The only reason those “Spanish speakers” were able to be the construction saviors described here is because the government was doing everything it could to obstruct all the legitimate contractors who were trying to get in to the area to help. Being illegal, these guys were able to swell the ranks of the few local contractors and get the job done, while bypassing all the nonsense being piled on the out-of-staters.
The GOP will be signing it's own death warrant with amnesty.
/johnny
Hey, Haley, you pay enough and you’ll have Americans working in those chicken plants, and conditions will be be better for the workers too, because they won’t have any fear of being deported if they complain.
Not that illegal immigrants have much need to fear being deported. However, if they rose up, unionized, and started making demands on the corporations that employ them, somehow, it seems that Big Business’s love of the illegal would fade out.
Supply and demand, Haley baby. Econ 101.
Government prefers to keep African-Americans out of the work force and to supply major contributors with trainable, more docile, illegal immigrants. Hopefully within my lifetime, African-Americans will notice this, especially those serving on the Congressional Black Caucus.
"Spanish Speaking Low-Skill Workers" were needed in NOLA ... when half the black people there don't work? Haley, have another mint julep and STFU.
"Immigration reform" isn't intended to bring cheap labor into this country. It's aimed at bringing a new generation of consumers here -- which is why the automation argument doesn't hold any water in this debate.
Gee, Barbour, do you suppose temporary work permits might have done the same thing? When we were in the Kobe earthquake of 1995, that is what the Japanese government did. There was no immigration category for construction workers. The Kobe area was seriously short on construction workers to rebuild. The Japanese construction companies needed construction workers and volia! Hundreds of mostly American and Australian construction workers suddenly came to the rescue on cultural visas.
They lived in tents mostly, did a nice job, didn't demand public services and went home when the job was done. Yeah, the cultural visa thing was a little bit of a stretch, but their temporary employers pointed out that their workers got cross-trained in the different construction techniques and the Kobe area got better housing as a result.
The tightwads will bury us.
For insight into rapacious businessmen, pols like Barbour, their love for illegals, and your food, just put ‘Jack Decoster’ into a search engine!
After he escaped and fled to New England, he worked as a laborer in the shipbuilding industry. One of the things that struck him at the time was that slavery was a crippling institution in the South even for the slave owners. This was because he and the other laborers who toiled in these difficult jobs -- many of them former slaves like himself -- had a better standard of living than their slave masters in the South.
Haley, please immigration reform is needed if we want to keep America the country we are. Strengthen the borders and deport the ILLEGALS!
So, effing RINO Hayley Barbour is willing to give away my country’s sovereignty because Mississippi got some houses rebuilt after Katrina. Well, just frigging hunky dory.
How many rapists, criminals, disease factories, drunk drivers, baby factories that load up our school with “Spanish Speakers”, use our hospitals for free, overload our social and financial support systems, and on and on did that get us, Haley? How many? Too damned many you traitor!
They are going to give us nothing but 2nd and 3rd generation “Spanish Speaker” children whom they will have taught to hate this country of Gringos and to use it, not paying back one damned dime.
The reason these builders and others want illegals is because they can pay them squat, no benefits and treat them like carpola and they cannot complain.
We have a gazillion chicken plants in GA and plenty of people who need work. Haley Barbour is a GOP progressive tool.
Then prison conditions are too good.
Haley, that's because the taking away of jobs started in the 70s and 80s while you weren't watching. Today, it's a fait accompli and you're a fool for advocating that we wash, rinse, & repeat the cycle through amnesty.
In Arkansas BLAME WALMART!
Back in the dark ages this area was in the economic stranglehold of the Chicken Men! you worked at their starvation wages or you didn’t work. People here were too poor to go to where jobs were.
Then Sam Walton started his Walmart stores and things began to change. He offered better wages than the Chicken Men so workers deserted the chicken plants to work for Sam.
An accountant working for the Chicken Men found a way to increase wages in the processing plants .25 cents an hour(which was worth a couple of dollars in today’s money) and it would not affect the bottom line of the companies.
I still remember the words of the President of the local Chicken company...”I’m not going to give them .25 cents an hour raise!”
He was the first Chicken Man to go to Mexico and bring in bus loads of workers to replace those who had gone to Walmart.
175 years ago Barbour would have been extolling the virtues of owning negros. Big Chicken, Big Sheetrock, Big Cotton... the tune is the same.
The quote is from Mark Krikorian, a senior executive at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Krikorian used to be one of the people I admired most in the Immigration debate.
Unfortunately, about 6 months ago, Krikorian wrote a long essay at National Review Online where he advocated that “several million” of the 12 million illegal aliens be put on a path to citizenship.
He also advocated several other compromises with the “Gang of Eight” Amnesty.
Literally - there is NO one in the GOP leadership who can be completely trusted anymore on the Immigration issue!
The guy up the street is a skilled union tradesman who, about a year after Obama got elected, managed to scam his way onto SSI/SNAP and now spends his days sitting around drinking and watching porn.
Get every single guy like THAT off his duff and out there rebuilding hurricane-ravaged areas. Then if we still need more immigrant help, we can talk.
There is no more hostile work place for a non-"spanish speaker" than one where "spanish speakers" have taken over.