How many of you would willingly pay more for produce...?

Question

... if it meant ridding the nation of the illegals?

What if all the money thrown the rat hole on WIC, welfare, food stamps, free medical care, services, public health, law enforcement, jails, child care, etc, etc, etc for the illegals was used for parks, infrastructure, clean energy development and education?

Thoughts?

Katie. We are not talking about the war. Please re-read the question.

Katie. We are not talking about the war. Please re-read the question.

Answer 1

It would amount to a cent or two more for a head of lettuce... while we'd save FAR more than that by relieving our social services of having to spend on criminal immigrants.

Answer 2

A core element of the American creed has always been a belief in the dignity of labor at least until now. Supporters of a guest-worker program for Mexican laborers say that "there are jobs that no Americans will do." This is an argument that is a step away from suggesting that there are jobs that Americans shouldn't do.

President George Bush, a strong supporter of the guest-worker program, has long said that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." We are supposed to believe, however, that the work ethic does stop there, it is only south of it that people can be found who are willing to work in construction, landscaping and agricultural jobs. So, without importing those people into our labor market, these jobs would go unfilled, disrupting the economy (and creating an epidemic of unkempt lawns in Southern California).

This is sheer nonsense. According to a new survey illegals make up 24 percent of workers in agriculture, 17 percent in cleaning, 14 percent in construction, and 12 percent in food production. So 86 percent of construction workers, for instance, are either legal immigrants or Americans, despite the fact that this is one of the alleged categories of untouchable jobs.

Oddly, the people who warn that without millions of cheap, unskilled Mexican laborers, this country would face economic disaster are pro-business libertarians. They believe in the power of the market to handle anything except a slightly tighter labor market for unskilled workers. But the free market would inevitably adjust, with higher wages or technological innovation.

Take agriculture. Phillip Martin, an economist at the University of California, Davis, has demolished the argument that a crackdown on illegals would ruin it, or be a hardship to consumers. Most farming livestock, grains, etc. doesn't heavily rely on hired workers. Only about 20 percent of the farm sector does, chiefly those areas involving fresh fruit and vegetables.

The average "consumer unit" in the U.S. spends $7 a week on fresh fruit and vegetables, less than is spent on alcohol, according to Martin. On a $1 head of lettuce, the farm worker gets about 6 or 7 cents, roughly 1/15th of the retail price. Even a big run-up in the cost of labor can't hit the consumer very hard.

Martin recalls that the end of the bracero guest-worker program in the mid-1960s caused a one-year 40 percent wage increase for the United Farm Workers Union. A similar wage increase for legal farm workers today would work out to about a 10-dollar-a-year increase in the average family's bill for fruit and vegetables. Another thing happened with the end of the bracero program: The processed-tomato industry, which was heavily dependent on guest workers and was supposed to be devastated by their absence, learned how to mechanize and became more productive.
America does not need illegal aliens and the sooner you realise that the better off you will be.This nation was built by Americans doing hard back-breaking work.And nothing has changed.

Answer 3

Your question is misleading. Your problem is not about the high cost of fruits and vegetables but about people of whom you choose to label as (illegals). People who work to provide a service for those who would never think about doing such a thing, are workers who pay their taxes regardless of where they came from. Where I live, there is noone willing to do this job because it doesn't pay enough. So every year we have bus loads of Mexican workers to come in for the season and do the work that nobody wants to do. If the farmers did not accept outside help, they would lose their crops because they would not be picked on time. The workers that are bussed in get to feed their famillies and pay their bills when they return to the states. They provide. They do a job that needs doing and are happy to do it. I think you need to educate yourself before you dump your racist beliefs on others. And for your infomation, the high cost of prices to produce is usually caused by supply and demand. Which means the availability of the product. Other factors are cost of transport. Check low income areas and you will see that the ones that are abusing your SYSTEM are people off all races that just can't make ends meet, no matter how hard they try. The average American is barely making ends meet. Don't be too quick to label people who only want a normal life for their famillies and a chance to do so. It's not the illegals that cause your problem. Go back 100 years, everyone immigrated from somewhere. We were not all born here.

Answer 4

We have our own homegrown criminals that need to pay their debt to society IN THE PRISON SYSTEM THAT CAN DO THOSE JOBS! WE already pay for them to be in the prison system! We have our own Homegrown poor that can't afford to eat and pay these ridiculous elctricity bills that the energy companies refuse to lower... CHARITY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME! Too many Americans are working two and three jobs to make ends meet! Rent Ceilings and caps and Energy Caps!

Our tax money should be used for Legitimate Americans in infrastructure, improve the education system, reduce the cost of going to college for Americans and generate some good paying jobs! I would like to retire Before My 100th Birthday. Senior citizens can't afford anything anymore either!

Let those Illegals go to where ever it is they came from and rip each other off and snort up Peru!. South of the border is Not our Responsibility. Remember this Ford Motor Company was one of the first Amrican Company to send Union jobs to Mexico in the 1990's under Clinton, now almost all of those jobs are gone, right along with Microsoft and the rest of them. Tell the sob stories to the families loosing their homes and futures.

Answer 5

Yes, because produce doens't really cost THAT much to pick. The transportation wholesale markup, packaging and retailing are where the money goes. Plus all of those other jobs now done by illegals were done by americans just a very few years ago, like construction, pothole patching and nobody was complaining then. The use of illegals was started to get a pricing edge over the competition and then it snowballed, everyone "had" to do it.

Answer 6

You are viewing this from a middle class perspective (which I say absent of value judgment - in fact, truth be known I appreciate it). Let me tell you how the rich view these issues.

The difference between you and me is that you work for money. At the heart of your question is the issue of entitlement. You work hard, you were born here, you earned it (thank you by the way for all that you do). I don't think about it differently, I think about it oppositely. You see, if my assets don't produce income, I have to give up my lifestyle and take a job (perhaps not unlike yours). So how do my assets produce income? In three key ways...

First I have my securities portfolio. If corporations don't make a profit (thanks to inexpensive - maybe illegal - labor) their stock prices, debt and dividends can't support my lifestyle.

Second, I own consumer debt. If working folks like you don't pay their bills on time I'm going to have to go get a job.

Finally, I own real estate. If people don't pay their rent on time I have to make my own leverage payments and that cuts into my opportunity for leisure.

From an Alternative Minimum Tax perspective I love paying for social programs that you aren't getting (and I pay a lot more for them than you do). Why? A single mom who get's WIC is able to spend those vouchers in grocery stores that I own stock in, people who owe me consumer debt work and money she's not spending on food help make sure she can pay her rent. The same thing with food stamps. I LOVE the federal low income energy assistance program. It props up utility companies (that I own stock in) during the time of year that they would otherwise see massive write offs. What's better is that a lot of people in the middle class can take advantage of it.

So here's the thing. Our government isn't interested in helping the poor. Every subsidy program they have is designed to (in the end) benefit people like me who choose to invest. It is not politically viable to tighten our borders because corporations need cheap labor. At the end of the day you really don't pay that much for it (not compared to people like me) and therefore you should not expect to benefit the way I do - what could be more consistent with personal responsibility than that?

I hope this doesn't come across as harsh. It's simply the way the world works. You can thumbs me down into oblivion if you want. That would probably be easier than having to absorb the truth I have just shared with you.

Answer 7

My solution is very simple if is a case of Lettuce you are talking about. Buy an AERO GARDEN and grow our own. Americans did it in World War II with Victory Gardens!

Answer 8

Americans (im one) usually sell out. " Its cheaper for me? Then let 'em in! Me me me!!!!!" Thats why politicians do nothing about it. Fine, save a nickle on your ice berg. Better learn to speak spanish and get in line.

Answer 9

What are you all going to do when there are so many people here buying lettuce (including the lettuce pickers) that the price of a head of lettuce goes two to three or more times the cost ...because there is such a demand.
We can afford to pay more for some of our food sources. We have been for years. This is bunk material for illegal immigration. If we allow those needed to pick and box or whatever on a farm, it wouldn't be 10-20 million people or more.
We are being invaded.

Answer 10

ME! ME! ME!

Except spending money on people isn't throwing it down a rathole. It is being taken from our own children's education and our own services, however, to the point where they are being ruined for our own people.

I would gladly spend more for produce to get my children's schools back on track.

--Job Lowe

Maybe but the system is that there are more of us than you and we have more votes to protect our systems once everyone is aware of the problem.

Also, I don't think you'd want to lock yourselves and your family up behind walls unable to play in public because you lost the middle class.

I have money to invest right now, and I am having to look at investments in areas elsewhere in the world. There are companies not supporting lifestyles like yours that provide more return. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one thinking if there is no loyalty to America, you shouldn't expect loyalty FROM America including American consumers, sorry.

Look at what has happened to Tyson since people decided not to buy from them, and even poor old Ford just had to close domestic jobs and open factories elsewhere and now for some reason Americans aren't buying Ford cars.

I was a loyal Ford purchaser for a couple of decades, and I know exactly why I switched. Funny how coutries the world around want to get access to the American consumer and our own companies don't even see yet what they have to lose.

Answer 11

Yes, sure, let's make the economy less efficient in order to uphold our racist standards. Sounds like a great idea.