Comments on: California farmers encouraged by Senate immigration outline

By: DB Smith

DB Smith — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 03:43:14 +0000

Anthony, Dee has it right. It would be common sense and not speculation to say that if you and your family were supported by big government assistance programs/entitlements and didn’t have to get up and go to work vs. picking grapes for a living which one would you do? In addition what do you think is going to happen after the millions of illegals magically become legal? Do you think the new legal will still work for coolie wages with no benefits? The new flood of illegals will then push out the new legals for jobs. On and on and on…….

By: Dee

Dee — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 20:47:33 +0000

Anthony-If legal workers are not taking the jobs, it is because the employers are not paying a wage that will is worth the labour, simple free market reality. Under paying illegal immigrants is stealing from the workers and limiting jobs to legal workers. *******

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 20:33:45 +0000

DB Smith several states have passed very strict immigration laws which have chased away the illegal immigrants who work in a variety of food-related businesses

In this example in Alabama (certainly no bastion of government “handouts” as some call them), they still had to use legal immigrants for jobs paying $10 per hour. Americans do not want these jobs. We can speculate from now till yesterday on how much this is due to social programs and entitlements. Until there is factual information to support that conclusion, that is all it is, is speculation. The fact is that in states like Alabama where policies advocated by some people as a solution to our immigration woes have been written into law, American citizens still are showing no inclination to take these jobs. I will take fact over speculation every time.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/in-alabama-legal-immigrants-wanted-for-dirty-jobs

File this story under Unintended Consequences. HB 56, as Alabama’s year-old immigration law is known, was supposed to drive illegal Hispanic immigrants from the state and free up factory jobs for natives. Workers cleared out, but a boom in hiring of Alabamians to chop chicken and clean fish hasn’t materialized the way the law’s backers had hoped. So employers are turning to another immigrant work force: refugees.

By: DB Smith

DB Smith — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:16:02 +0000

Anthony, Mr. Wenger and CFBF, could you please tell me what the hourly wage is that the illegal immigrant farm worker is being paid vs. minimum wage and if the the employer provides all the legal coverages for the illegal worker that are required by law? I’m wondering if the American worker finds a more beneficial income through big government assistance programs and entitlements vs. picking grapes.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:52:07 +0000

Thank you Mr. Wenger and CFBF for providing a well-needed dose of reality to counter the hysteria that so often accompanies the debate.

Your experience with the difficulty in hiring citizens even in these recent difficult economic times demonstrates that the ideologues with their scare tactics about taking jobs away from Americans, are either ignorant or lying or both.

These immigrants are in fact doing jobs that most Americans simply will not do.