Phat, we have already gone over all this before.
Let the domestic poor compete with undocumented workers for jobs ...
Already been tried. Americans don't want to do that work.
As I reposted in my
Message 415 (10 Sep 2024) from my
Message 534 (21-Jan-2019) -- the subject of
Message 415 was the shortage of Americans with construction skills because of the decline of trade unions, the traditional schools for teaching those skills:
dwise1 writes:
And it's not a case of those immigrants doing the jobs that Americans refuse to do; eg, from my
Message 534 (21-Jan-2019) reply to Faith:
dwise1 writes:
"Jobs that Americans refuse to do"
Remember the 1964 A-TEAM (Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program#Aftermath and
https://www.npr.org/...grant-farmworkers-with-high-schoolers. When we closed the bracero program the farmers had no farm workers to pick their crops for them. Despite the opponents of the bracero program decrying how they were taking jobs away from Americans, Americans didn't rush in to grab those jobs. Seeing two different problems -- lack of farm workers and lack of summer jobs for teenagers -- politicians decided that combining the two problems would provide the solutions. So in 1964 they recruited high school athletes to do farm work. They got a lot of responses, though coaches would not allow athletes enter that program because they needed to make practice during the summer. The students were appalled at the extremely bad living and working conditions, the same ones that the braceros had had to endure. Many students deserted within the first few weeks (some after only a few days) and they staged strikes in some of the camps. The program was a failure and was cancelled after the first summer.
Do the name, "Salem, Ohio", ring a bell? --
https://www.theguardian.com/...n-raid-meatpacking-plant-ohio. The Fresh Mark meat packing plant, a major industry that the town depends on, employed many Guatemalan illegals. Not only did Fresh Mark benefit from their hard work, but they and their families were a contributing part of the community. On 19 June 2018, ICE staged a massive raid on the plant arresting 146 workers. The effects on the town were devastating. The plant continued to operate, but at a reduced capacity which cost them revenue. Many Guatemalans left the town out of fear, so the businesses in town suffered from the loss of many of their customers. The plant has tried to recruit workers, which should be easy with all the Americans flooding in to fill those jobs. That hasn't been the case. On the radio, it was reported that Syrian refugees were filling those jobs.
Rather, this is a case of immigrants doing jobs
that Americans can no longer do because they cannot learn the skills due to the loss of the institutions which used to provide that training. It's like the
Catch-22 I recognized even in high school: you cannot get a job if you don't have work experience, but you cannot get that work experience without having gotten a job.
Which makes the threat of mass deportations of those skilled immigrant workers so dire to the American economy. Who's going to replace those essential workers if so few of us have the required skills? Even farm work requires skills which take years and we've already seen Florida farmers unable to harvest their crops because so many farm workers are leaving the state because of rabid GOP anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Part of that report on the Fresh Mark meat packing plant included the town's unemployed whites complaining about those illegals taking jobs away from them, but when those jobs opened up after the ICE raid
none of them applied for those newly opened jobs.
During the campaign, Trump's racism was on full display, though maybe you needed to have grown up with a Texan to spot it -- growing up, my father's family had moved to Texas a few times. Like with some the Pat Robertson's double-talk during his presidential run, which went over the public's head whereas I, with my fundamentalist Christian experience, could see right through him --
let those with eyes to see and ears to hear watch and listen (it's from the Gospels, so you might not recognize the reference). When one speaks in code (eg, Jesus teaching through parables so that the masses couldn't understand whereas those with sufficient training could, which is why he then took his disciples aside to "teach them the mysteries of Heaven", which itself was a reference to the
mystery religions in which public displays and ceremonies (The Outer Temple) were heavily shrouded in symbolism the meanings of which was only given to initiates into the religion (The Inner Temple) and which they were to keep a closely guarded secrets.
To blacks, Trump infamously said that the illegals are taking away "black jobs". What are black jobs? Well, my father told me of how his mother, a white woman (his side of the family was predominantly Irish), had to wait until night time to sweep off the mud porch so that their neighbors couldn't see her "doing n***** work." That's what Trump meant by "black jobs": "n***** work".
Those with ears to hear and eyes to see ...
... and make work a necessity rather than a luxury.
Already been tried and failed. Because that attitude ignores reality. Like a white person (I'm about 94% Celtic, BTW, and 6% either German or Jewish; we're not sure about that part with my sister insisting on Jewish while I want to see some supporting documentation) advising blacks that if they just do what the police officer tells them they will be perfectly safe. Our white experiences with the police are entirely different from blacks' experiences. That's just reality.
We've tried attaching work to welfare and it has always failed. Of course, there have to be jobs. Also, especially for single parents, child care is either unavailable or costs more than they would earn. Plus, the way that unemployment benefits are set up, the moment you start working you stop getting those benefits. Even if they want to work (and most do), the system doesn't let them.
IOW, the entire system would need to be reformed. But under Republican rule, those "reforms" would be completely detached from reality (consider the anti-abortion laws written by Republican politicians with
zero medical knowledge that end up getting women killed in horrific manner).
Find the undocumented workers and make sure they are paying into social security.
We've already discussed this, though it was mainly with Faith. Many do indeed pay into Social Security
and Medicare. In order to cover their employers' asses, undocumented workers obtain fake Social Security Numbers (SSNs or "sosh" in military parlance -- our "sosh" was also our military ID number in all my 35 years of service, but that practice has been discontinued; it was only when I got my retiree ID card in 2011 that I first saw my new DoD ID number). Thus, their employers use those fake numbers to do all the required payroll taxes and income tax withholding, even though their workers will never get an income tax refund nor ever receive any Social Security or Medicare benefits. BTW, the undocumented workers who staff Trump's resorts have fake SSNs, but management confiscates and locks up their documents
which is emblematic of human trafficking operations (for a few years, we had General Military Training (GMT) instruction in how to identify human trafficking operations). As the French say, "Nous sommes foutus" ("We're screwed." -- the German, "Wir sind beschissen" means we're shitted upon; most German profanity uses excrement so they don't understand when we refer to sex to express bad things).
Teach the domestic poor to help themselves and not be coddled.
I agree, but the system has to facilitate that
and it doesn't. While the Democratic tendency is to try to help them (admittedly perhaps too much), the Republican tendency is to just cut them loose and have them fend for themselves. Like when De Santis kidnapped through deception those immigrants already in the system seeking asylum (ie,
not undocumented) and bussed them to New York City in the middle of December with the little children dressed in t-shirts and just dumped them out on the street.
Part of Republican propaganda was the "issue" of immigrants in NYC being housed in hotels and being provided for in the interim. It's simple logistics that whenever you have a large number of people you need to provide shelter and sustenance (logistics is the bread-and-butter of the military, that and organization). It is also simple logistics that hotels are a prime source of shelter
and that prime room rates do not apply when an agency contracts blocks of rooms. For example, when our return flight from Italy was messed up, the airline booked us into a hotel. I found the standard rates for single occupancy of my room and it was more than $600 (in 2018). Did the airline pay over $600 to put me in that room? To quote that great American philosopher, John Wayne: "Not hardly." An empty hotel room provides management no income,
so deals at reduced rates will be struck. Immigrants housed by the government in a luxury hotel does not mean that the government had to pay full price for each room.
The undocumented workers already know that they have to work.
Yes, and that's a given. They are ready and willing to do work that Americans refuse to do. That has been the story of immigrants for centuries.
So why do the Republicans have such a huge problem about that?
We want them to feel welcome but we want them to contribute.
Do we? Really? So why do we keep telling them that we don't want them here?
BTW, a little something about the restaurant trade.
The economics of running a restaurant can be brutal. My father was a general contractor who would often put together new restaurants and he was the inquisitive type (probably where I got it from) who wanted to learn as much about a client's profession as he could, out of personal curiosity. The basic rule of thumb (AKA "heuristic") is that when you open a restaurant you need to start with enough capital to set up
and survive for at least two years with making no profit. To say that they operate on a shoestring is padding their economic situation too much.
And many restaurants depend on undocumented labor. That's just a simple fact of life. So at the end of the day, has that restaurant made enough to pay all its workers? Making payroll is a big bragging point for Republicans, but for so many businesses (Accounts Receivable look great, but that's cash coming in later not
right now when you have to pay your employees
in cash now not the promise of cash later) you often have to take out short-term business loans to remain solvent (that is from my Accounting 101 course in the early 70's, so it's neither rocket science nor brain surgery).
But restaurants are more immediate; for them there's no such thing as Accounts Receivable, money that is coming in tomorrow. So what far too often happens, even in "liberal enclaves like Los Angeles",
restaurant workers just do not get paid on time. They have to hold out and keep on working and hope that they will eventually get paid. And being undocumented, what legal recourse do they have? None. BTW, the
Bracero program ceased to exist 60 years ago and lawsuits over farmers not having paid their Mexican workers are still working their way through our legal system.
Yes, they want to work. Do we want to pay them fairly? To again quote that famous American philosopher, "Not hardly."
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