Doug Kanter wrote:

Yea so? So are you just as complicit in allowing a clearly illegal
practice to continue?

You are way too hung up on the word "illegal".

It is the germaine issue. What part of "illegal" do you not understand?
Those people do not belong here, unless theygo through the proper
channels to immigrate legally. All you have done thusfar, is to attempt
to justify their illegal actions, and the actions of those who "look the
other way" by hiring them. It still doesn't make it right.


This segment of farm labor is
illegal because their presence used to take jobs from citizens who were
willing to work for minimum wage. Nowadays, people are more likely to weigh
the wage against the work being done. They'll accept minimum wage for easy
retail work, but not for bending over 400 times a day in a hot field and
swinging a razor sharp knife in the vicinity of their ankles (using cabbage
picking as an example). Laborers come from places like Mexico because
minimum wage here is far better than the $8 a WEEK they could make back
home. I defy you to find enough American citizens willing to take their
places.

All well and good, but it's still ILLEGAL.



If the pool of illegal labor were to go away, what would happen? I'll
tell you. Either they growers would develop better technology to replace
human labor with machines...

You are obviously not a gardener. Some crops are too delicate for
"technology".

They said the same thing about cotton until Eli Whitney came along.....


Corn harvesting pretty much reached the pinnacle of
"technology" fifty years ago, as did wheat and other grains. Other crops
will always require human hands, especially those which end up in the
produce department rather than in cans or frozen. Only human hands can
assure that these crops are presentable to the customer.

How myopic you are. You are declaring defeat before even exploring the
possibility.


or they would (by the force of supply and
demand), have to raise their labor rates, until they were able to hire
local people. Yes, that would cause the prices to rise, but that's not
the germaine issue.

It's not??? Are you ready to pay 3 times more for your food? What portion of
your budget goes for food? Multiply by 3 and tell me how quickly you'd be in
your boss' office looking for a massive raise, along with all of your
coworkers.

Ah! So what is it then? In this circle jerk of an economic discussion,
on the one hand I have you guys on the left complaining about the
substandard wages that the "working poor" are being paid. Then on the
other hand, you complain that if we pay people are "reasonable wage"
that the increase in costs would be too much for consumers to bear. You
use this as some sort of loose justification for remaining complicit in
the illegal immigrant labor practices. Yet we are doing nothing more
than forstering and encouraging a "slave labor" class of worker. Mark
talks about the "slave class" of people doing menial jobs, and how
idealogically wrong it is, yet neither one of you can resolve the issue
of cheap goods versus the elimination of the "slave class". You can't
have it both ways. Which do you want?



You are so ideologically constipated that you cannot see.

Really? I see things very clearly. Maybe because I don't spend my time
making excuses and exeptions for things that should not be.


Yes you do, Dave. You're the guy who told me it's not worth your trouble to
deal with your town council to get things changed. You gave me a laundry
list of excuses why participating in local decisions rarely worked.

Sorry if the voice of experience troubles you. I'm telling you how it
is, and has been, in my area. You, of course, translate that to mean
that I'm not willing to "do" anything. I assure you that that is not the
case, although I'm not about to endure harrassment or other problems to
push my agenda, unless I have broad support.

Dave