usillegalaliens.com

The MSM report ad nauseam that illegal aliens are only "doing work that Americans won't." This mantra is mercilessly bandied about by illegal immigration supporters and echoes throughout the halls of Congress and the White House whenever the topic comes up. What is never mentioned, however, is that the illegal aliens are artificially depressing compensation and that illegal aliens are the only ones who will do the work at such low wages. In actual fact, illegal immigration distorts the law of supply and demand in a capitalistic society. Additionally it is grossly hypocritical to want to raise the minimum wage on one hand while the other hand winks at illegal aliens working at far below prevailing wages.

In any case, illegal aliens are not just picking lettuce and digging ditches any more. It wasn't that long ago that being a dry-waller, brick-layer, house framer, painter, roofer, carpet layer, plumber, or electrician was a decently compensated, middle class trade. Now it is increasingly becoming the work for illegal aliens at far less than the free market rate. While illegal alien workers are only a small portion of many of those job categories their willingness to work at dramatically lower rates artificially drags down the compensation for all workers.

When the resident poor and uneducated Americans can subsist on welfare they are not going to pick lettuce, dig ditches, clean toilets or wash dishes at minimum wage. However, if there are massive shortages of workers for such jobs, the forces of supply and demand will come in to play and the compensation for those jobs will rise to attract more workers. At some point, it will pay more than being on welfare and be attractive enough to turn off Oprah and the labor shortage will be alleviated.

There are also side affects of "only doing the jobs that Americans won't do," at artificially depressed wages anyway. One is that it increases the load on the welfare systems as there are fewer working poor and more welfare recipients. Another is that many unscrupulous employers pay illegal aliens in cash, off-the-books, avoiding all taxes which also makes the illegal alien worker have little or no income "qualifying" them for welfare benefits as well.

One of the problems with the MSM, the President, and Congress believing that only illegal aliens will do the work that Americans won't is that they must have never done any of that kind of work. It must be so beneath them that they just can't believe "Americans" will actually do it.

When I was seventeen I was 6'2"and weighed 155 pounds. That summer I took a job in a Dole Pineapple plant where for 12 hours a day, six days a week for three months I had to lift, carry, throw, and stack 100 pound sacks of cattle feed. Working on the loading dock one day where the sacks were filled, it was my job to pick up a bag from two automatic filling machines and carry them eight feet or so to the edge of the dock and throw them into a truck. The two filling machines produced four bags a minute. That is 240 an hour and 2,880 a shift. At 100 pounds each that was 144 tons.

It was hot, humid, dusty, stunk and I was paid minimum wage – with an agricultural exemption from any overtime. While Tennessee Ernie Ford wrote a song entitled "Sixteen Tons" about mining coal, we didn't get any songs written about us doing 144 tons – you just did the job.

When I started that job I could barely pick up a 100 pound bag with two hands. At the end of the summer I still weighed 155 pounds but could pick up a bag with each hand and fling it ten feet. I also learned that it wasn't the kind of work I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life.

Many of the people reading this report have similar stories and work experiences. These are the jobs that legal immigrants, students, and the working poor have been doing for the last 100 years. The jobs were not done by illegal aliens. Do we need a bona fide guest worker program to allow seasonal migrant workers from Mexico to come in and earn money picking lettuce? Probably, but I am tired of hearing that illegal aliens are only doing the work that Americans won't do because that is BS – I've done that work. I even did it in December 2006 when I spent five and a half hours snow shoveling 36 inches of snow from my around my and one of my neighbor's Colorado homes. I didn't want to do that work either but I did it because it had to be done. Where were all the illegal aliens when you really needed them?

A March 2006 article in The Christian Science Monitor by Ron Scherer, Immigration debate crux: jobs impact - Experts weigh how illegal workers affect US employment, reports:

www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_ille ... igration...