CA: Life without 50,000 illegal immigrants (Ventura County)

Ventura Star ^ | 4.23.06 | Tom Kisken

[cripplecreek]

Sure costs will go up, but higher wages will trickle down.

[Lizavetta]

Taxes would go down

Once government has succeeded in getting your money, you can bet they will not give it back, even if the original "need" for the tax has gone away.

I've always thought that any "tax cut", which is always highly publicized, is secretly compensated back to the government by raising a thousand other current taxes by miniscule amounts in a way that no one will notice. Call me cynical.

[prion]

A reasonable overview, I think.

[NormsRevenge]

We see it happening here ,, it's called a parcel tax, a library tax, a supplemental district fee, a toll fee, you name it, it comes in many forms.. all accomplish much the same and all of course are temporary. ;-).

[muawiyah]

Except that the writer buys into the idea that 11 million people can't be relocated.

All you have to do is round up and deport fewer than a million, send several hundred corporate executives to prison, and make it virtually impossible to get any job other than cutting the lawn, the other 10 million will move themselves.

This is actually going to have the biggest impact on slumlords.

[bordergal]

Then use H-2 visas if you are short of agricultural labor, that is what they are for.

We have a system in place. Life will go on.

[petkus]

The owners of these farms that use illegal immigrants are the richest group of phonies.

They try to intimidate us to believe that cost will go up but that is a fallacy. The only thing that will happen is that these guys will make less money without paying slave wages to these illegal aliens!

[NormsRevenge]

I agree, life will go on..

I used to raise veggies in my backyard and think I can still remember how to plant a seed or two.

[Ben Ficklin]

The quota on the H2A ag worker visa is no where near what agriculture needs. Plus, the regulations on the visa are so complex that no-one can conform to it and the quota is never reached.

Mr Grower says, "we need more temp visas"

United Farmworker Union says, "we need more green cards".

[Onelifetogive]

Ventura County without undocumented workers would mean

Of course, this assumes that ILLEGAL workers could not be replaced with the necessary number of LEGAL immigrants from Ukraine, Thailand, Ethiopia, Italy, etc. The benefit of spreading the immigration around versus having the majority of our immigrants being from Mexico is that they will quickly assimilate into the American culture. They would have to because there would not be enough immigrants from any one culture to allow them to maintain that culture here (i.e. no Ukrainian shopping, Ukrainian schools, Ukrainian government forms, Ukrainian television, Ukrainian radio, etc.....)

I would be happy to have total immigration HIGHER than the current level of legal AND illegal immigration if it could be spread around. When America was a much younger country, we had immigration MUCH higher as a percent of the population than we currently have. They assimilated just fine. The reason we can't have that level of immigration now is that the leftists have 1) denigrated teaching the greatness of American culture and 2) burdened our country with a welfare system that keeps us from admitting too many people because we would have to support them. I'd rather fix those problems than keep out the millions of people around the world who would join the America culture and make this country great for another millennium...

[ridesthemiles]

Rojas says he would only work for $20 an hour, then he proceeds to say that he works now as a landscaper for $400 a week. If that is a 40 hour week, that is $10/hour.
What kind of fuzzy math is involved here???

[ridesthemiles]

The quota on the H2A ag worker visa is no where near what agriculture needs. Plus, the regulations on the visa are so complex that no-one can conform to it and the quota is never reached.
Mr Grower says, "we need more temp visas"

United Farmworker Union says, "we need more green cards".""

What the Union is really saying is "we need more UNION MEMBERS...."

[LaMudBug]

IMHO, this is an article that covers a lot of illegal immigration bases and is well written as far as I am concerned. Others with greater knowledge of the immigration issue or greater bias may have a different viewpoint and have the freedom to express their thinking on this or other formats.

My biggest problem with the illegals coming here from Mexico is not their primary focus of income from some kind of a job in this great country, but the latent and hidden desire to "Reconquista" the SouthWest U.S. Those that wish to do this are no different from the raghead Islams that want to turn this great country into a Muslim theocracy.

The Mexican government is doing what the English did in the 1600's and the 1700's. They emptied their jails, poor houses, insane asylums and put them on ships bound for the U.S. That reduced their social costs of government and that is exactly what the country of Mexico is doing at this time. A poverty stricken, corrupt, elitist governing, socialist inclined country deliberately pushing their people across the border.

The other concern is with other nationals who come here as covert terrorists waiting for the code word to arrive for them to do whatever they are suicidally programmed to do.

This problem began in 1965 when Ted Kennedy was able to change the immigration laws. The situation today is part of the long range goal of the Fabian Socialists (just do a google on Fabian Socialism) to make the United States part of a one world government operating under a socialist/communist theory of government/economics that the elitists have the mentally perverted concept of how the people of the world should be governed and made to behave.

Solving this problem will not be easy. Although I voted for Bush and would never vote for a DemoRat/Socialist candidate from the DemoRat/Socialist party, I am terribly disappointed in his approach to this problem.

He has screwed up on several issues and this is one of them. I deeply fear that the American middle-of-the road voter, who does not know their ass from a hole in the ground, is going to turn on the Congress in the coming election and convert it to a DemoRat/Socialist majority with Nancy plasticface Pelosi in charge of the House.

Lord help us. We are in a struggle for the survival of the United States as a constitutional Republic that compares with the gravity of World War II.

I wish that I could see GWB being the great leader that we need at this time, but I just do not see him that way. He has really disappointed me and I think the country is going to suffer as a result of his failure to be a dynamic, Conservative President of the U.S.a.

Have a good day wherever you are....

[Ben Ficklin]

"we need more Union Members"

AgJobs is the bill that was written in 2003 to reform the H2A ag worker visa and one of the provisions of that bill was to give the union broad access to the workplace to organize.

More importantly, AgJobs also has the path to citizenship/green card language that makes the worker easier to organize. Temp workers are hard to organize.

[lsjogren]

Make the employers of illegal aliens pay the full cost of bringing in non-American workers, i.e. K-12 education for the illegal aliens' kids, health care, etc.


You will be amazed at how quick those employers find American workers to do the work.


Illegal immigration is the mother of all corporate welfare programs.

[Ben Ficklin]

As the article points out, the farmer doesn't set the price, the market does. If the additional labor costs put his cost to close to the market price leaving no profit, he will just go out of business.

His other option is to move to Mexico and farm.

[manwiththehands]

Sounds like everything would balance out fairly well. And the best part is: America would be for AMERICANS again.

[Mike Darancette]

Hooked on Jose.

[Hardastarboard]

When labor is expensive, businesses substitute capital. When capital is short, businesses substitute labor. Econ 101. If the "undocumented workers" all went home tomorrow, it would take a while, but businesses would adapt. They always do.

I heard Bob Brinker today talking about how the government needs to be doing more to make sure we have energy sources into the future. I wanted to scream at my radio. Here we have one of the brightest and most able investment advisors of our era talking about Keynesian manipulation of the economy by the government.

The morons in the giant, bloated government bureaucracy can't even keep our borders secure (a task which they are REQUIRED to do by the Constitution), and he thinks they're the answer to our energy situation.