufacturing. (Of course, those have exacerbated the problems in the US but who's counting?)
Farming took a hit this year from a late hard freeze but it appears that the government was the one that had to supply more seed corn to replant; it appears that much of the ag sector is still government controlled rather than private. I would suspect that removing those controls would go far in advancing their progress.
I don't know how it's going to end but it isn't a sustainable model; both governments have to get control of their borders and solve their rampant economic woes but both appear total inept at either.
It's become so bad here we're now "minority majority" and most are undocumented except for the newborns, of course. They have almost bankrupted the hospital and I expect it's only a matter of time before it either is forced to close or the City/County will have to come to the rescue and support it w/ tax revenues. Of course, like everywhere else, those are declining as well as more and more dollars go to the cash economy and hence aren't taxed and the more affluent who can flee the encroaching hordes while still have at least chance to sell a house...not a pretty current sight nor a promising outlook. :(
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