Are illegal immigrants used by agro-giants to lower the cost of labor?

[0rganism]

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. The powers-that-be want a permanent underclass with no legal rights

that can be easily exploited. True immigration reform could threaten profits.

[0rganism]

3. the thought of unionized migrant workers must give capitalists nightmares

Why, it would upset the Natural Balance!

[Leilani]

2. Not only agro-giants

many industries & small businesses alike...

construction jobs used to be high pay, but in some parts of the country, illegals have replaced Americans.

Also the problem of benefits...many employers don t want to pay them.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

6. construction jobs used to be high pay

I experienced that myself back in the 80's

[lanparty]

4. ALL products sell to pricepoints ...

Once a product drops BELOW the pricepoint, the producers just pocket the difference as profit. The age old addage of corporate America is:

"Charge WHATEVER the market will bear"!!!!!!


No, they could enslave all those illegals and the prices you pay wouldn't go down.

[0rganism]

7. The poll isn't asking directly about product price, it's about labor price

You said it yourself: "Once a product drops BELOW the pricepoint, the producers just pocket the difference as profit."

As every good outsourcer knows, one of the best ways to reap temporary economic-like profits from a nominally equilibrium market is radically drop one of the production cost factors, e.g. labor. Price stays the same, production cost drops, and the owners get a bonus. This doesn't affect the equilibrium price, as the cost of production increases to include the distributed pay hike for "top management".

[Feanorcurufinwe]

8. Huh? You need to re-read the poll.

[depakid]

5. kick

:kick:

[slanderusa]

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[ikojo]

10. Historically large agircultural concerns have pressed

Congress to pass more lenient immigration laws when they needed cheap labor. They always use the argument that "no American wants to do this job."

[havocmom]

11. Not just agro-giants. Hotels, restaurants, meat processors, construction

pretty much any industry that is labor intensive is going to save $$ this way if they can.

If the government was serious about stemming the tide of illegal immigration, there would be serious and constant checks into the status of employees at places of business with stiff penalties for employers of illegals. If the fight were real, the resources spent racing around the border catching poor people would be channeled to catching the fat cats making millions off the labor of the poor people. Those people would not be risking life and limb crossing the desert around Tucson if there wasn't an employer waiting for them.

[Nikia]

12. It is obvious that they will work for less

Not only because they risk deportation but because $6.00-$7.00/hour is a lot more than they can usually make in Mexico. Many of the immigrants live in larger groups to save money than most Americans are willing to do annd share vehicles.
On the issue of "Americans won't want those jobs anyway." to some extent that is true although not as much in areas with high unemployment. Most adult Americans want full time, year round employment. Some jobs that have a high percentage of immigrants are jobs that only work for a few months out of the year. In order to attract enough labor to do the job for only a few months, companies might have to pay labor a much higher wage than would make their business profitable if they only hired people who could legally work in the United States. Some jobs, such as slaughtering animals or hand harvesting, which really is back breaking work, are difficult to attract and retain legal workers for.
If there were a guest worker program as Bush wants for such jobs, I think that there should be a stipulation that the company pays a fair wage. They would have to pay what a comparable company would pay for year round work. For example, a company that only cans vegtables 3 months per year would have to pay guest workers the same amount that a company that cans vegtables all year long. That would insure that workers are paid a fair wage and that a company that needs 200 people for only a few months could have its needs met as well.

[Placebo]

13. Absolutely.

Sad times my friends.