Thread: Small Business Owners Fear Future w/o Guest Workers

Years ago, I owned a small business. I hired mostly college kids to work for me and devised a schedule that could accomodate everyone. It wasn't all that difficult and I didn't open a business and not expect to work myself.

Later, I owned another small business of a different nature and I would never have even considered hiring someone who couldn't speak English to work in my store. It WAS hard to get help and there were times when I worked double shifts for days at a time because of it.

So I will say that in certain places at certain times of year, there are probably worker shortages.

However, I don't think and I never have thought that there is any problem with GUEST WORKERS who are LEGAL. It is the illegal aliens we are against. If those very same people come back legally, I have no problem with them having jobs as long as the gov't doesn't come up with some discriminatory measure to keep people from hiring the employees who best fit their work environment regardless of their ethnicity.

I never did go along with hiring unqualified people for the sake of filling quotas. All that did was cause hard feelings and put a whole bunch of people into jobs they couldn't possibly do.

I, personally, would NEVER have hired a guest worker who couldn't speak perfect English because I don't have the patience to try to communicate with them and some situations are too critical for misunderstandings. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't want the government to say I'm discriminating for not hiring one of the people they gave special privileges if they grant any of them guest worker status.

I had a contractor over to give me an estimate to refinish my deck and repair stucco. I got the name of this company from a friend of mine that had used him to refinish her deck that was four times larger than mine.
I told him up front that I couldn't have any illegals working at my house. He told me that his head guy was legal, that he had been in this country 8 years, and that his company had paid $6,000.00 to get his wife up from Mexico and make her "legal"???
I told him that because there was not an outside access to the deck his people would have to come through my house and that I didn't want any illegals coming through my house.
His estimate was 3 times what he had charged my friend and he never gave me that estimate for the stucco. In fact I think he burned rubber out of my neigborhood.
I rented a sander and this lazy American did myself - probably did a better job.

Originally Posted by Newmexican

I rented a sander and this lazy American did myself - probably did a better job.

Good job Newmexican. You don't sound too lazy to me.

Newmexican, that is a very common problem here, too. You have to make it really clear that these people aren't going to be in or around you and then the rate goes up. Thank God my husband knows pretty much how to do most anything that can be done. We do all our own painting, yardwork, repairs, etc. If we buy an appliance, we take our truck and go get it.

I did pay two homeless vets a couple years in a row to rake up leaves for me but it was only because they were willing to do the job and I had extra money. There's some mexican dude who wanders around with his rake and thinks I'm going to pay him fifty bucks to pull weeds that I can pull myself. That aint gonna happen. I act like I don't know what he's talking about and my Spanish-speaking neighbors get into the act and start "translating" for me. LOL

A big Amen to checking the status of home repair workers! My father hired Mexican workers to put new siding on his house. He beleived it was better to pay them since they needed the money more than a reputable company. I warned him about it but he was firm on them being good hard workers. I called to check on the progress and he was thrilled to report how hard they were working. Unfortunatly....they never finished the job. They didn't finish the job on alot of homes. So they filed a class action suit and found out they went back to Mexico. So we got a big too bad you loose. Of course he still felt he got what he deserved for paying them in full up front. He's since passed away and now it's my expense to finish it. [/b]

Hey...newmexican....you can be my lazy man any day.

GOOD FOR YOU!!!

Send them packing...but not to North Carolina, puleeeze!!

Oh you'd be SUPRISED at what a good job those lazy Americans can do !!