Proudly harboring the undocumented

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I’m confused too that posters are questioning whether OP is telling the truth. It’s not like it’s a crazy story.

Just pointing out that the OP's "gringo" assessment of the situation is likely not consistent. I'm not saying the black slaves didn't call their Democrat masters virtuous gods, that probably happened. Just, we all know they skedaddled as soon as was possible.

I pay him. Well. He comes whenever he wants, works as long as wants, and does whatever he thinks is needed and as he pleases. To suggest that that's treating him as a "slave" in an insult to slaves.

As I said before, if he finds a better opportunity and "skedaddles," I'll be happy for him. Truly. But I'm apparently paying him well enough and treating him respectfully enough that that's not happening.

As for the "gringo" slur, here's the thing: I'm fluent in Spanish. I've lived, done graduate graduate studies and work worked in Latin America. My oldest was born there. My spouse and kids (as adults) have lived and volunteered in different countries there -- and for years at a time during real work, to be clear, not some bullshit "build a church instead of a school and leave" kind of way. And I have latina grandchildren.

So, yeah, sure, I'm a gringo. But I have no doubt I am more versed in Latin American culture and people than you are.

I was born and raised in Latin America. I have multiple relatives who came to this country and scammed the system. You really want to play this game, white savior?

I sure do. And you know why? Because it's now my turn not to believe YOU. You're full of shit.

Tell me, if you were "born and raised in Latin America," how did you acquire US citizenship? Which privileged line were you in? Were you born to US citizens? Did you marry one? What was your anchor? Tell us your story. Because this much is undoubtedly true: you had advantages that my yard worker did not.

American citizen father whose family had been Texas since before the Alamo. He went back to Latin America for a number of years; ended up getting married and I was born there. Midway into my childhood came back to the USA where I grew up LMC. Cried for the first week of school in the USA because I couldn't speak the language. My maternal side of the family, on the other hand, well, that's where the undocumented migrants and working the system comes into play. My maternal grandfather worked undocumented in this country for 50 years returning home to see his family once a year for a week. My mother didn't live in a house with indoor plumbing until well into her 20s and it wasn't because the outdoor water source was nice. Sorry to disappoint, but we are the much darker side of mestizo and my family doesn't make it on the TV shows in Latin America.

You still want to play this game?

Perhaps because I understand this issue as a citizen on both sides of the border I have a more developed perspective on this. Ultimately, I do believe the best thing possible for both peoples is an orderly enforcement of American labor laws and a prevention of mass economic migration to this country (along with better economic development of Latin America).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

Okay, answer this question. Do you want to deport all these undocumented immigrants even though you voted for Harris or do you not want to deport them? You are being extremely unclear.

Migration is an economic issue. I want employers to stop using undocumented labor, corporate and rich white people, alike. I want enforcement mechanisms in place against those employers. Take away the economic incentives and the issues will solve themselves.

Well, I want good workers and there's a shortage of good documented ones. If there wasn't a shortage, we wouldn't need undocumented ones. So make it easier -- better said, make it possible, which it currently isn't -- for more undocumented workers to get documented. That's a more realistic approach than just the issue just "solving itself."

You have to be a troll. They cannot become documented because their economic power is specifically derived from their undocumented status. The moment they become documented and subject to American tax regimes, your newly documented workers will be displaced by demand for the next wave of undocumented workers. How can you possibly not see this?

You keep talking like it's an all or nothing proposition. It simply isn't true that none of the millions of undocumented workers in this country can ever be documented without a giant wave of new undocumented workers taking their place. You're basically saying throw everybody out and let the market fix itself. That would cause an economic calamity. So I turn the question back on you. How can you possibly not see that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

The American worker does shitty yard work. If the American worker wants to make $36 an hour doing yard work, they need to up their game.

If my guy were legal he’d still do a good job. I know he would. But he’ll never be legal. Can’t be. I’m not penalizing a hard working man just because he didn’t have to dumb luck that the rest of us did of being born in this country. He’s here, he’s honorable, he’s working hard, and he’s getting my money.

But you are penalizing your fellow (lower class) Americans who had the dumb luck of being born in this country by distorting their labor market. I'm sure he is honorable and hard working, but it does not change the fundamental fact that his presence (along with millions of others) is distorting the labor market in this country to the detriment of the domestic labor force. You so desperately want to be the hero here, but, the person who creates the demand for the undocumented labor are the fundamental problem.

If you don't care about healthy labor markets for your fellow Americans why should MAGA voters care about the common good?

I don't want to be the "hero." I just want to be a decent and fair human being. And to me it's more decent and fair to hire an undocumented hard worker over an American slacker. You keep acting as if they work equally hard. They don't.

And you act like there are no consequences to you creating demand for undocumented labor. There are consequences. Especially when that demand is aggregated at a national level. If this is simply about economics, why have wage and labor laws in the first place?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

Okay, answer this question. Do you want to deport all these undocumented immigrants even though you voted for Harris or do you not want to deport them? You are being extremely unclear.

Migration is an economic issue. I want employers to stop using undocumented labor, corporate and rich white people, alike. I want enforcement mechanisms in place against those employers. Take away the economic incentives and the issues will solve themselves.

Are you with the mass deportation effort or are you against it? You can't seem to answer a simple question.

You're the fake poster not op. What Harris voter is in favor of this mass deportation?

It is an economic issue, not a national security issue. I am neither for nor the deportation. I don't care about it. Until you fix the economic incentives, deportation won't be a lasting solution. You seem to live in some world without nuance. Grow up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I’m confused too that posters are questioning whether OP is telling the truth. It’s not like it’s a crazy story.

Just pointing out that the OP's "gringo" assessment of the situation is likely not consistent. I'm not saying the black slaves didn't call their Democrat masters virtuous gods, that probably happened. Just, we all know they skedaddled as soon as was possible.

I pay him. Well. He comes whenever he wants, works as long as wants, and does whatever he thinks is needed and as he pleases. To suggest that that's treating him as a "slave" in an insult to slaves.

As I said before, if he finds a better opportunity and "skedaddles," I'll be happy for him. Truly. But I'm apparently paying him well enough and treating him respectfully enough that that's not happening.

As for the "gringo" slur, here's the thing: I'm fluent in Spanish. I've lived, done graduate graduate studies and work worked in Latin America. My oldest was born there. My spouse and kids (as adults) have lived and volunteered in different countries there -- and for years at a time during real work, to be clear, not some bullshit "build a church instead of a school and leave" kind of way. And I have latina grandchildren.

So, yeah, sure, I'm a gringo. But I have no doubt I am more versed in Latin American culture and people than you are.

I was born and raised in Latin America. I have multiple relatives who came to this country and scammed the system. You really want to play this game, white savior?

I sure do. And you know why? Because it's now my turn not to believe YOU. You're full of shit.

Tell me, if you were "born and raised in Latin America," how did you acquire US citizenship? Which privileged line were you in? Were you born to US citizens? Did you marry one? What was your anchor? Tell us your story. Because this much is undoubtedly true: you had advantages that my yard worker did not.

American citizen father whose family had been Texas since before the Alamo. He went back to Latin America for a number of years; ended up getting married and I was born there. Midway into my childhood came back to the USA where I grew up LMC. Cried for the first week of school in the USA because I couldn't speak the language. My maternal side of the family, on the other hand, well, that's where the undocumented migrants and working the system comes into play. My maternal grandfather worked undocumented in this country for 50 years returning home to see his family once a year for a week. My mother didn't live in a house with indoor plumbing until well into her 20s and it wasn't because the outdoor water source was nice. Sorry to disappoint, but we are the much darker side of mestizo and my family doesn't make it on the TV shows in Latin America.

You still want to play this game?

Perhaps because I understand this issue as a citizen on both sides of the border I have a more developed perspective on this. Ultimately, I do believe the best thing possible for both peoples is an orderly enforcement of American labor laws and a prevention of mass economic migration to this country (along with better economic development of Latin America).

Thanks for identifying your privilege. Born to an American citizen. Exactly what I expected. Sorry you cried for a week when you were five. That must have been tough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

The American worker does shitty yard work. If the American worker wants to make $36 an hour doing yard work, they need to up their game.

If my guy were legal he’d still do a good job. I know he would. But he’ll never be legal. Can’t be. I’m not penalizing a hard working man just because he didn’t have to dumb luck that the rest of us did of being born in this country. He’s here, he’s honorable, he’s working hard, and he’s getting my money.

You make up fictions about lawn care quality in order to justify paying below market labor rates. Quit lying to yourself to play white savior.

Did you read Vance’s book? He makes the same point about immigrants vs American born labor.

OP here. Yes, I read Vance's book. I wasn't impressed. He also told obvious lies in it. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

The American worker does shitty yard work. If the American worker wants to make $36 an hour doing yard work, they need to up their game.

If my guy were legal he’d still do a good job. I know he would. But he’ll never be legal. Can’t be. I’m not penalizing a hard working man just because he didn’t have to dumb luck that the rest of us did of being born in this country. He’s here, he’s honorable, he’s working hard, and he’s getting my money.

But you are penalizing your fellow (lower class) Americans who had the dumb luck of being born in this country by distorting their labor market. I'm sure he is honorable and hard working, but it does not change the fundamental fact that his presence (along with millions of others) is distorting the labor market in this country to the detriment of the domestic labor force. You so desperately want to be the hero here, but, the person who creates the demand for the undocumented labor are the fundamental problem.

If you don't care about healthy labor markets for your fellow Americans why should MAGA voters care about the common good?

I don't want to be the "hero." I just want to be a decent and fair human being. And to me it's more decent and fair to hire an undocumented hard worker over an American slacker. You keep acting as if they work equally hard. They don't.

And you act like there are no consequences to you creating demand for undocumented labor. There are consequences. Especially when that demand is aggregated at a national level. If this is simply about economics, why have wage and labor laws in the first place?

I'm not "creating demand for undocumented labor." I'm offering opportunities to hard workers and paying them well. It's the lazy domestic workers who are creating the opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

Okay, answer this question. Do you want to deport all these undocumented immigrants even though you voted for Harris or do you not want to deport them? You are being extremely unclear.

Migration is an economic issue. I want employers to stop using undocumented labor, corporate and rich white people, alike. I want enforcement mechanisms in place against those employers. Take away the economic incentives and the issues will solve themselves.

Are you with the mass deportation effort or are you against it? You can't seem to answer a simple question.

You're the fake poster not op. What Harris voter is in favor of this mass deportation?

It is an economic issue, not a national security issue. I am neither for nor the deportation. I don't care about it. Until you fix the economic incentives, deportation won't be a lasting solution. You seem to live in some world without nuance. Grow up.

OP here. You're the last poster who should talk about nuance given the "all or nothing" drivel that you continue to spew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

Okay, answer this question. Do you want to deport all these undocumented immigrants even though you voted for Harris or do you not want to deport them? You are being extremely unclear.

Migration is an economic issue. I want employers to stop using undocumented labor, corporate and rich white people, alike. I want enforcement mechanisms in place against those employers. Take away the economic incentives and the issues will solve themselves.

Well, I want good workers and there's a shortage of good documented ones. If there wasn't a shortage, we wouldn't need undocumented ones. So make it easier -- better said, make it possible, which it currently isn't -- for more undocumented workers to get documented. That's a more realistic approach than just the issue just "solving itself."

You have to be a troll. They cannot become documented because their economic power is specifically derived from their undocumented status. The moment they become documented and subject to American tax regimes, your newly documented workers will be displaced by demand for the next wave of undocumented workers. How can you possibly not see this?

You keep talking like it's an all or nothing proposition. It simply isn't true that none of the millions of undocumented workers in this country can ever be documented without a giant wave of new undocumented workers taking their place. You're basically saying throw everybody out and let the market fix itself. That would cause an economic calamity. So I turn the question back on you. How can you possibly not see that?

OMG. The problem is on the corporate employer side. Once the undocumented have legal status:

*employers will have to withhold taxes and SS because if they don't their own newly legal employees will sue them

*newly documented will lose the optionality on tax compliance (major economic hit to them)

*employers will not be able to economically exploit the newly documented because if they do, the newly documented will not fear seeking legal redress and accessing the legal system. So employers will be legally compliant, increasing costs. So employers will demand new undocumented labor and new supply will meet that demand, economically dislocating the newly documented immigrants.

What happened after amnesty in the 1980s? What I just described.

While these issues play out in a slightly different way at the consumer level (your lawn care), a whole host of additional costs will be imposed on the legal status workers, in particular insurance and taxes as the government will now have a contact point with those individuals.

The economic power for undocumented migrants comes from their undocumented status. They trade living in the shadows for jobs. Bring them out of the shadows and their economic value takes a major hit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

Okay, answer this question. Do you want to deport all these undocumented immigrants even though you voted for Harris or do you not want to deport them? You are being extremely unclear.

Migration is an economic issue. I want employers to stop using undocumented labor, corporate and rich white people, alike. I want enforcement mechanisms in place against those employers. Take away the economic incentives and the issues will solve themselves.

Well, I want good workers and there's a shortage of good documented ones. If there wasn't a shortage, we wouldn't need undocumented ones. So make it easier -- better said, make it possible, which it currently isn't -- for more undocumented workers to get documented. That's a more realistic approach than just the issue just "solving itself."

You have to be a troll. They cannot become documented because their economic power is specifically derived from their undocumented status. The moment they become documented and subject to American tax regimes, your newly documented workers will be displaced by demand for the next wave of undocumented workers. How can you possibly not see this?

You keep talking like it's an all or nothing proposition. It simply isn't true that none of the millions of undocumented workers in this country can ever be documented without a giant wave of new undocumented workers taking their place. You're basically saying throw everybody out and let the market fix itself. That would cause an economic calamity. So I turn the question back on you. How can you possibly not see that?

OMG. The problem is on the corporate employer side. Once the undocumented have legal status:

*employers will have to withhold taxes and SS because if they don't their own newly legal employees will sue them

*newly documented will lose the optionality on tax compliance (major economic hit to them)

*employers will not be able to economically exploit the newly documented because if they do, the newly documented will not fear seeking legal redress and accessing the legal system. So employers will be legally compliant, increasing costs. So employers will demand new undocumented labor and new supply will meet that demand, economically dislocating the newly documented immigrants.

What happened after amnesty in the 1980s? What I just described.

While these issues play out in a slightly different way at the consumer level (your lawn care), a whole host of additional costs will be imposed on the legal status workers, in particular insurance and taxes as the government will now have a contact point with those individuals.

The economic power for undocumented migrants comes from their undocumented status. They trade living in the shadows for jobs. Bring them out of the shadows and their economic value takes a major hit.

Oh, please. Do you really think that the lazy "domestic" workers who I have hired in the past to do their shitty jobs declared the cash payments that I made to them to the IRS and paid taxes? Do you really think they had insurance? Cut me a break.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

Drop me a lime with those laws or changed so that people like our guy have a realistic chance of legal immigration. Until then I’m hiding him.

That’s the crux: he’ll never have a realistic chance at legal immigration because his economic value and utility is *derived* from his undocumented status.

Your worker is a good person and you are well intentioned. Nonetheless, if your worker had legal status his costs of operating his business would go up. As it is, he is paid cash under the table, he accepts more risk than a worker with legal status would (risks that would more properly be allocated to you the homeowner), and he very likely does not report his income to the IRS. This all means he is cheaper than properly authorized labor. A cost savings that *you* are the true beneficiary of. The net effect is that you get cheaper cost services and domestic workers with legal status are priced out of the market.

I’m sure you think that using and harboring cheap labor is noble. But the reality is that no matter how good your intentions are and how decent a person your landscaper is, you are intentionally engaging in economic activity that benefits you materially, helps the undocumented laborer but undercuts the domestic workforce. You are selling out the American labor force so that you can have extra dollars. In doing so, you are perpetuating inequality and creating a permanent economic underclass.

If your laborer ever actually had legal status, he would find himself price undercut by undocumented labor. If you were using above board labor, your prices would go up.

No, he'll never have a legal chance at immigration because the current law doesn't allow it under any circumstances. And I'm not benefiting economically in any way, shape or form. As I said earlier, I also have a lawn service where the workers appear to be documented and I'm very sure -- based on what I pay the company -- that the workers are paid less than my undocumented guy. For your argument to make any sense, I would have to be paying my guy a low wage, but I'm not. And do you know why I'm not? Because he does a BETTER job than anyone I've used around here from your so-called "domestic" workforce. They don't do half as good a job that he does. I pay him what he's worth, and I'm not undercutting anyone. If the "domestic" workforce wants $30+ an hour to take care of my yard, it can do that by doing comparable work.

In short, the whole premise of your argument is that I'm underpaying, which I'm not. I'm paying generously. I always pay generously for good work. "Domestic" laborers, by and large, do shitty work and then blame immigrants.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The price point the domestic labor business charges in a market place where it is competing with undocumented labor is distorted and cannot be relied as a data point for setting the market labor wage.

It is not that you are paying generously, it is that your laborer is pricing generously. And you are happy to take advantage of it. Prices paid are pretax to labor but labor makes economic decision on an after-tax basis.

Dollars: Assume your guy is working 50 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. $30 * 50 * 52 = $78,000 per year. As an undocumented immigrant, the odds are overwhelmingly high that he is:

*not properly business bonded and insured (that's 2-5% in costs)

*he is not paying into SS and MC (that's another 15.3%)

*he is not paying income taxes (that's another 10-15% depending on jurisdiction)

*he does not have commercial (or consumer) auto insurance (around 12.5% of his revenue if you figure about $10,000/year--which is low for commercial auto)

There are a bunch of other things like business licenses and compliance costs he is probably also skirting and you are already approaching an increase in 50% of his costs just to get him to the same place on an after tax basis. He would need to charge you at least $45/hour if he was doing everything above board just to get himself to the same economic outcome. You think you are generous because you are paying him $30/hour because it is in your economic interest to save the true cost differential of getting him to the same place economically. Your greed is blinding you. And the moment he charged $45/hour, he would lose so much business to the undocumented guy charging $30/hour that it makes no economic sense for your guy to ever get legal status.

Of course the competitor cannot pay his laborers $30 an hour. He is likely paying full freight on the costs of running his business and the undocumented laborer is undercutting him. Your legal workforce guy would need to charge closer to $60/hour to get his crew near $30/hour and even that is cutting it thin. Most service business need to charge more around 2.5x what they pay their hourly laborers to get to a modest profit margin after accounting for all costs, so you would be talking in the ballpark of $75/hour price to get a domestic laborer to $30/hour (which will still be less on an after-tax basis than your undocumented laborer).

Risks: Last week I helped connect three undocumented laborers with a good friend from law school. They had been badly burned on a job where a homeowner asked them to unsafely burn debris on his ranch. My friend has taken on several of these types of cases and achieved great outcomes against the home owner's insurance. My undocumented laborers are so scared of any contact with the legal system (as was the case pre-Trump) that they are going to eat the injuries themselves. And while you may be one of those nice white people that thinks so highly of yourself, I am a native citizen of and raised in the same country as these injured men came from. As you would expect, I speak the language fluently, and I am trusted a lot to help a lot of these people never at a gain to myself. It didn't matter how I explained the issue to them. They are going to eat the injuries.

Undocumented migration by and large is an economic issue, not a social justice issue (in this country, at least). It always has been and always will be. There is a reason why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were hostile to undocumented labor. Chavez knew that this was purely an economic issue and rich farmers and wealthy people like you would use undocumented labor to undercut the wage and bargaining power of the domestic labor force. I know you think you are doing something noble. In reality, you are only perpetuating inequality and a permanent underclass.

Look, these are real people. We're not in economics class. Nothing that you just said changes the fact that if I put on my community's Facebook page that I was offering, say, $25 a hour for yard work I'd be inundated with responses from "domestic" workers happy to take it on. There's no requirement that I, hiring a guy to do yard work as an independent contractor and paying him under $2800 a year, have any obligation to withhold anything or pay the government anything. The responsibility falls solely and squarely on the guy doing the work. Were I paying $25 an hour to some "domestic" guy down the street to do shitty work, which I can virtually guarantee to be the case, and he took doesn't follow the law and pay his taxes or social security either, am I responsible for that too? Or are you saying I should only hire workers who work for companies and not themselves regardless of their legal status?

You got yours, so f#ck dem poor people, huh? And you think you are the hero of this story. You are an awful human being.

To give an American worker who is complying with the law the same economic benefit of what you are paying your undocumented laborer, you would need to be paying somewhere in the ballpark of $60-75/hr. Post that job on Facebook at $60-75 hour and see the quality of the work product your receive from domestic labor at that price point.

The undocumented laborer is arbitraging costs and undercutting the domestic labor market through noncompliance with the law. You are all too happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits you ($30 for great work product sure does beat $60 for it). The undocumented laborer is happy to accept this arrangement because it economically benefits him. The domestic middle class is pissed because they are on the losing end of this transaction. That you can’t see this distorts the labor market and contributes to inequality is driven by your material greed (who cares if the other guy complies with the law, you got a great work product, right?).

If you share no sense of community or duty to your fellow Americans, why should the MAGA voters? If you are all too happy to live in some libertarian paradise where you don’t care about the consequences of your economic choices because compliance with the law is on the other dude then why should anybody have any sense of duty to the common good? Or is your expectation that MAGA voters should just sit idly by and watch undocumented labor destroy the domestic worker’s bargaining power and be happy about it? Is that the stupid fantasy land you live in where they fancy economics class stuff doesn’t apply?

The middle class has watched their economic opportunities be hollowed out for a variety of reasons (lots of those reasons caused by Republicans) and you’re all too happy to continue doing it to them in this part of your personal life. Then you wonder why they vote the way they do.

This is an economic issue, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with your laborers work ethic or social justice. I’m sure he is a fine human being trying to take care of his family. But one side of this issue is for cheap labor and the other isn’t. You have made clear which side you are on.

The best part is that you are probably one for people who claims to be happy to pay more taxes for the common good. If you only felt that way about lowing your lawn and your produce….

P.S. If you are really going to hang your hat on the constructor status argument, you should not be bragging about paying by the hour for your unskilled labor. That really, really undermines your argument.

I pay by the hour because I don't need a lot of hours. And I pay well. Nobody in America pays anybody 65 dollars an hour for yard work unless you hire a landscaping company or something. And there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to do that.

LOL.

Yes, it is morally wrong to use black market labor when it undercuts the domestic labor market. Unless you are some Ayn Rand libertarian jerk where everyone just looks out for themselves and doesn’t care about the common good.

Again, if you can’t be bothered to care for your fellow Americans, why do you expect them to care for anyone else?

Okay, answer this question. Do you want to deport all these undocumented immigrants even though you voted for Harris or do you not want to deport them? You are being extremely unclear.

Migration is an economic issue. I want employers to stop using undocumented labor, corporate and rich white people, alike. I want enforcement mechanisms in place against those employers. Take away the economic incentives and the issues will solve themselves.

Are you with the mass deportation effort or are you against it? You can't seem to answer a simple question.

You're the fake poster not op. What Harris voter is in favor of this mass deportation?

It is an economic issue, not a national security issue. I am neither for nor the deportation. I don't care about it. Until you fix the economic incentives, deportation won't be a lasting solution. You seem to live in some world without nuance. Grow up.

You don't care about the deportation issue and yet you are reading and writing in a thread about it.

[Anonymous]

We are not harboring an undocumented individual but we are paying the legal fees for three people we have known for years. They are wonderful hard working people who can’t afford good representation on their own.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t agree with the way MAGAs are approaching this as hunting down immigrants for sport, but there needs to be humane immigration reform. Plenty of people all over the world are in bad situations and would love to live in the US. Laws need to be respected.

The US and mostly Western European countries have historically done real damage to countries in South America and Africa. They are still living in impoverished unstable countries. Same with the Middle East with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Assad in Syria and now Israel working to exterminate a whole group of Palestinians. People who have never known what it feels like to feel safe, to have a real home and a stable job. They will do what they have to keep their families alive. Most of these immigrants have a story to tell. Not all but the stories are heartbreaking.

There was a picture of a Palestinian women holding a boy that might have been about 13 years old with tears brimming around his eyes. I wondered how long before that profound sadness turns to anger and violence. It will be justified but this boy and his peers, if they make it to adulthood, will have a hard time getting people to listen. This will just be another denied holocaust and history books will not be kind to the US.

To OP, good job. If we all do what we can, the small acts of kindness can change people’s lives for the better.

The silly romanticization is a bit much, not to mention totally ahistorical.

The people of South and Central America and Africa engaged in ongoing wars of conquest (and sometimes annihilation) long before Europeans or Americans had any meaningful impact whatsoever. And the history of the ME is arguably the bloodiest per cap in world history, even if one excludes all conflict involving extra-regional powers.

TLDR? You’re a fantastist.

Yeah ok but going back to ancient history is not relevant. Yes African countries have a long history of killing each other and it’s still going on. It doesn’t negate the damage done by Europe and the Superpowers, especially colonialism mostly done by European countries. Recent history is what counts, not ancient history.

American schools do a terrible job of teaching the dark side of capitalism, the evils of the CIA, lies from the military. You either have to teach yourself or continue your education with certain programs.

Here’s one Example of CIA damage done…

In the 1950s Guatamela, a country where a US corporation owned about 45% of the good land to grow their bananas. The elected leader wanted to farm out parcels of land to Guatemalan farmers. This socialism wouldn’t be in the United States best interest so the CIA orchestrated a coup, put a dictator in place which started a 36 year civil war with more than 200,000 people never seen again.

This kind of covert wars and destruction of other countries chosen governments was especially active in the 1900s. Coups and placement of CIA hand picked dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Noriega in Panama, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and way too many to mention around the world.

Let me know if any of this is in accurate or you another one who calls names without adding relevant information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They crossed the border illegally. They may have a criminal record at how , you do not know. They did not follow the law. Many people have to wait for years to get a visa to come to the US and follow the rules.

So? I have spent 20 years following visa rules and have now applied for a green card. I have nothing against undocumented immigrants.

These people are the hard-working backbone of America. We're not competing for the same jobs. Live and let live.

[Anonymous]

This story is bizarre. A gardener randomly knocks in your door with no tools including no power tools or wheelbarrow, extra trash can or container to move things, gets hired by OP to do yard work and gets paid $36 an hour but only seasonally. The guy can come whenever he wants and work as many hours as he wants. And add to that he can do whatever he wants in your yard. So how do you even know someone can’t do an equal or better job who is legal?

And OP you aren’t the savior you think you are. If you think he has such specialized skill no one else possesses then you actually could have sponsored him to get a green card. You just have to wrote it up in a certain way and post adds giving Americans a chance to apply.

Several family members actually have sponsored household workers and those workers have gotten green cards and gone on to become US citizens.