Barry Wong wants to cut off utilities to illegal immigrants

[UnderAGreySky]

If you know illegals are staying somewhere, why not arrest them and get them deported? How do you know your utilities are getting consumed by illegals?

[ShadowDragon8685]

If people would just stop hiring them 90% would go home next week at the latest. But actually put people in jail who employ illegal aliens? Hell no! Instead, treat them as subhuman... while employing to watch your children, mow your lawn, or work in dangerous/unpleasant conditions.

The problem with that, Broomstick, is that people want a subhuman servant to watch the children, mow the lawn, and work in dangerous and grueling conditions.

They want it for two reasons:

• You can get away with paying a subhuman servant very, very little compared to what a native would demand to the job.
• You can heap abuse and shit upon a subhuman servant that would result in you either not having an employee if it were a native, or even having been assaulted if you tried it on a native.

It's disgusting, but it's the way of the world. Once it became no longer possible to own a human in this country, the virulence that was that kind of oppression and ownership didn't die, it just had to get subtler. They worked out forms of financial slavery when there was no longer overt slavery as an option, and with our country having (barely) sufficient regulation for that not to fly anymore, they use people who cannot complain to the regulators if you fuck them over by, say, flagrantly ignoring OSHA regulations or labor regulations.

Farm-work is atrocious, back-breaking (even in modern days,) labor, it requires putting a lot of people outside in the field in the blazing sun with little to no relief from the elements, the insects, and other vagaries of mother nature. Finding a sufficient number of natives able to do this work is hard enough, given the American fitness, but even provided you could gather together enough Americans fit enough to do the work and willing to take it on, the demands they'd place on the farm are demands the farm won't want to make; things like healthcare (they definitely don't want to insure their employees' health, because as previously mentioned it's backbreaking labor,) adherence to OSHA regulations, adherence to labor regulations, and of course they're going to demand more money for that much backbreaking work than any farm feels like paying. Inevitably, of course, they'll realize that the number of Americans fit and willing to perform the work is very, very limited, and realize that, bizarrely enough, "field hand" has now become a field of skilled labor in terms of labor pool, and Unionize.

It's easier and cheapet to learn a bare minimum of Spanish and pay a bunch of brown people from places like Guatemala and Mexico an hourly wage that works out to very upper middle class in their country. The farm my uncle works at only employs legal migrant labor, in fact, and they still manage to put out enough money that the guy who's been working there for a very, very long time is known to have a "casa grande" on the coastline. Sure, it's backbreaking labor for most of the year, but he comes home to live the good life over the winter.

Unfortunately, the demand for migrant labor far outstrips the supply of legal migrant labor, and the selfishness of Americans knows no boundaries whatsoever, so there's lots that still prefer to exploit illegals; illegals get the shittiest end of the stick. The employer can dick you over however he likes, you can't report him or sue him because you'll be deported, and he can always threaten to have you deported himself if you complain about it.

It's similar for the demand for illegal import domestics. Wealthy shitheads don't want someone to cook and clean, they want a servant. Someone who is, by definition, cowed and subservient, who will obey their whims and meekly respond to their furious tempests. Unfortunately, you try that shit on an American and again, you're likely to get your ass afoul of labor laws or even finding criminal charges pressed against you for making violent gestures towards them that can (and should be!) interpreted as assault. They want someone they can abuse - someone whose passport they can take when they get there, if they ever had a passport. Someone with poor English skills, preferably from a place where the police are feared instead of trusted, someone who is trapped as a stranger in a strange land. That person, you can abuse - you can get loud and angry at them if they mishear you and prepare a cappuccino instead of a frappuccino. You can tell them to work all the long hours you want, make them sleep on a cot below the stairs or in the laundry room. You can make them do things they didn't sign up for without them telling you you want extra pay, and if you happen to be the man of the house and the servant is a woman you fancy the look of, you can coerce her into sex or even force yourself upon her and there's nothing she can do about it.

Essentially, it's not that nobody in the house wants to do the chores and hires someone to do it. You can do that, if you're willing to pay for it, and the kind of person who gets an illegal can bloody well afford to pay a lower-income person to clean their damn McMansion and take their shit to the dry-cleaners and have their cars polished and shit.

It's that they want to lord it over someone, in a way that is starkly illegal in this country. Thus, they have to prey on someone who has no recourse in the way a native or at least a native speaker would. I think that, even moreso than industrial migrant labor, is more a form of social predation than it is about getting your chores done without having to do them yourself. Someone who is a native, or at least a flawless English speaker, someone who's not afraid of being deported, would call the police if, say, they got into a frothing rage at them and threw a mug of scalding hot liquid at them, or struck them (or even raised their hand threateningly,) and they most certainly would have them hauled up if they tried to rape them! They wouldn't take the abuse, because they could always tell the rich man back off right back at him, get just as loud, and if he gets violent, get violent right back at him.

They want someone they can abuse, not someone to do the damn chores. Hence, illegals.

[Broomstick]

Uh, Shadow... given I am more than twice your age, with far more worldly experience, you aren't telling me anything I don't already know. Your tone is edging into condescending.

Yes, I am aware there are bullies and bad people out there. I have even been in subordinate position to them on occasion. That doesn't make any of it OK or right. It's still criminal and immoral. I have to object, even when my objecting won't have any damn effect.

[Darth Tanner]

Out of interest what is the penalty for employing an illegal immigrant in the USA? In the UK its usually a fine upto £10,000 fine per worker and a cabinet minister just recently had to pay £5000 for employing an illegal house keeper.

[Kanastrous]

Sec. 274A of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and 8 U.S.C. 1324a, makes it unlawful for any person knowingly to hire, recruit or refer for a fee any alien not authorized to work. An employer that violates these laws can face penalties of:

· $250 to $2,000 fine for each unauthorized individual;

· $2,000 to $5,000 for each employee if the employer has previously been in violation; or

· $3,000 to $10,000 for each individual if the employer was subject to more than one cease and desist order.

The employer could also be fined $100 to $1,000 for each individual “paperwork” violation.

The criminal penalties for a pattern and practice violation can be up to $3,000 for each unauthorized alien, imprisonment up to six months, or both.

---

Basically slap-on-the-wrist. Not a very hard slap, either.

[Gil Hamilton]

It's because no matter how much people rally against illegal immigrants, the people making policy don't want to go after the businesses that are bringing them here. This was something that bothered conservatives during Bush II's presidency, because he wasn't exactly strong on illegal immigration. After all, if strides were made to shut down companies that hire illegals to keep their costs down, it would mean going after some of his buddies in Texas.

[The Spartan]

How much of it comes from not wanting to deal with the consequences? What I mean is if you crack down on the companies* that hire illegals then, presumably, they'll start hiring nonillegals and, again presumably, prices for those goods and services would go up. Similarly, many of those businesses are farms and it would be rather easy to blame the government for increases in prices and for farms unable to compete because of increases in wages, etc., etc., etc.

In other words, how would people respond if you cracked down on the guilty companies and the prices for milk, chicken, strawberries, etc. started rising as a response. Would people connect the two? Would subsidies be used to hide the increase? Or would they simply rage against the government?




*When I say "companies that hire illegals", I'm referring to the ones that do so more or less habitually, not those that have one or two who managed to slip through the cracks in a company's vetting process.

[Kanastrous]

Yes, you sometimes hear nonsense like without illegal labor we'd all be paying $10.00 for a head of lettuce!

I've heard those figures dissected and usually the rise in food prices is described as really minimal, if we hired legal labor for farming.

[General Zod]

Yes, you sometimes hear nonsense like without illegal labor we'd all be paying $10.00 for a head of lettuce!

I've heard those figures dissected and usually the rise in food prices is described as really minimal, if we hired legal labor for farming.

I've always figured rationale like that was bullshit that companies liked to use to justify their use of illegal labor and scare people into not taking action, considering plenty of industries get by just fine hiring legal employees.

[Kanastrous]

That's always been my assumption, too.

[Broomstick]

Not to mention that, with such high unemployment, it would be no problem finding Americans willing to do many of these jobs. Heck, menial labor used to be how high school drop out kept themselves fed, we still have plenty of uneducated around but not enough jobs for them.

Of course, you'd have to pay at least minimum wage and observe safety practices that might cost a few pennies in the short term... oh, the horror!

[Vendetta]

Of course, you'd have to pay at least minimum wage and observe safety practices that might cost a few pennies in the short term... oh, the horror!

And of course they'd have legal recourse in the event of other unscrupulous employment practises, so you wouldn't be able to work them quite as cheaply as you do the immigrant labour who can't shop you to the law.

[The Spartan]

So, there's really no reason not to crack down on these companies then is there? Bribery aside, anyhow.

Which leads me to think that, specific details aside, we'd need to implement that change, implement increased immigration enforcement, not at the border, but to make sure that companies and individuals are not taking advantage of illegals that do still come, make sure that people aren't staying past their visa and perhaps introduce an amendment that modifies the 14th amendment so that children of immigrants are only citizens if the parents have immigrated legally.

What am I missing? I feel like there's another aspect that I'm missing.

[Kanastrous]

perhaps introduce an amendment that modifies the 14th amendment so that children of immigrants are only citizens if the parents have immigrated legally.

There's been talk along those lines but I kind of doubt that it will amount to much. I think it's reasonable but I don't think the idea has widespread support.

[General Zod]

So, there's really no reason not to crack down on these companies then is there? Bribery aside, anyhow.

Which leads me to think that, specific details aside, we'd need to implement that change, implement increased immigration enforcement, not at the border, but to make sure that companies and individuals are not taking advantage of illegals that do still come, make sure that people aren't staying past their visa and perhaps introduce an amendment that modifies the 14th amendment so that children of immigrants are only citizens if the parents have immigrated legally.

What am I missing? I feel like there's another aspect that I'm missing.

A lot of farms that hire illegal immigrants get by on massive government subsidies. Remove their subsidies if they hire illegals and they'll start jumping in line.

[Gil Hamilton]

Not to mention that, with such high unemployment, it would be no problem finding Americans willing to do many of these jobs. Heck, menial labor used to be how high school drop out kept themselves fed, we still have plenty of uneducated around but not enough jobs for them.

Of course, you'd have to pay at least minimum wage and observe safety practices that might cost a few pennies in the short term... oh, the horror!

The unscrupulous employer also loses the power to threaten them. With citizens, they can't threaten to call the INS on them and their families if they aren't willing to tolerate abuse. A maid doesn't have legal recourse if her boss feels her up and a field hand can't complain about really unsafe work environments. Losing that power over employees is something I think these clowns care more about than merely having to pay their staff more.

[The Spartan]

perhaps introduce an amendment that modifies the 14th amendment so that children of immigrants are only citizens if the parents have immigrated legally.

There's been talk along those lines but I kind of doubt that it will amount to much. I think it's reasonable but I don't think the idea has widespread support.

Well, I don't think that any of that's going to be implemented any time soon so much of what I said is, in the end, hypothetical, if not moot.

A lot of farms that hire illegal immigrants get by on massive government subsidies. Remove their subsidies if they hire illegals and they'll start jumping in line.

That would fall under the part where we crack down on businesses that make it a habit of employing illegals without performing due diligence on immigration/citizenship status.