We apparently travel in different circles - in E WA the illegals would send their pay home & hit the welfare offices. Mexico would have a huge balance of payments issue without the Mexican citizens that are in this country sending money back to Mexico.Originally Posted by YardleyLabs
As for people not wanting to move, you must have had an interesting group of employees.
As for people not wanting to work, possibly conditions waiting for a handout have become to lucrative.
When I contract mined, quite successfully, the other 5 people on our crew were Mexican, 3 legals & 2 with cards so they were legal just not citizens. It worked quite well that way. When I went back to that company in a management position it became obvious to me that unless something changed there would be no way we would attract a sufficiently energized work force to continue operating as we did. Again, I say, it has become to attractive for US citizens not to work.It did not cost us less to hire aliens, it cost us more to comply with Labor Department requirements. In addition, we spent 10's of thousands per year in legal fees to try to comply with all legal requirements. However, INS made it hard to comply, not easy. Processing delays were often measured in years so that people would go out of status despite doing everything appropriately. Under the law at the time, we could continue employing them but they could not take a job with another employer. If we laid someone off who was out of status, we had to fly them back to their home country.
So I went to the big kite factory, working as an engineer & eventually a lead. Through 3 layoffs I saw Americans RIFFED because they were more expensive than someone who could go through the motions but obviously with less talent. Over time this creates a serious brain drain. When the government shut down military procurement in the late 60"s over a million engineers were without employment. Some were that way because they did not see the HWOTW & had allowed their skills to deteriorate but there were those who had not but were SOL.
So, I saw something different than you & will reiterate, "It is much to easy to be without employment"
At the big kite factory it was within your right to turn down an assignment, these were looked upon as opportunities, which if refused were serious considerations when advancement opportunities arose. One of my sons presently has a small construction company, He generally uses South Americans (Mexicans are not the only people looking for opportunities) as they do not ususally arrive with baggage.Eventually, we hit a point where the incremental cost of hiring an alien was 20-30% more than hiring an American but Americans would not do the work that needed to be done even at higher salaries. Accordingly, we simply stopped pursuing those types of jobs and cut our workforce by 80% Those jobs ended up being outsourced to other countries instead. America lost, India gained. Our average salary at that time was approximately $90,000 per year and we eliminated 80 jobs when we stopped accepting work requiring staff relocation.
When the unions, many years ago, got the child labor laws passed, everyone thought that to be a victory. People of my generation still have fond memories of picking various fruits & vegetables, that's why we are a hard working, generally, group of people. It's hard to appreciate hard work when your day has been spent navigating the controls of a Game Boy, an IPOD or twittering away.
But what has happend in some industries is mechanization - the only issue being many of those originally employed do not have the skills to get into that line of work. I believe that to be the individuals fault.
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