Thread: Illegal Immigrants Doing the Jobs Mexicans Won't Do

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/ ... orney-text

While sitting in my dentist's waiting room today, I read an interesting article about "Mexico's Other Border". The following excerpt really caught my attention:

In Chiapas, where coffee, banana, and mango harvests have depended for decades on Guatemalan agricultural workers, employers underpay undocumented workers or refuse to pay them at all, counting on them to fear repatriation too much to complain. Gang members as well as freelance toughs lurk along the riverbanks and footpaths, alert to the backpack-carrying travelers who may have money secreted away. Although certain villages along the freight train routes are known for locals who hand free food up to the migrants hanging off the railroad cars, the locals at other stops jump onto the cars to beat and rob migrants, sometimes with police watching or joining in.

We always hear that illegals come to the U.S. only to work. If that's the case, why don't Mexican illegals living in the U.S. just go to Chiapas and pick coffee, bananas, and mangos in their beloved homeland instead of coming to the U.S. to pick our lettuce? Could all of the freebies we lavish on illegals have something to do with it?

employers underpay undocumented workers or refuse to pay them at all, counting on them to fear repatriation too much to complain

It the underpaying or not paying that keep them coming.

Originally Posted by SecureTheBorder

We always hear that illegals come to the U.S. only to work. If that's the case, why don't Mexican illegals living in the U.S. just go to Chiapas and pick coffee, bananas, and mangos in their beloved homeland instead of coming to the U.S. to pick our lettuce? Could all of the freebies we lavish on illegals have something to do with it?

I definitely think that the freebies are part of it. But it also has to do with the fact that they can earn much more money doing the same type of work north of the border. I believe that a lot of our illegals come from Chiapas. The Central Americans are picking up the jobs that the Mexicans left behind.

Originally Posted by BearFlagRepublic

I definitely think that the freebies are part of it. But it also has to do with the fact that they can earn much more money doing the same type of work north of the border. I believe that a lot of our illegals come from Chiapas. The Central Americans are picking up the jobs that the Mexicans left behind.

Yes, but the thing is....if their businesses weren't diluting the labor market by bringing in cheap labor, they'd make more.

My biggest problems with illegals are 1. that they're illegally here, and 2. that they are holding down the wages of the American workers.

Brings new light to the saying about how "the sh~t rolls downhill.

I believe part of the 1.4 billion that BUSH wants to give to Mexico, will go towards Mexico securing its own southern border.