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RE: Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 04/16/18> One last thing before we move on…. AGUA.
I would have done exactly the same. Borders are established by war and conquest - they are about power.
I think situations that result in illegal immigration are deliberately fostered, because it allows unscrupulous businesses to get away with paying their employees less than the minimum wage and denying them the labour conditions that would otherwise be necessary. The threat of exposure makes illegal immigrants easy prey to such abuses.
I agree that borders are established by war and conquest and power comes with that. I don't know that the situations that result in illegal immigration are deliberately fostered on behalf of the businesses that end up hiring illegals. There is plenty of illegal immigration in several countries that the people have been uprooted from their home country because of political differences and such.
I can't speak to any situation other than what I see here in Texas, and I see it every day in the industry I work in. First let me say that it is a myth that these illegals are paid less than the minimum wage.
I'll start with what are known as "day laborers". These people hang out at local spots and wait for someone needing laborers to show up and pick them up and take them to a job site to do usually manual labor, digging ditches, building fences, clearing debris and things like that. They work by the day and most days will end up being about 10 to 11 hours of work, that includes the time to drive to the job and also to drop them back off where you picked them up. They do not have their own transportation, when you hire them they will also require that you provide them lunch, it may only be a hamburger meal or three tacos from the taco truck but you will feed them. They also won't work for less than $100 for the day, in some areas of Texas, like Austin, the going rate is $125- $135 a day plus lunch. When you break it down by the hour that is well above the $7.75 minimum hourly wage the government requires businesses to pay.
There are no taxes taken out and it is paid at the end of the day when they get dropped back off.
The illegals have even gone as far as to group themselves in 3 or 5 man crews where you can't just hire one laborer, even if that is all you need. They won't split up and would rather go back home and not work then run the risk of being separated in case something were to happen. The groups will sometimes allow a little room for negotiation but you aren't getting them for less than $100 per person.
The other group is the steady work illegal, these people are illegal but give a fake social security number in order to make it where the employer has a number to withhold payroll taxes and apply it too. The employer knows it isn't their number but as far as he's concerned he did his part and had them fill out the paper work and taxes are withheld. These people end up working in the same conditions and under the same laws and regulations that anyone born here works under, the only thing is that these folks will never file a tax return or see any social security even though they have paid into the system.
I know one illegal that works for a landscaping company mowing lawns. He has worked there for eight years, each year he leaves and goes back to Mexico the second week of December and then he returns between the third week of January and the middle of February, it just depends on how long it takes to get back across the border and back up to Houston. Each year he will give his employer a different name and social security number for the paperwork. The employer pays them with a check, which they sign endorse and then he trades them cash for the endorsed check, he doesn't charge them a fee. They can take their check to the local convenient store and cash it, but they will pay a 2% check cashing fee.
Don't get wrong, I'm not saying it is a great life for the illegals, it is not, but it is a far cry from how bad people make it sound and how the illegals are being exploited at every turn, because it isn't happening, at least not here in Texas.
The biggest risk the illegals face is deportation, but those who have been here and back home and then back here know it is not the end of the world for them. They just start the trek all over once they get placed back at the border.
It may be different in other states but I can tell you this is the way it is here and that is from first hand knowledge.
I do feel for them, the illegals, because of the terrain they have to traverse to make it to where they can get picked up by friends or family and the blue barrels just reinforce how treacherous the trip can be.
Fantastic - good on them! I've heard of a few instances where illegal immigrants in the UK had suffered exploitation, although the same could be said for many "legal" workers here too!
My father came from the Bahamas - although when he came to the UK, in 1948, it was still a British colony and he had a British passport, so there were no issues about moving here. He came to study, and was planning to return, but then he met my mum...
I mention this because shortly after he arrived, there was a large influx of immigrants from the Caribbean to the UK, a policy that was encouraged by the UK government at the time because there was a demand for cheap labour. There is currently a big row going on in the UK because many of the immigrants who arrived at this time did not receive valid documentation, and are now being denied healthcare in their old age because they are seen as illegal immigrants - despite the fact that they've been working here and paying taxes since the 1960s and 70s.
Some of them have probably been returning regularly to the Caribbean over the years, just as you describe with the Mexican immigrants - but they have still spent years fulfilling the UK's demand for bus drivers, cleaners and hospital staff etc in the productive cities of London and Birmingham.
And the reason they were in countries like Jamaica in the first place is because the British empire needed a lot of slave labour to build up its sugar industry in the 18th and 19th centuries! So it's not surprising that there's a big row about this that has resulted in the resignation of a government minister, when people who worked for the UK for decades and whose ancestors sweated and toiled to build up the British Empire are being labelled as illegal immigrants and denied healthcare.