Businesses need immigrant workers but extremists 'are stirring the pots of hatred'

Salt Lake Tribune ^ | 02/10/2008 07:06:28 AM MST | Tom Harvey

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Records show that undocumented Swift workers simply purchased SSNs and IDs on the street for about $800, which easily got them work.

Thus screwing the good folks from whom these were stolen...

[Aikonaa]

Greedy American businessmen are fast destroying my belief in capitalism as practised currently in the US. It seems that more and more businesses are taking the take ‘easy’ way of bribing elected officials and relying on de-facto slave labor rather investing and innovating. The short-sighteness and arrogance of some business leaders is simply unbelievable. Do they really think they will able to avoid the predictable consequences of the current demographic shifts in the US?

[ketsu]

Today’s slave traders force their serfs to fend for themselves, and pass on the costs to the taxpayers. Today’s Uncle Tom Cabins would be charging the residents $400/month rent.

Not to defend slavery, but slave owners were quite prescient about this. They said "we own our capital, you(northern industrial abolitionists) just rent it."

[mtbopfuyn]

Business’s need taxpayers to support their low wage slaves.

What low wage slaves? Excuse me, but they make twice what this US citizen makes.

[umgud]

The need for cheap labor no more justifies illegal immigration today than it did slavery in the past.

[TADSLOS]

I’m a hater. I hate people who knowingly break our laws and then have the audacity to tell us that it’s for our own good.

[VanShuyten]

At least a lot of the illegals are leaving due to a lack of jobs.

Not around DC they aren't. Gee, for some reason, they'd rather be unemployed and hanging out at the liquor stores in the US than unemployed in whatever manure pile of a country they came from.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

In the past two decades, Utah's economy has gone through changes that have created a greater need for more low-skilled workers than a native-born population could or would want to fill, said Pamela Perlich of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah.

Pam must've been one of the college students who got a full-ride from mommy and daddy. As one of the unwashed masses that worked while in college, I can tell you that I and a lot of fellow students weren't above working at a cheese factory, an industrial plant cutting plastic parts, refurbishing valves that come in from the oil rigs, and two summers on a highway construction crew (I-80, southwestern Wyoming). Care to tell me more about jobs Americans won't do?

Suck it, Pam. There's a lot of college students that are barely making it because the Mexicans are flooding the job market.

[ketsu]

Greedy American businessmen are fast destroying my belief in capitalism as practised currently in the US. It seems that more and more businesses are taking the take ‘easy’ way of bribing elected officials and relying on de-facto slave labor rather investing and innovating. The short-sighteness and arrogance of some business leaders is simply unbelievable. Do they really think they will able to avoid the predictable consequences of the current demographic shifts in the US?

American business has always been this way. What's happened is that technology and productivity gains have gotten to the point where they can shaft workers in ways that companies could only dream of in the 60's.

Outsource skilled jobs, insource the unskilled ones. The effect is that it hollows out the middle of the economy. The winners win big(i.e. hedge fund managers) the losers lose big(i.e. middle class jobs, accountants, programmers, call center workers, etc...). You're left with a third world economy.

[DoughtyOne]

Give that guy a cigar! Bingo!

[Aikonaa]

Clearly, in the interim, they have decided that the taxpayers that they take money from are just too damn expensive to employ.

Things may get interesting if the current downturn in the economy actually turns into a severe recession. The taxpayers may actually decide to stick it to these business-parasites.

[KC-10A BOOMER]

Well sign me up as a racist xenophobe too. I had a friend that went to an RNC meeting in Salt Lake City a couple of years ago and they were all for selling out to the illegals on this same line of BS. Needless to say he is no longer a member of the Republican Party.

[PubliusMM]

Well, then, put me down under the irrational hater column...

Let’s toss this out... The employers in many industries have need for entry level and less skilled position workers. There are literally millions of folks on welfare, sucking the life blood out of an economic system that should be the envy of the entire world. Seems to me we need to get that human resource into those jobs...kinda like bussing school kids, only on an interstate scale.

You say some would not like it? Then let them get jobs closer to their current digs. Either way, get off the dole. We’re tired of paying your way. We’re tired of watching you suck up resources because you think it’s your ‘right’.

This is fixable.

[DoughtyOne]

BTW, folks should realize we’re redistributing wealth every April 15th, as those who make less get refunds on monies they never paid in. It’s truly amazing what this nation has turned into while we continute do vote for the lesser of two evils.

End welfare today. If you don’t work, let the family take care of you if they are so inclined.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

bookmark

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Utah's senators received perhaps 100 calls in opposition for every 10 in favor of the immigration-reform bill that failed to pass the Senate in June

Right on, we can make a difference.

BTW, I find it quite ironic that liberals are now whoring themselves for illegal profit-driven business operations. Who's the discriminating big-whitey now? They've now become everything they supposedly hate.

[DoughtyOne]

Folks said Bill would also. I don’t like the prospect of it, but it’s time the Republican part realized that it cannot thumb it’s nose in the face of conservatives.

Let it try to win an election without us. Let’s see how that flies. When it realizes that it’s future rests on conservative votes, it will change. Or we will replace it.

[Reeses]

The government has stumbled on the solution only they haven’t realized it yet. Every year the DARPA Grand Challenge offers cash prizes to develop increasingly capable robotic vehicles. The first year nobody won, the second year 5 designs drove themselves 132 miles through an extreme obstacle course. The government got a huge amount of engineering work done for a bargain basement price.

We should extend this incredibly winning formula to farming, construction, meat packing, gardening, manufacturing, road construction. The result would be jobs that pay $40/hour servicing the robots, more income taxes paid and fewer social services used, less crime, less pollution, less turning America into Mexico.

Mexicans wages alone cannot fund the baby boomer generation's retirement. We're going to need significant new technologies to boost worker productivity without boosting school, healthcare, prison, and welfare spending.

[Melinda in TN]

I guess I'm a bad old Republican extremist then. I think if we put the millions of Americans that are on welfare in these unskilled jobs and did away with welfare we wouldn't need illegal labor, not that I think we actually need illegal labor anyway.

[businessprofessor]

I have no problem with breaking a union but not with illegal alien labor. Americans willing to work for market wages without the union markup and restrictive work rules are fine with me. Right to work should be the law of the land. Non union American labor is the backbone of this country.

I am puzzled by the report indicating that the employer used the Basic Pilot system. I am not sure how the employer can determine if a worker is an illegal if the system did not flag the documentation. Employers need a simple low-cost tool to determine worker status. Illegals caught using fake documentation need to be fined, jailed, and deported.