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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSI who wrote (8194)	1/17/2003 1:41:36 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

Just as devil's advocate: do you really think life would come to a screeching halt if all illegales somehow suddenly "went home" (or at least until they could apply to come in legally)? If it happened overnight it would be a huge disruption. If it happened over time we'd all adjust. We'd pay more for food or we'd wind up with more imported food and you'd see immigration laws loosened considerably. Ask yourself why with all the opposition to undocumented workers the situation still exists? It exists because we benefit from the situation. Illegals aren't just in the menial labor market. My husband hires a lot of guys for his construction projects and some of it is highly skilled and pays well even by US standards. They all have green cards, yet when you have sixty guys and two thirds of them have the same last name even while they are from very different parts of Mexico and Central America, realistically you have to think some of those documents are not exactly genuine even though they are enough to cover the legal liability of the employer. Maybe this is unusual, minority view, but I'd find a way to pay more for non-terrorist oil, and more for non-illegal labor, not just out of altruism, patriotism and sense of community, but in the belief that it's good business -- You assume that the resident population gets paid more and does a better job. This is not always true. My husband uses Mexican workers not because they work for less (they are paid the same) or that they have special skills that he can't get from the locals but because they show up on time and they show up sober. He has lots of issues with the resident population that will apply for this kind of work. They show up drunk or high if they show up at all. He winds up bailing them out of jail or gets them straight from work release at the city jail. They complain bitterly about the work, show up without tools and constantly push the limits of acceptable job behavior whereas the Mexicans are for the most part very happy to have the work and don't make waves. The only real negative is that they don't always understand my husband's Spanish... but then the locals don't always understand his English so it's a swap.