It’s a race to the bottom.

God/Allah/Jehovah/Ahura Mazda save us all.

“If businesses were forced to adhere to the labor laws that are already on the books, this wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, we’ve got a domino-effect where one employer breaks the law (ie. Wal-Mart) and is able to undercut the competition so much that the business community makes the argument that the need to break the law in order to stay competitive.”

This may seem like a conservative argument, but the best answer to me would be a “tough love” approach. Specifically, the mage-corporations who have made a habit of ignoring our laws have passed the savings on to us to the point where the American public has an incredibly skewed idea of what things should really cost. For all the lip service Republicans give to the free market, they seem to avoid the uncomfortable truth that we’ve got an artificially created underclass. Becoming a melting pot sometimes requires a little melting, and that can get a little uncomfortable for those who aren’t fully aware of how much they personally benefit from illegal labor.

Or to put things more bluntly, if paying farmworkers a decent wage means apples are suddenly going to be $10 per pound, so be it. Unlike the indentured servitude “conservatives” in Washington, I really do believe that the effects on prices are something we let the laws of supply and demand work out. As long as everyone’s forced to play by the same rules, I think things will work themselves out.

I wish I could agree that we’re ‘pampered’. I suppose I’d love it if I could pay rent, buy food, afford health care, save money, buy clothes, travel around by some method other than walking, and enjoy my free time as I see fit on the types of wages our corporate overlords would prefer to pay us. Hell, I wish I could get by on minimum wage.

The truth is that the vast majority of Americans who ‘won’t’ work for low wages aren’t pampered, unless you don’t believe we’re entitled to actually enjoy the fruits of our labors, as the rich and the parasitically wealthy do, instead of merely getting by. Instead, we are forced by the very market conditions created by the economy in which we live, to make the sort of money that gets us considered lazy or pampered by the free marketers who believe wealth should go only to a priviledged few who, supposedly, ‘earned’, despite all evidence showing that the wealthy in this country are parasites who got their obscene wealth by their willingness to cheat.

Looking over my personal finances - when you factor in student loans, bills, living expenses, neccecities of living and so forth, and remove any and all personal pastimes and hobbies that, by right wing perspective, I am not actually entitled to enjoy, I could probably get by on, at bare minimum, 10 dollars a day, IF and only if I could get my student loans deferred.

Fortunately, I’m doing really well for myself these days, and I’m making what you could call a personal profit. And frankly, I am happy about it. I simply don’t wish to end up making so little money I’m a broken leg away from homelessness, and I’m offended that more people in this country seem to think otherwise.

I’ll never pretend times are super easy for everyone, nor will I pretend they’ll always be good for me. The fact is that I’m lucky. Even if I weren’t, American workers don’t live in some kind of cheap country where every bit of our money goes to leisure pursuits, most of us are living fairly close to hand to mouth. We need every dime we make and we rightfully should demand as much as we can get. After all, the oligarchs feel no guilt flaunting their own ill gotten and obscene money.

Therefore, it infuriates me to see people pretend that the problem is some kind of unfair insistance on ease instead of a desperate need to actually survive without having to live without your parents until you’re 40.

Greg’s right - these jobs would be snatched up by Americans in a heartbeat if Americans could actually live on the wages. but since most of us don’t like living in dirty, squalid shacks with 15 other people, the only living possible when you’re making 2 bucks an hour, I guess that makes us lazy.

To end this rant, it is criminal, not to mention immoral that we rationalize the exploitation of illegal immigrants for this kind of work. All of us should be entitled to essential dignity.

Just look at municipal waste workers — garbagemen. They get paid fantastic salaries, better than police and firefighters or any other civil service job, yet the minimum employment requirements are far lower (criminal background, no diploma, etc).
That’s because municipalities can’t get away with hiring massive numbers of illegals to provide waste disposal, so they have to compensate American citizens (or those with work permits) with higher hourly pay for what is a very unappealing job.

I personally paid my way through college with a dangerous job that paid $200+/day and had no requirements, but very, very few people were willing to do it.

That’s how free markets work.

Farmers, like the strawberry ones around here, can’t afford to pay minimum wage and perks to the workers who only have to be on the job for a small part of the year. I can understand why they go for the illegals.

However, I am aware of businesses that do not want to cut into profit by paying standard wages.

This sort of subject can get a bit sticky. Not all the folks out there hiring undocumented immigrants are greedy or shifty folks, just trying to get by with cheap help.

I certainly do not agree with the employment of illegal immigrants but I do not see how we would be able to force everyone to comply with the law AND offer the same jobs with better pay and benefits.

Americans won’t build houses, paint them or do landscaping to name just a few jobs?

The answer is quite obvious.