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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (328347)	2/17/2017 10:18:07 AM
From: Alex MG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541768

wow, these people are insane WASHINGTON (AP) -- Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.

To: epicure who wrote (328347)	2/17/2017 2:22:34 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541768

The problem is more fundamental - the American workforce doesn't really want these jobs. Remember the Wattsonville raspberry pickers being paid $15 hour? What do you suppose the hourly wage for a landscaper is? That is not a horribly bad wage and I suspect that not many native-born Americans were applying for that work. It looks like about $10 for a gardener (minimum wage plus a bit). It is highly seasonal and the skills aren't transferable to another profession. Some studies show that the supposed "savings" of below-minimum wages is a bit of a myth in food production - there is a limited labor pool that wants to work in the sun, the ones that do have to be competitively acquired (often above minimum, but below livable union scale). In some industries, at some point it gets automated (look no further than the grape growing industry) due to this imbalance. We really need to tease apart wages, illegal industry practices, and migration controls as separate issues. If the federal government took the same approach to illegal ag and construction businesses using undocumented labor as they have with drug dealers, there would be a hue and cry from all those Trumpets. They would have their assets seized and then who would juggle the cognitive dissonance of "America First" and "Deport the Illegals" with their shrinking ability to get high-labor workforces to work their sites plus have the specter of the loss of their business as the fruits of a criminal enterprise hovering over them?