“You Cannot Hire American Here”

[Gunny]

What a crazy turn of affairs that this OP is now the default position of American progressives.

 

[grimballer]

Republicans: Capitalism is the best system there is! Competition breeds excellence! Let the free market decide!

Also Republicans: Well yeah, but we didn't mean like this. You gotta play by the rules.

Still Republicans: Okay, but if you're rich you don't have to play by the rules. We'll bail you out.

The Dems have a lot of problems, but their policies on labor in relation to immigration are far more sensible.

you sure about that?

democrats: Americans are too lazy to do certain type of jobs n that’s why illegals are needed N are willing to work for way less than average American

also democrat: universal minimal wage is needed to prevent greedy capitalists from exploiting n underpaying his/hers employees

still democrats: universal free healthcare care is needed n should be given to everybody regardless of their legal status

 

[Gregolian]

Yes! I have been saying this for a long time.

It would also help people eat healthier and not just premade garbage. It would save us a ton in medical costs long term.

Yes! 10000%

People need to know how to cook real food and not only eat pre made garbage!

Our shitty diets are directly related to a large portion of our health problems.

People that don't know how to cook and the amount of them out there kinda blow my mind.

 

[skysolo]

Yeah it's very American to show up drunk and dirty for your first shift and then demand a paycheck that day.

I'm pretty sure that's an exaggeration from a restaurant owner who is taking advantage of the American version of "slave labor". Paying shit wages with no benefits so she can be successful while these people live in poverty with no health or dental insurance. What an American hero she is.

You beat me to it.

 

[skysolo]

Couple issues here. One being restaurants are already notoriously hard to operate for a profit with a majority failing in the first year and a vast majority shuttering before 5 years. Raising costs and charging more for your product isn’t in reality feasible for the industry at the moment.

Secondly, I don’t see raising the wages of something like a prep cook actually translating into a restaurant getting the same quality of work from an American as they do an immigrant. The immigrants I’ve cooked with bust their fucking asses, take their jobs as dead serious, and operate on a completely different level than Americans doing the the same jobs as them. Even in the really successful, high end places I’ve worked where all the kitchen staff is paid well over minimum wage, the head chefs always hire a ton of immigrants because they work the hardest and fastest.

Legal and illegal immigrants make up 17% of the labor force. Your anecdotal evidence about immigrants working the hardest and fastest is absolute nonsense.

 

[nostradumbass]

Great, so where does the fight for doubling the federal minimum wage fit into this equation? How is the same side trying to juggle both that employers don't pay enough and need to more than double their wages for low skilled jobs, and also that we need more illegals because businesses would shut down if they had to pay what Americans demand.

If we're going to tackle just this argument, then illegals are good for business only as long as they're illegal. If there was a "pathway to citizenship", they would both demand the same wages the current Americans do and it would make welfare benefits more easily accessible.

 

[Riptide]

Killed @luckyshot thread within 10 posts. lol

Their businesses should not be open if they can't run them legally

/thread

Shipping in replacements seems like painting over a crack rather than fixing it.

America needs illegal immigrants: Who else will work long hours in physically demanding jobs for low wages and no benefits to speak of?

This abused underclass is necessary to maintain our lives of relative luxury.

Undocumented workers driving down wages for low skilled jobs confirmed.

Wages won't go up to meet fair market, if more people desperate to work for under market value keep coming in

 

[cincymma79]

NPR has released an interesting series of articles interviewing business owners from across the country— oftentimes from very Republican places, such as Alabama or Tennessee— about why they employ undocumented workers.

The results are unsurprising: undocumented workers are willing to do jobs that American citizens aren’t, are sometimes willing to work for less or without benefits, and are often harder-working and more reliable.

The latest interview is with a Missouri restaurant owner who says quite frankly what would happen if she could not hire undocumented Mexicans to work in her kitchen for $11-16 per hour with no benefits: “We’d close. I’d sell everything for whatever I could get for it, and we’d close.”

When asked why she didn’t hire American, she was equally frank: “That is the biggest joke. I hear it all the time. We put ads in the newspaper, on Facebook, on Craigslist, in the window. The [American citizens] who come in will show up for one shift. They will not be clean. They will probably not be sober. They will ask for money at the end of the shift and not be back.”



Employers in virtually every field with a high population of undocumented workers— farm work, restaurants, landscaping, construction— give these same answers.

Why do so many people refuse to believe them?

The simple fact is, that much of the American economy, and all the goods and services that we are accustomed to at the prices we are accustomed to paying, is reliant on population of relatively low paid workers with no benefits.

Why on earth do we vilify these people?

Why do you think their labor is less valuable

 

[PainIsLIfe]

I agree. But what do you do when nobody can afford food?

People will afford food and cut back on the latest iphone. Or they'll force their employers to give better incentives or else they'll find jobs that offer them.

 

[PainIsLIfe]

Which would make sense if you prevented corporations from outsourcing...which is just hiring illegal immigrant workers but housing them in their original countries, lol.

Hold on, before you respond let me explain. The low wage argument about how illegal immigrants hurts domestic wages has some validity. But it is the economically identical scenario to going to a country with lower wages and employing those people. In both cases, you're circumventing the domestic wage market for lower waged employees.

One cannot say to a company "You need to incentivize people to take your low wage work by raising your costs." while allowing other companies to circumvent those same pressures by offshoring.

If you want real market competition and you're allowing offshoring to beat the domestic wage floor, you're going to have to let domestic companies beat the domestic wage floor as well. Otherwise, you're tipping the market in favor of companies that can offshore.

Fair, but if you offshore everything then Americans cant buy your product because they have no jobs. The whole idea behind outsourcing is that you pay very little and then bring the product back into the state where people have disposable income.

 

[Gregolian]

There is a line in season 2 of Sons of Anarchy where a Neo-Nazi named Darby is running a carpentry business. All his employees are Mexicans. The true believer Neo-Nazi, Weston (played by Henry Rollins for extra wtf-ness) calls him on it and Darby responds:
"I can't afford the white guys"

Weston responds with some:
"Never put money before race"

sorta thing.... SEASON 2 AIRED BACK IN 2009!

 

[PainIsLIfe]

Couple issues here. One being restaurants are already notoriously hard to operate for a profit with a majority failing in the first year and a vast majority shuttering before 5 years. Raising costs and charging more for your product isn’t in reality feasible for the industry at the moment.

Secondly, I don’t see raising the wages of something like a prep cook actually translating into a restaurant getting the same quality of work from an American as they do an immigrant. The immigrants I’ve cooked with bust their fucking asses, take their jobs as dead serious, and operate on a completely different level than Americans doing the the same jobs as them. Even in the really successful, high end places I’ve worked where all the kitchen staff is paid well over minimum wage, the head chefs always hire a ton of immigrants because they work the hardest and fastest.

Again, if you need to hire illegal workers to be competitive/profitable then you have a failing business model.

I'll hapily stipulate that most immigrant are much better workers than Americans - that's more of an indictment of American's sense of entitlement than anything else, but also who would risk their life crossing a desert to get here a be a lazy ass?

 

[ineverpost]

America needs illegal immigrants: Who else will work long hours in physically demanding jobs for low wages and no benefits to speak of?

This abused underclass is necessary to maintain our lives of relative luxury.

Some Americans dumb enough to believe that they are the reason the $30 p/hr + blue collar jobs are gone.

 

[PainIsLIfe]

You think liberals need to learn the difference between legal and illegal? Liberals have proposed many paths towards legalization of hardworking workers.

Republicans always shoot these plans down for one simple reason: they fear it would ultimately lead to more Democratic voters.

Wjile that's patially true, republicans were about to pass a path to citizenship until the base rose up and said not until you stop mass immigration and near-open borders.

 

[Gunny]

Again, if you need to hire illegal workers to be competitive/profitable then you have a failing business model.

I'll hapily stipulate that most immigrant are much better workers than Americans - that's more of an indictment of American's sense of entitlement than anything else, but also who would risk their life crossing a desert to get here a be a lazy ass?

Based on my lifetime of experience in the manufacturing sector, I tend to disagree with the common assessment that immigrants are better workers. Speaking in broad generalities, they tend to be slower and less skilled than the equivalently qualified generic American worker. What they are, however, is willing to endure borderline abusive working arrangements. One of my peer manufacturers has a plant in Dallas made up of a largely immigrant workforce. They do things like suddenly require extra long hours and weekend shifts during busy periods then cut their hours short during slower periods. I heard they just announced the factory will be closed out of the blue for a week coming up with all the workers sent home with no pay. Mind you, we’re talking about people living from paycheck to paycheck in the first place. They’ll then be expected to show up after subsisting on who knows what for a week as if nothing had happened. My factory is in Vermont where there is no appreciable immigrant population. Try that shit in VT and your employees will have found different jobs at the end of the off week. And that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work. A competitive labor market supports wages/benefits/conditions. A labor market made non-competitive by flooding it with desperate immigrant laborers erodes those gains.

It boggles my mind that so-called progressives are now the ones defending these kinds of practices. Thirty years ago you’d be called a callous right wing ass hole for making the same arguments I hear Democrats make on this forum every day.

 

[Nate banged my mom]

My dads friend has his own small business making liposuction needles here in oc. hardcore republican . Let’s just say most of his machinists are illegals but really cool guys . I volunteered there for a few months . The guys were riding their bikes there from other cities at like 4 -5 am. Hard workers .
Without illegal Mexicans his business wouldn’t exist and he wouldn’t have money to buy one of his daughters a Land Rover like it’s nothing .

reported for no pics of the daughter/your sister

 

[TheGreatA]

Sounds like some robber baron bullshit.

The so-called "blue collar" party of the United States won't survive, if they stand for this.

 

[luckyshot]

Killed @luckyshot thread within 10 posts. lol

You know what would really be something, though? If all the people who liked the posts saying "Well, these businesses shouldn't exist if they hire illegals" would either:

a. Actually not support any businesses that hire illegals. (Hint: they wouldn't be able to eat at any restaurants-- or shop at grocery stores for that matter.)
b. Insist that the politicians that they vote for enforce the laws they say they care so much about. Oh, but that's right, for all the nativist rhetoric, the GOP is squarely in the pocket of its corporate donors.

Cliffs: You'll do fookin nutin.

 

[VivaRevolution]

NPR has released an interesting series of articles interviewing business owners from across the country— oftentimes from very Republican places, such as Alabama or Tennessee— about why they employ undocumented workers.

The results are unsurprising: undocumented workers are willing to do jobs that American citizens aren’t, are sometimes willing to work for less or without benefits, and are often harder-working and more reliable.

The latest interview is with a Missouri restaurant owner who says quite frankly what would happen if she could not hire undocumented Mexicans to work in her kitchen for $11-16 per hour with no benefits: “We’d close. I’d sell everything for whatever I could get for it, and we’d close.”

When asked why she didn’t hire American, she was equally frank: “That is the biggest joke. I hear it all the time. We put ads in the newspaper, on Facebook, on Craigslist, in the window. The [American citizens] who come in will show up for one shift. They will not be clean. They will probably not be sober. They will ask for money at the end of the shift and not be back.”



Employers in virtually every field with a high population of undocumented workers— farm work, restaurants, landscaping, construction— give these same answers.

Why do so many people refuse to believe them?

The simple fact is, that much of the American economy, and all the goods and services that we are accustomed to at the prices we are accustomed to paying, is reliant on population of relatively low paid workers with no benefits.

Why on earth do we vilify these people?

How about pay a living wage, and charge prices to support that?

You know American made, union made clothes can't compete either, that doesn't mean Americans won't work in textile factories. They just won't do it for vulture wages.

 

[ultramanhyata]

Where I live pizza prices vary wildly. And the quality of the ingredients is virtually identical.

So I wonder...

Joe's Pizza sells a large one topping for $5. While Sam's Pizza sells a large one topping for $17.00. Both do great business and both Joe's and Sam's pay virtually the same wages to their workers.

So if the owner of Joe's is making a healthy and acceptable profit selling $5 pies imagine how much more he could pay his worker's per hour selling $17 pies without a change to his margins.

Discuss.