Thread: A Scenario of Illegal Immigration

A Scenario that shows some of the dangers of illegal immigration.
by: Joe "Dragon S5" Youngblood

In this scenario you own a landscaping and lawncare business. You are making good profits until you recieve some bitter competition. You and your competitor are now locked in a fierce strugle for supremeacy of your market area. At this point you lay off a few workers and ask the others to fill the labor gaps thus making more efficent use of the one input you control the most (labor). A few more months run by and your company has yet to see the profits of the year before. Your son wants a car, your wife wants to go on a cruise and your daughter wants new clothes for college etc... You just can't seem to keep your life at the comfort level it was before this bitter strugle broke out so you fire a few more workers and hire some high school kids to replace them. That summer your profits raise a little more, but unfortunately you are still not at the prior levels. During the summer one of the kids breaks his leg setting a retaining wall and that makes you responsible for workman's comp. You do the right thing and have his medical bills taken care of as well as partial pay while he is off work for the next 6-8 weeks.

As fall sets in and your leaf blowing business heats up you start getting too many orders to handle all over your market. Your losing profit once again. Sending the same employees everywhere seems inefficent, however, if you hire more workers you will be losing profit. You are driving to the office one day when you see about 20-30 men standing on a street corner, the thought flashes in your mind that you can make more money if you paid a lower labor rate and did not have to worry about medical or workman's comp. You swing into the parking lot and pickup 5-6 "day laborers" thus doubling your workforce. You take them in and have your current staff show them the ropes, after a week of training you fire your current staff. A few weeks later your company is back to the level of profit you were comfortable at. As the weeks go by your stress from the demands of your family wear off and once again you become comfortable. A few months later your competitor goes out of business because he can no longer compete with your rate, since of course he is hiring legal help.

Spring is in blossom and the smell of money is tantilizing your nostrils. This season you have basically no comptition and an abundance of cheap labor. Over the winter one of your workers has taken an english course and you have began to trust him. You agree to pay him a higher wage if he becomes your new foreman, you fire the other foreman(last legal employee) because his wage is now deadweight. You allow the new foreman to find new illegal workers to help on projects and find that your clients are pleased that you finish projects in half the time. Then one day you see an obituary in the paper. One of the guys you fired to make room for the cheaper labor has died, he had been out on the street since you laid him off stuggling to make ends meet, he was robbed and murdered by a desperate man who used to work construction until he was laid off. Your heart melts so you seek out all of your old (legal) employees and find one willing to come back. You introduce him to the new foreman and erase the guilt from your mind.

A couple days pass and your old employee approaches you. He tells you an unbelievable tale. It seems the foreman refuses to speak english on the job sites and that he can't comprehend spanish. He seems upset and distressed, you make it a point to tell the foreman that he needs to speak english to the workers. Your foreman tells you that the one employee is the only one who knows english, the rest would be lost if his directions were all spoken in it, but he tells you he will try both. At the end of the week your foreman ask permission to fire the legal guy and tells you that he is "unwilling" and "lazy" when you speak to the worker about it he tells you that again the foreman won't use english on the job site. You mull it over for a day, but in the end decide your bottom line is more important than the guys job, so you fire him and allow your foreman to replace him with two or three illegals.

Now you have a successful business, a great family life and no financial worries. However in the process one man has died and many are in unemployment lines struggling to care for themselves and/or their families.

The next busy season begins but this time you have competiton. Your foreman has quit and started his own business, the business you taught him. Along with him many of your old competitors have learned your secret and begin to hire illegals and day laborers to work their jobs. Your profits plummit and your bills start stacking up. It turns out that you have actually helped your competition in the long run. You begin laying off workers and cut back your crew. You also start crusing the lots where day laborers gather to find those who are most desperate or new to the city so you can pay them cheaper.

You don't know how you did it but finally both of your kids are off to college. You and your wife have saved quite a nestegg back and you decide to retire. You breath a sign of relief your first retired morning. You hear a lawnmower and look out your window to see 7 guys mowing your hard, in a few minutes they are gone. You begin to ponder their legal status but quickly forget as you fire up your laptop and get ready to do some day trading. It looks like you have made it, beat everyone and are now set to be comfortable for the rest of your life. Too bad your kids won't have it that easy, perhaps like you they could find some law to break to make themselves just as successful. Your coffee taste good so you buy some stock in the company and just keep staring out the window.

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The truth is that America's dirtiest and hardest jobs have been done by LEGAL workers. It is only the conscience choice of an employer to hire illegals. It is the duty of all of America to fix this problem and enforce our immigration laws before all of our jobs are replaced.

The truth is that America's dirtiest and hardest jobs have been done by LEGAL workers. It is only the conscience choice of an employer to hire illegals. It is the duty of all of America to fix this problem and enforce our immigration laws before all of our jobs are replaced.

good post. No one profits from illegal labor in the end -- neither the employer nor the illegal worker, because in the end it all comes back.

What is so sad and disgusting to me is it's not just "cheap" labor the Senate is rallying for, it's 'SLAVE" labor . . . the attitude of some of the elite of this country is an embarassment and it will come back to haunt us all.

Great post. There's just no way to prevent this kind of "bottom line" thinking as long as the country is filling up with illegals willing to keep undercutting the overall wage levels.

I'd really love to post of copy of your scenario on my blog, with your permission only, of course.

--gary

Excellent post! And that is exactly how it works.

My husband just told me yesterday that he knows a small business owner of a construction company did the very thing you just mentioned. He had a Mexican employee, who worked for him for several months, the Mexican spoke English very well,and he made him his foreman, then hired more Illegal non English speaking workers.
The Mexican head worker had a wife and kids back in Mexico, and the construction owner jumped through hoops paid the fees and had the Mexican workers family brought here.

But there's a twist!!

The Mexican worker has now started up his own construction business (In the same town as his former employer) and is taking the other Mexican co- workers with him!
He is charging far less per hour than the other small American business owner was charging customers,and he has also stolen many of his former bosses customers!

Oh, but they add so much to our economy!!!!!

We had a hail storm come through our area last spring. The roofers showed up by the dozens leaving estimates. They all had illegals working for them. I would not let any of them do my roof.

It is still waiting for me to find someone without illegal workers to do my roof.

Thank goodness, the damage didn't cause leaks - yet. Also, we have had to be away from home from work, so we may have to wait a little longer to find those legal workers.

These businesses that do not require a great deal of start up costs for equipment, etc. are extremely vulnerable to the illegals.

We work in construction. My husband has worked construction for 35 years. Now in the residential part it's mostly Mexicans...some of their help they are paying as little as $3 per hour. The going rate is $8 for the apprentice and $15-20 for the more experienced.

The only thing left now is commerical work which requires considerable financial outlay to get the equipment to get started.

We'll be retiring soon...without ever having hired illegals...but the competition is fierce and to my mind, unfair. I feel sorry for our sons who will have to compete with the illegals.

RR

go ahead and use it, it would be an honor.

Yeah I have seen this scenario play out over and over and over again. It's just the way competition works, if you can undercut your opponet without any sort of consequence to gain short run profits then why wouldn't you?

Originally Posted by nntrixie

Oh, but they add so much to our economy!!!!!


It is still waiting for me to find someone without illegal workers to do my roof.

Thank goodness, the damage didn't cause leaks - yet. Also, we have had to be away from home from work, so we may have to wait a little longer to find those legal workers.

roll roofing is pretty cheap and so is tar . . . my brother-in-law repaired my roof in the back of the house for about $100.00, then I paid him for his labor.

Out roofing job is a pretty big job.

We have an older two story home with a very, very steep roof - several peaks.

Also, the composition is laid over the old wood shingle roof - so it must have all that removed, new decking put on and then shingles - big job.

There was a time my husband and I would have tackled it - but not now.

We did paint that big house ourselves a couple of years ago. It was kinda scary some times. We had to rent scaffolding for one of the gable ends.

Our neighbor told our daughter he would sit by the window with his phone and dial 91 - and wait to dial the other 1. He said I kept telling my wife, "Those old people are going to get hurt.".

Originally Posted by nntrixie

Out roofing job is a pretty big job.

We have an older two story home with a very, very steep roof - several peaks.

Also, the composition is laid over the old wood shingle roof - so it must have all that removed, new decking put on and then shingles - big job.

There was a time my husband and I would have tackled it - but not now.

We did paint that big house ourselves a couple of years ago. It was kinda scary some times. We had to rent scaffolding for one of the gable ends.

Our neighbor told our daughter he would sit by the window with his phone and dial 91 - and wait to dial the other 1. He said I kept telling my wife, "Those old people are going to get hurt.".

my roof has a steep pitch too like Creole cottage. Sounds like you have a good neighbor. When I first moved here I got the chainsaw going in the backyard cutting overgrown trees, my neighbor almost freaked -- I don't think he'd ever seen a woman using a chainsaw