You make some very good points Jim and I agree that we need to clamp down on the hirers as well. In fact, perhaps we should come down on them harder than the illegals so they do not have the incentive to hire no one other than legal citizens. I have always said and I will continue to say that I have NO issues with anyone coming to this country legally, gaining meaningful employment, paying into the system and reaping the benefits of being a law abiding U.S. citizen. If my grandfather had not been able to enter this country legally I may not be here now nor many many other people in my family. So I am a second generation American, I work hard, pay my taxes and so on and I want this country to be here for my grandkids and their kids and so-on. I know that immigrants helped shape this country and make it the great country that it is and I have no quarrel with that. My quarrel is with illegals and those who hire them. Like I said, sure they save the hirer a lot of money, but is that money being passed onto us, the consumer? I don't think so. And you are right; I was not willing to work for the money they were offering which was less than minimum wage. I could not afford to drive to work much less anything else if I did. And why are they offering these meager wages? Because there are folks who are here and will work for these wages because they have no choice. They can't complain because we will kick them the hell out. Call it exploitation or whatever, the point is, if everyone living in this country was a legal citizen, then we could demand higher wages for these jobs. The strawberries will still get picked, the roofs will still be shingled and the ditches will still be dug. It is just that now the ones doing it can actually make a decent living at it. That is what I think anyway.
Bruce -----Original Message----- From: Jim Davis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 6:07 AM To: CF-Community Subject: RE: This absolutely takes the cake - Immigration Reform To me that's the crux: you were not willing to work for the amount of money that the illegals were. You said it yourself: you could have worked, but not for that compensation. The sad truth is that we keep talking about illegal immigrants as if it's their fault, as if they're criminals when in fact (in my opinion) it's the hirers. We've got a great country, there's no denying it. We're also very close to some not-so-great countries. We're going to attract illegal immigrants: there's really nothing we can do about that (except lower our standard of living below what they've got at home... but I don't like that solution much). We've got to make it less attractive to come here. Personal risk is a laughably silly deterrent when you're talking about people that may starve in their homelands. They come here to do better - as long as they CAN DO BETTER they'll keep coming. And making 15-25% of our minimum wage is much, much better for a lot of these people. For a hirer they can saves incredible amounts of money with very little risk. You won't take their deal but they've a surplus of hungry illegals that will. They risk what? Fines that come near to the savings they've made? A slap on the wrist? In the rarest of cases some small jail sentence for one of the subordinates that they've shielded themselves with? So what's better? Telling desperate people not to come despite all the evidence in the world that they can thrive here or coming down on the hirers and cutting off their attraction to come in the first place? Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Macromedia ColdFusion MX7 Upgrade to MX7 & experience time-saving features, more productivity. http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion?sdid=RVJW Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:235060 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
