From - Sat Jan 5 20:36:30 2002 Lines: 86 X-Admin: news@aol.com From: fightback3@aol.com1 (FightBack3) Newsgroups: alt.california Date: 29 Dec 2001 00:13:59 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: What'll ya do when they offer to perform *your* job for a % of the $$? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: <20011228191359.13214.00001213@mb-fm.aol.com> Path: vienna7.his.com!vienna2.his.com!newsfeed4.cidera.com!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!portc03.blue.aol.com!audrey04.news.aol.com!not-for-mail Xref: vienna7.his.com alt.california:353962 "Many people in the U.S. conclude that 'illegal aliens are only working at jobs American workers don't want or refuse to do,' and they are partially correct because no American in Southern California or anywhere else in the U.S. could live on $1.00 per day like José Ladrillo. And José is a good worker, and he is a good father and good husband, and he sends most of his earnings home to Mexico each month. Workers like José transmit about $12 billion dollars every year home to Mexico . . . " from Surfer Slim's U.S. Border Report http://www.dslextreme.com/users/surferslim/smug.html Illegal aliens may work in the U.S. for as little as 1/50th (one-fiftieth) the hourly wage of U.S. workers doing exactly the same jobs. U.S. Border Report interviewed José Ladrillo (not real name), a Mexican illegal alien, working as a brick mason for $1.00 per day in Southern California. José constructs brick and stone fireplaces in million-dollar-plus architect-designed homes in San Diego. He can find no work in Mexico. He has worked in Southern California for 6 years. José's $1.00 per day is about 1/50th (one-fiftieth) the wage of an eight hour work day at the official California legal minimum wage of $5.75 per hour, for a total of $46.00 for 8 hours, but José typically works ten hours or more each day, not eight. José lives, sleeps, cooks, and eats on the floor of the unfinished, unheated house under construction where he is working. He has no employment benefits, no breaks, no lunch hours, not even a toilet or running water until the plumbing is installed. When he has no house under construction to live in, he sleeps in one of his employer's work vehicles in the company equipment lot, or sometimes he sleeps outside under the bushes and trees near the work site. Some work sites have dozens of illegal workers living like this in the nearby bushes and trees. Workers sometimes construct cardboard-box houses and entire villages. North San Diego county has many of these hidden cardboard-box communities. José's employer helps him return home to Mexico every year for the Christmas holidays by dropping him off and picking him up at remote locations along the Mexico border east of San Diego, California. José manages to send home $25 every month to his family in Mexico, but the telegram company takes a big commission of about 20%. Employment arrangements like this are called "peonage," a form of slavery, and are not uncommon today in construction, auto repair, manufacturing, textile, landscaping, nursery, gardening, lawn care, hotel, restaurant, fast food, child care, maid service, plumbing and heating, warehousing, ranch and farm, meat packing, food processing, newspaper and merchandise delivery, car wash and detailing, security, taxi-cab, massage parlor and prostitution, and many other mostly blue collar trades, especially in border states and states with large numbers of illegal aliens like California and New York. On January 1, 2001, the official minimum wage in rural Mexico is $0.37 cents per hour in U.S. denomination (USD), or $3.75 USD for a typical 10 hour rural workday in Mexico, and the official minimum wage in California is $5.75 per hour. In rural Mexico $1.00 per day is considered a good wage by people with no jobs. About 3/4ths or 75 million Mexicans live in the rural areas of Mexico with little or no employment opportunities. It is these people who are migrating to the United States to work. Today another person is without a job, unemployed. He is an U.S. citizen, a skilled brick mason in Southern California. And he is collecting an unemployment benefit of $175.00 per week, and a welfare benefit of $325.00 per month; money that other U.S. citizens paid as taxes to the state and federal government. He may soon give up looking for work as a brick mason and take a lower-paying job, or a part-time job. This displaced American worker wants his higher-paying job back, and he wants to work. Many people in the U.S. conclude that "illegal aliens are only working at jobs American workers don't want or refuse to do," and they are partially correct because no American in Southern California or anywhere else in the U.S. could live on $1.00 per day like José Ladrillo. And José is a good worker, and he is a good father and good husband, and he sends most of his earnings home to Mexico each month. Workers like José transmit about $12 billion dollars every year home to Mexico. Therefore, the common belief that "illegal aliens are only working at jobs American workers don't want or refuse to do," is incorrect and a false belief, because American citizen workers do want these jobs, and American citizen workers do want their approximately 5.2 million-plus displaced jobs back. Additionally, foreign nationals who are entering and working in the U.S. without immigration and work visas, and without paying income taxes, and without paying F.I.C.A. taxes, are all committing serious crimes, as are all U.S. citizens committing serious crimes who are transporting, employing, and exploiting these foreign nationals. http://www.americanpatrol.org http://www.fairus.org ftp://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.others.html (Prof. Norm Matloff) ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US