And they water down the wage rates and benefit packages which undercuts
many skilled workers.

And the resulting product leaves much to be desired on the part of the
American consumer.

I have personally witnessed whole blocks of residential housing being built
without anybody that can speak English building them. Pseudo electricians
without any form of license or proof of qualifications, pseudo plumbers etc..
etc.. and these homes have NUMEROUS code violations.

How can a proper home be built by unqualified workers who can't possibly
read the National Electrical Code because they can't speak English and
their own education from their native country is on the grade-school level?

Taking jobs that nobody wants? Hardly. However a qualified, intelligent
and skilled electrician would certainly look elsewhere rather than work
for the watered down peanut wages that most homebuilders offer. Home
builders get away with these insulting wages (and code violations) by
exploiting immigrant workers AND taking advantage of over-worked
and underpaid city code enforcement officers any way that they can.

You are forgetting simple supply and demand factors that are covered
by economics 101. Too much supply equals reduced wages and
benefits. Quite simple. The allowing of hordes of illegal aliens
reduces the wage and benefits packages for many Americans.


You misunderstand me. Aside from my flaming response above in the
thread, I completely agree with you on this particular issue. Quality
suffers greatly when immigrant work is hastily dumped on us.
Responsible trade slowly assimilates workforce from these other
countries into our own economy. Slapping together an infrastructure
based out of Mexico or India is asking for trouble. Similarly,
homebuilders inflating profits by dumping illegal immigrants into our
workforce damages long-term viability of these companies: Centex, D.R.
Horton, etc. I don't know which large homebuilders heavily rely on
this particular labor force, but it sure makes me think about who will
build my next home later this year. I may just have to buy a house
circa 1980 or so...

The only saving grace is the failing of companies due to bad labor.
In my case, I've witnessed this problem with programs written very
badly we've been fixing. As a contractor, I relish this situation,
but it may take some time for the "debugging" field to fluorish, as
bad code sets in across the board.


But, there's a problem
when an Indian, whose education and living expenses are often
government subsidized (ergo no student debt), attempts to steal a job
from a highly educated person just because they cost a lot less. A
shame that companies have learned a painful lesson by embracing the
tactic too quickly, with the breached privacy, inferior quality, and
backlash among the U.S. workforce. The real shame is, when a recovery
is in the works after the imminent demographic switch (retirees
fleeing the job market), they are the ones who'll be interviewed by
the interviewees. Have you ever offshored a major component of your
business? Yes, see ya!

My business is staffed by family and friends and those that I know
and trust when I need them (as in American citizens). I would
rather go out of business than hire illegal aliens or 'offshore' portions
of it to foreign workers.

You can offshore certain portions of your business, but only if it's
properly managed (vague term indeed), and the work involves less
critical processes to your business. A few Fortune 500 companies
actually lost money on the transition, and are faced with bad PR as
well as lower profitability. Double whammy.