by Jana on Fri May 30, 2008 4:10 pm
I can think of 5 people off the top of my head who needed to renovate their homes and chose to use illegal immigrants, because they didn't have the money to pay for legal contractors.
That said, maybe they should have done less work on the homes and used legal contractors.
If we did pay people more money to work the farms, the cost of food at the supermarket could easily triple. Consider the complaints right now as food prices are inflated due to rising transportation costs. The hue and cry from the average consumer would be tremendous if apples went from $1.79 / pound to $5.37 / pound.
Now consider the price of food at your local restaurant (most likely prepared in the back by folks who's native language is Espanol) - a $12 plate of food now costs $36.
This would severely hamper our consumer driven economy and if we are realistic, we know the economy would contract without low wage workers. There are some costs related to having them here, specific to the schools and the hospital bills.
But the value in services that they provide far outweights the costs. The hospital bills have more to do with the inefficient health care system, and the outlandish prices listed for "private pay" individuals. I had a lab done last month - the original cost was $153, my insurance company paid $12 and said I didn't have to pay anything else on the bill. How did the lab company come up with $153 as the original price?
What we need is efficient immigration, it is hampered at present by the backlog of background checks at homeland security, and the unwillingness to legitimize people who are already here, already working (not living off of welfare), and already paying sales taxes, gas taxes, car tabs, and rent (which helps cover property taxes paid by the landlord).
This is one area where I agree with McCain more than Obama - we need a more realistic immigratin policy.
BTW, after watching the video last night, I don't think the numbers on his graph are correct. Based on the hairstyles the video appears to be shot in the mid to late 1980's. First - he has far more people in the country as of 2008 than demographers report. I think we have appx 300 million. Second, I fail to see how the steady 10- 20 million undocumented workers presently in the country explode to 500 million so quickly. I question the math and the assumptions of how many children immigrants will have per family. Most reduce closer to American size families by the 2nd generation. They now have more access to family planning options, and assimilate to the prevailing American philosophy that providing more resouces to fewer children sets them up for success in the long term.
Where is the peer review of the speaker's demographics?
