CNN.com - Day labor -- not a niche market anymore - Apr 29, 2006
CNN.com - Day labor -- not a niche market anymore - Apr 29, 2006
Homeowners are the number one employers of day laborers, the majority of which are illegal, according to this article. Many are hired right outside of Home Depot stores.
Personally, I've not run into this phenomenon, but this appears to be widespread. I lean more toward giving the immigrants some sort of status. This is the only practical thing to do as there are 11 million illegals here in the US and there's absolutely no way they're all going to be deported.
I have to say however, that the american worker is set upon by all sides; white collar technical jobs are being sent overseas and those engaged in low paying manual labor type jobs now have to compete with immigrants willing to work for less. On top of it all, defined benefit pension plans (the one's that pay you for life) and social security are going the way of the dodo bird. If that's not enough, the stuff the average person needs (i.e. fuel, housing, health care and etc.) is escalating dramatically in cost.
In short, there's not much help out there for the average worker, yet our government is prepared to pay $ 2.o trillion to pursue war in Iraq. How many Allentowns can be saved with that money? How many displaced workers can be retrained with that money? Could the social security system be shored up with that money?
We're told that the cost benefit of that expenditure is now that of making sure the Iraqis have "freedom". That's like saying that I'm going over two towns over to install a spinkler system in somone's house while my own house is a tinderbox about ready to go up flames. That makes absolutely no sense at all.
Homeowners are the number one employers of day laborers, the majority of which are illegal, according to this article. Many are hired right outside of Home Depot stores.
Personally, I've not run into this phenomenon, but this appears to be widespread. I lean more toward giving the immigrants some sort of status. This is the only practical thing to do as there are 11 million illegals here in the US and there's absolutely no way they're all going to be deported.
I have to say however, that the american worker is set upon by all sides; white collar technical jobs are being sent overseas and those engaged in low paying manual labor type jobs now have to compete with immigrants willing to work for less. On top of it all, defined benefit pension plans (the one's that pay you for life) and social security are going the way of the dodo bird. If that's not enough, the stuff the average person needs (i.e. fuel, housing, health care and etc.) is escalating dramatically in cost.
In short, there's not much help out there for the average worker, yet our government is prepared to pay $ 2.o trillion to pursue war in Iraq. How many Allentowns can be saved with that money? How many displaced workers can be retrained with that money? Could the social security system be shored up with that money?
We're told that the cost benefit of that expenditure is now that of making sure the Iraqis have "freedom". That's like saying that I'm going over two towns over to install a spinkler system in somone's house while my own house is a tinderbox about ready to go up flames. That makes absolutely no sense at all.
posted by Greg L at
9:25 PM
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