Thank goodness our government is suddenly obsessed with dealing with America's plague of illegal aliens. There is clearly nothing more important right now than making sure we prevent people who happen to have born in other countries from doing jobs people who happen to have been born here don't want.
But this all-important crackdown doesn't exactly make you want to run out and start a labor-intensive business, does it? Certainly not if you're up to speed on the heart-warming situation at New York grocery delivery company, Fresh Direct.
Last week, federal immigration officials notified Fresh Direct that they were launching an investigation of the company's workers. Fresh Direct told its workers about the investigation -- and, not surprisingly, dozens of the workers ran for the doors. Meanwhile, the workers had been discussing the possibility of unionizing. So now the Teamsters union is accusing Fresh Direct of trying to bust the proto-union by terrorizing employees about the federal investigation.
Any good news here?
Not much.
No matter what happens, Fresh Direct loses good workers, the workers lose jobs, and Fresh Direct's costs (and, therefore, prices) go up, hurting customers. Fresh Direct's remaining employees presumably get a raise at some point, and maybe better benefits, but only by forcing the company to fire human beings who were willingly doing the same jobs for less.
If Fresh Direct is/was paying its document-challenged employees slave wages, fine. If Fresh Direct is/was making a piggish profit and intentionally employing only people who have no legal standing on which to complain, fine. If, however, Fresh Direct is/was simply providing employment opportunities to people who chose to take them, they don't deserve what they're getting. It's time companies like Fresh Direct stopped getting blamed for the fact that citizens of other countries want to do jobs that people who were born here don't.
Follow Henry Blodget on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hblodget
Let's face it: the people who hire illegals very much do not want them to become legals. A man or woman who is "officially 'not there,'" and "on the lam," will do anything you tell him to do without question. You can put the screws to him any way that you like, and feel free to "justify" it any way that you like. That man is still a slave.
We should not be punishing the illegals who are merely caught in this system, but we should be viciously punishing the employers who "employ" them. We do this to protect the men and women who are caught in this system, not to turn them out into the cold. Once again, if we do not enforce our own laws, no one has any of those laws' very important benefits.
Well that is precisely what these pro global idealogues want you to think with their lies on jobs "americans won't do" and "outsourcing benefits workers" and "skilled labor shortages"
These lies are all non sequitors to any one who paid attn in econ 101 or has any smattering of common sense
It really bothers me of the so called "progressive" movement that they are so pro illegal immigration - we have more illegals pooring in than we had legal immigrants most of the past decade - how is our economy and way of life supposed to sustain that? And deliberately pits minorities and low income workers in a death spiral competition for the low wage jobs. Unfortuately the left is on the wrong side of this issue and are "misunderestimating" the impact this will have on the next election - this is an issue that is a hot button in middle america.
More and more of our white-collar jobs have been outsourced to India.
And now, our manual labor jobs have all been taken by illegal immigrants, thanks to greedy employers who prefer to pay slave wages instead of a living wage to Americans.
Doesn't leave many jobs for the next generation of Americans, does it?
The illegal immigrants don't really benefit, since there's little hope of them ever getting ahead or joining the middle class.
Amercan blue-collar workers don't benefit, with their wages stagnant thanks to competition from immigrants.
The middle class doesn't benefit either, with their communities flooded with a new permanent under-class of people who are illiterate and have a tendency toward crime.
You forget just one thing; illegal immigrants want to do jobs people here don't want --- AT SLAVE WAGES!!
If employers paid a living wage, they might find that magically, Americans would be willing to do the work! What a concept!
This is nothing but worker intimidation at its most base. To suggest otherwise is simply ignorant.
I am broadly in agreement with you on your comments.
The discussion concerning immigration is tinged with an over-agressive prosecutorial tone. Punish industry. Punish immigrants.
We need a new framework to manage the issue. The economic reality is that workers will continue to migrate to the US to improve their living conditions and companies seeking low-skilled employees will continue to hire them.
It is economically rational for both parties to pursue this course. The exogenous impact is that prices remain low, lives are improved, and that society as a whole benefits.
A sensible program that registers and taxes workers and possibly provides them with a path to citizenship is what is required.
Guest workers who engage in crime or who violate the terms of their agreements would face deportation. Companies that hire undocumented workers would be heavily fined.
We can forecast growth rates and labor requirements to establish quotas for low-skilled workers annually.
An annual lottery could be held in which applicant workers must provide proper documentation to enter and be assigned to certain regions of the country with preferences for workers seeking to join their families already in the US.
This process helps to avoid an overconcentration of immigrants in one particular region. It also enables workers better access to employment and manages the size of the labor pools in particular markets.
Companies would have to register to access to workers in the labor pool. Having received access to the pool, employers will be less inclined to hire undocumented workers.
Undocumented workers, recognizing the companies will not hire them because they are unregistered, would return to their homes or be deported as there would be no economic benefit to stay.
The winners of the lottery would have 6 months to enter the US and register at designated registration points.
The border situation in the US is shameful, but it exists primarily because the legal alternatives for migration remain focused on European immigration rather than the more pressing reality of regional immigration.
The anti-immigrant lobbies of the 19th and early 20th centuries were only partly about old-fashioned racism. They were mostly driven by working-class American workers who could see how the employers used "coolie labor" to drive down wages and keep them down. It's happened again.
"Don't want"? It is two words, so I know that this mass delusion wasn't created by Luntz. The naivety is stunning, verging on the complicit, once you understand its intent.
People who have discretionary money, discretionary lives, and discretionary jobs should refrain from passing on non-researched, unsubstantiated, unverified, folklore.
Where was the seminal, boilerplate solid research which sprouted this conclusion? To be repeated over and over as a mindless incantation or sooth for their soul.
Did they call up all of the people that comprise the U6 unemployment figure? They won't be able to reach them all, because millions have fallen off of that broad statistical radar, which is never discussed. Still unemployed.
People delude themselves that those jobs at Fresh Direct were made available to other than friends or family of the already "employed" illegal immigrants.
"Want" went to "must" a long time ago for vast numbers of born and bred Americans. Vast.
Oh and BTW, if you have never been hungry for a week, you won't get this. Those illegal immigrants and their families who have been living on 70 $4 hours per week... can't load up their Lexus and RV and head back to one of their investment properties in Mexico. They are stuck here.
And every day they grow more desperate.
Watch your back. Because they aren't coming for me. I am a daylaborer. I work with them. I don't have a fat wallet.
Thousands of legal foreign nurses ahave been recruited from the the Philipines & Africa, paperwork & greencards paid for, housing provided in order to avoid safe staffing, and raised wages.Additionally these people are unfamialiar with some of the legal requiremnts enacted to make american hospitals safer.Do you think they'll blow the whistle? Not on your life!
Likewise ,Dell in Austin ,brought in many Indian workers on 2 year contracts and paid them $10 dollars an hr, because an experienced American tech worker would cost 5 times that and want to go home at 5pm.Foreign workers know they have no rights and won't challenge abuse, unlike Americans, so they are hot commodities for corporations to use and discard.
We hear that American workers aren't educated for the new technologies, but instead of training poor people here who need jobs and can't afford college because they have to work , these same companies let other countries pay to train them and then raid those countries for their most educated., keeping those countries in a perpetual third world state.
Its not the American worker who doesn't want to work my friend. Its corporations who want to continue their unobstructed profiteering without restraint.