Posted on 06/01/2005 11:26:35 AM PDT by JZelle
Jack Brooks observes the 25 or so women sitting at stainless steel tables, picking lumps of meat out of blue crabs fished from the Chesapeake Bay. There are a handful of Americans and about 18 Mexicans packing up small tubs for sale to restaurants and markets. "We have to have the Mexican workers just to sustain our business. American workers simply are not available," the co-owner of J.M. Clayton Co., a Cambridge, Md., business founded by his great-grandfather in 1890, said last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Oh!! They are available, it's just easier to sit at home and collect the check than get up and go to work.
If they are legal immigrants, then there is no problem here.
Crab Pickers - Sorry!!
pay more.
the discovery channel is running that show now on alaskan crab fishing - they have no problem finding workers, because they make decent money.
Supply and Demand. As long as they can find migrant workers to work for minimum wage there's no urgency to raise wages to attract US Citizens.
You are exactly right! I cashed checks at the local bank from Mexican workers and seems like they earned a very decent wage. Also they lived rent free in the packers quarters. They did have to pay for food, but most of the money went right back to Mexico. Transportation was free from Mexico but they needed to pay the return fare.
I was amazed at the number of women willing to leave behind a family for 9 months to work in the US. After 2 or 3 years of saving the earnings, they could live quite well in Mexico for a very long time.
I agree, but are you willing to pay $15 for a crab coctail or po'boy?
"American workers simply are not available," I think he meant to add "at the wage we want to pay"...
and its the same reason why we don't have agricultural investments in automated harvesting of vegetables - why bother when the migrant farm workers work for next to nothing. maybe someone could invent a machine that cracked crabs and harvested the meat, but we will never know because no one invests to invent one. its the same thing in industries going to china - why can't we have US based automated assembly of furniture for example? at least we would provide some jobs here in the US in the industries needed to support the automated machinery, instead of sending it all to china.
I will say this again -- if you want to end illegal immigration, then get rid of the jobs by making employers strictly liable for unlawfully hiring illegals. The penalty should be a minimum of one year in the pokey, no excuses. "Strict liablilty" means that the employer is guilty even if he had reason to believe the employee was legal or at least didn't know the person was illegal. Statutory rape works the same way. If she's 16, your getting 20 even if she had 20 forms of picture ID to "prove" she was 18.
let the market dicate that. when the price becomes too high for customers to bear, that would be the trigger to invest in automation.
taken to its extreme, this is the same line of reasoning that would argue for slavery. I am sure that somewhere, someplace, there is some business that could sell something at a profit if only they had zero cost labor - slaves. Should we give that to them? At what point do the social costs of giving the business what it thinks it needs, outweigh the economic benefits of having them stay in business? That's what is happening now, I'm saving $2 on my restaurant bill because they hire illegals - and I am paying for schools, medical, and other social services for those illegal employees.
Hiring foreign workers to pick blue crabs is far preferable to importing foreign crabs and falsely advertising them as home grown!
Please correct me if I'm wrong because I am not a farmer or commercial fisherman but I do know a little history on the subject and the very reason that children were out of school during the summer was so they could help with the farming of crops or commercial fishing whichever area they lived in! Correct?
So that these jobs that illegals are doing in farming or fishing industries could be and have been done by the young folks in the past...
They get the guys to go fishing because they make $10,ooo for a weeks work (solid week, no sleep, basically).
Did you notice last night that all the unloaders/processors were mexican?
very difficult to enforce. even your statutory rape example - 1/3rd of young girls have sex by age 16, 2/3rds by age 18. That's alot of guys you need to put in jail.
why don't the owners of the ship offer less in salary, and pocket the profits for themselves and/or lower the price of the crabs? its the same analogy.
If DHS f/k/a the INS finds illegal workers at a Tyson Poultry Plant, then only one person goes to jail and that person's name is Tyson. You can bet if Tyson has to spend a year in jail, his company will never, ever hire an illegal again.
So why must the workers be Mexican?
The potential shortage of seasonal workers along the Chesapeake illustrated a broader problem in the United States — a mismatch between the supply and demand for legal foreign labor.
... John Gay, vice president for government relations at the International Franchise Association and a co-chairman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a business group that is pressing for more legal, year-round foreign workers for restaurant, health care, construction, building maintenance, landscaping and similar jobs.
Gentlemen, do you "need" seasonal workers, or do you want more cheap foreign labor overall?
"Regardless of race, heritage or national origin, we are one family under God," Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick said last month at a press conference announcing "Justice for [Illegal] Immigrants," a church campaign led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The conference has joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the union Unite Here, National Council of La Raza and other groups seeking broad immigration reform, including amnesty for illegals.
Forget about it.
The crew accept the chance that they could catch nothing and get no money. They usually end up getting the qualified crew cheapest that way.
The processors know they will have a certain amount of work to do based on the set quota and set price for the ccrab. They hire unskilled mexicans cheap.
The fishermen & processors are 2 completely separte business entities.
Here many fisherman work on shares. with the owner of the boat getting two shares while the rest get one.
I've been think and thinking about this. More and more Americans want a good standard of living, so they avoid work like this like the plague. However, if businesses were to stop using illegals, then a heck of a lot of jobs would go unfilled quickly. If there are 10 million illegals here and lets say the range of 1 to 2 in 3 is working as an assumption, then about 2% to 4% of the U.S. workforce is working illegally. Just as a rough guess. When 5% unemployment is considered full employment, then there really is a need for more workers than the U.S. has in supply. If the illegals were all shipped out tomorrow, that would mean 2-4% of the jobs out there would be available. These are all, right now, low wage jobs. By supply and demand, wages would have to rise for these positions to be filled. That would put an upward pressure on costs and the price for these items would increase. The net result would be that, on an economically comparable scale, nothing would change. The higher wages paid for Americans to work the jobs illegals are doing now would still result in the same relative standard of living. Americans would have to get used to working and living in conditions that illegals experience today. Provided social services aren't pegged to inflation pressures resulting from dumping the illegals, then living on the government dole would be worse than living in the low standards illegals live in today. In other words, it might be enough to get Americans to do the cr@p jobs they won't do today because welfare would be worse. All based on supply and demand.
I’ll admit that the thought of seeing their employers – up to and *including* Gutless Wonder serving his year would suit me fine.
I've got news for you, more and more americans are avoiding jobs like engineering for the same reason. know anyone who wants to be a tradesman - carpenter, painter, roofer. why not? its not just unskilled labor anymore.
Some of this is geography. Chesapeake Md is sparsely populated but it is within driving distance of DC and Baltimore. Tell me there are no unemployed workers there.
"We have to have the Mexican workers just to sustain our business. American workers simply are not available,"
You want Americans, then you have to attract Americans. My guess is that the wages they are paying are so low that no American could take them and still make a living.
So CIS admits that unemployed workers presently don't have incentives to take jobs. Any adult male who doesn't already have an incentive to get a job won't benefit from kicking out foreign laborers.
Enact Bush's guest laborer proposal and they will all be legal and no one will have any problem.
I think he is saying that US workers don't have incentives to take low paying jobs with poor working conditions. How ungrateful are we (is the sarcasm suitably apparent)?
So he's saying that there are eleven million people out there who will sit on their butts instead of mowing yards for $10 an hour, but they will enthusiastically mow yards for $20 an hour?Or maybe they would just love to pick melons, paint water towers and tar roofs for $20 an hour.
Heck, I might mow yards for 20$ per hour!
susie
Enact my guest bank customer proposal and then all bank robbers will be legal and no one will have any problem.
Some Hispanic families have been here since before the revolutionary war and have shed their blood for your right to insult them in such a childish manner.
I went to the local veterans' cemetery this weekend. There are quite a few headstones in the new KIA section with Hispanic names. They weren't felons they were heroes and I doubt if their families would appreciate you saying that they were felons.
Legal Immigrants are fine!!
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Be Ever Vigilant!
Minutemen Patriots ~ Bump!
I never said that all Hispanics were felons. You're a little dense, aren't you...
What I did do was point out the absurdity of your claim by making a similarly absurd claim. By your posts, comments, and tag line you claim and imply that we need to pander to so-called "hispanics" by excusing the crimes of illegal aliens and rewarding those illegal aliends with jobs, benefits, and citizenship. So, I crafted a tagline which implied that we need to pander to felons to get their votes.
Maybe you should go back to your 'sock puppet' line.
Si. Actually the going rate is $5.25 per hour, or $2.25 per pound. The companies say one can earn $10 per hour (by picking a little under five pounds per hour), but I think this is an ambitious estimate.
Yes.
If the wage is high enough you will be suprised what people will do.
That is why so many illegals are in prison, crime pays better.
Pardon everybody in prison and we will have solved that problem too.
The latest poll shows that most Americans (81%) prefer the Minuteman solution to the President's proposal. It's really too bad for your side of this that so many bad guys have come in with the ones that really do just want to work. Those baddies have pretty well cemented opinion on this whole thing, I think.
When questioned on the gun issue bayourod admitted that he kept a gun for protection, but he didn't have any bullets.
We are in the presence of genius.
Don't forget to add that those Alaskan Crabbers are working in the most dangerous of industries. Many deaths each year. That tends to drive up the wages.
Using that type of reasoning, we could make dealing illegal drugs legal, and no one will have any problem. Actually, I'm opposed to rewarding anyone for violating the law, whether they be foreigners in the country illegally or Americans dealing illegal drugs.
You got that right!
Then Im sure you have no problem with Marc Rich because he was pardoned.
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