DamianaRaven wrote:Vordr wrote:Blah blah blah
I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying the argument that this country needs to maintain a cheap and exploitable population to survive. "Allowing" people to live here illegally so that they'll do shitty jobs for nearly nothing is no better than slavery. The simple fact is, American citizens ARE willing to harvest produce and farmers CAN afford to pay minimum wage - it's just cheaper for everybody not to is all.
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/f ... od-prices/
http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9357
Oh, I don't mean to imply that we shouldn't pay them minimum wage. We absolutely, positively, should be paying them minimum wage, and I think minimum wage should be higher than $7.50. Every person here should be able to have a decent life, and contribute positively to the economy (being paid enough is essential to that, so they can buy things). But keep in mind that farmers are required to pay American citizens minimum wage, most offer significantly more, and people STILL don't want to do the job.
That's the point I was trying to make. Not that we need to pay them as little as possible, but that often times, immigrants from central and South America are the only ones willing to do incredibly labor-intensive work like that for anything approaching what a farmer can pay. Harvesting is often much harder than factory work, so people expect pay comparative to factory work (~$20) which many farmers simply can't afford, given the number of workers they need. Immigrants working 10 hour days for $10 an hour is more than they're getting paid now, but is much less than the vast majority of born-and-raised Americans are willing to do the same work for.