[BigRon]

How many people feel Illegals mostly Mexicans are good/bad for America and could you explan why.

I would like to know the feelings about it on here as it has been in the news allot recently.

[JamaicanHerb]

horrible for america, they will do jobs for half the price, if not lower of an american worker so who is going to get hired? they commit murders, and i wouldn't be suprised if some committed crimes so bad in mexico they wouldn't be allowed in legally. The whole economy is going downhil because they are doing jobs americans once held, and got paid a good wage for it, not to mention better products......

[falnsenseofpryde]

yeah mesxicans can all die for all i care... we need a HUGE wall with lots of fire power to keep em out.. say there an american born named jamaican herb.. then theres a mexican named mexican green, the mexican does lower quality work, but still gets it done.. for 3.50 an hour, mexican green stuck to the minimum wage, 6.15.. WHOS GON' GET HIRED?



THE SPIC

[Boondock]

honestly, i tire of thinking about current events and the world goings on. i want to move to oregon and get me a little bit of property. my wife and i can be shut in's and enjoy our short time together. i want to move out of the city and get out in the open and distance myself from all this shit. live out my life in peace not having to deal with anything.

[Pigwax]

Originally Posted by JamaicanHerb

horrible for america, they will do jobs for half the price, if not lower of an american worker so who is going to get hired? they commit murders, and i wouldn't be suprised if some committed crimes so bad in mexico they wouldn't be allowed in legally. The whole economy is going downhil because they are doing jobs americans once held, and got paid a good wage for it, not to mention better products......

to say that they commit muders would not be a very intelligent assumption. every race has muderers, just because they are illegal doesn't mean they steal or kill. it is my opinion that most of them are hardworkers, just trying to make a living, because they obviously can't in thier own country.

the rest of what you said, i guess i can understand your viewpoint.

of course there will always be negative thoughts about illegals such as mexicans, because they do take alot of entry level jobs, but its not a problem easily fixed. most of you would say that they should just stay in thier own fucking country no matter what, but its not that easy. there must be a reason they are all trying to come here, look at it from thier side. they live in a shitty ass poor country with alot of crime and corrupt cops. thier neighbor is generally known for having money, equal rights, and many jobs. illegals can be an annoyance, i'm not arguing that, but if you whities were them, you'd do the same, you wouldn't care about what people like yourself think. besides, they don't even directly affect you, the only people who have somewhat of a right to bitch and moan about illegals are the white guys looking for entry level jobs. mexicans may make it a bit harder for them to find jobs, but they don't make it impossible. i'm sure there are countless people willing to work for the same wages, just because its work, and in that case, most people will just judge the worker, not if hes mexican or white. some white people just use it as an excuse that the mexicans are taking all the jobs when they don't have the initiative to take anything they can get.

[JamaicanHerb]

Originally Posted by Pigwax

to say that they commit muders would not be a very intelligent assumption. every race has muderers, just because they are illegal doesn't mean they steal or kill. it is my opinion that most of them are hardworkers, just trying to make a living, because they obviously can't in thier own country.

they aren't suppossed to be here, if they are violent enough to kill they have more than likley been picked up in mexico and would not have passed the legal screening process and not allowed in... therefore those people would still be alive.. i never said all illegals do that shit but alot do

[Pigwax]

most wouldn't want to go through the screening process anyway.

they may add a little crime, but theres crime everywhere, they don't add enough to make a huge difference. there are usless people for every race, and there are also honest hardworkers for every race.

[el-producto]

NEVER GOT WHY CRACKERS COMPLAINED ABOUT THEM TAKING "THEIR" JOBS. THEY COME HERE AND WORK THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL JOBS FOR BELOW MINIMUM WAGE

[Pigwax]

Originally Posted by el-producto

NEVER GOT WHY CRACKERS COMPLAINED ABOUT THEM TAKING "THEIR" JOBS. THEY COME HERE AND WORK THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL JOBS FOR BELOW MINIMUM WAGE

because white people want all of the jobs. even the shitty ones.

[gilligan]

i wouldnt mind em if they came legally, but the president of mexico encourages people to come here illegally and send back money. they dont take jobs from me, they take unskill/uneducated jobs.

[gilligan]

minimum wage is bogus, the pay should match what the job is worth. why put a floor on a job when dumbasses will do it for less? its simply inefficent.

[drukqs]

Its a horrible stereotype to say that mexicans are murderers and criminals.. I would think that blacks commite much more crime then mexicans.. Mexicans are a hard working people.. I agree with like everything pigwax said, if you were in there shoes you'd do the same.. I think all the US has to do is catch all of them, and make them pay taxes.. Once they are paying taxes we are good..

I do agree though that there are too many coming in, and thats why i think we shouldnt be in iraq, or we should pull back alot from iraq to watch that damned border.. If a mexican can get in that easily, even with drugs.. I guarentee you a terrorist can come in with some nasty fucking explosives and kill 100 people..

[JamaicanHerb]

they only commit a few percent of the crime so thats ok then? sweet so if i go and kill your whole family it's cool cause theres a few bad white seeds? BADASS i love yur thinking man u should run for presidente

and as for being in their shoes.... do mexicans even wear shoes?

[JamaicanHerb]

and is anyone in the carpenters union? i wanna get some exacts on what they make and their benefits and all that to show u all what they could make if they didn't stand on a street corner waiting for a job boss to come pick them to go to work, but instead get in the union and do it the right way.... you all really don't understand how a country works

[Pigwax]

you know... if they got rid of all the low paid mexicans, many companies would go straight down... there have been companies that have tried it, and alot of companies can't afford to pay higher standard americans.

shit like working a roof in 100 degrees weather... most white guys just won't do that for tiny wages.

[JamaicanHerb]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05349/622924.stm

Thursday, December 15, 2005
By Miriam Jordan, The Wall Street Journal

DENVER -- Over the past three decades, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners has seen its share of interior construction jobs in Colorado plunge to just 10 percent from 70 percent. That decline has prompted union leaders to reach out to workers once shunned as the enemy: illegal immigrants.

At a carpenters' union hall here one recent evening, union organizer Ernesto Belo found himself facing resistance from some veteran carpenters, who questioned the wisdom of embracing workers long willing to settle for lower wages. Mr. Belo grew angry with the skeptics.

"These are the guys working," he shouted. "Your average white kid isn't coming into construction. We need the immigrant workers. Accept that -- or the union dies."

The union movement has been in decline for decades as employers, facing foreign competition and pressure to reduce costs, turn to cheaper nonunion workers. In Denver, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Kansas City, Mo., and other cities across the U.S., leaders of construction and service-sector unions are reaching out to immigrants to try to bolster their sagging memberships and clout. The carpenters' union, for one, is determined to attract more members, regardless of their immigration status.

"If you want to grow, you have to represent the people who are doing the work," says Jim Gleason, the carpenters' labor boss spearheading the campaign in Colorado, where he estimates that two-thirds of all construction workers are immigrants, more than half of them undocumented.

But Mr. Gleason's recruitment drive shows that it's not easy bringing illegal immigrants into organized labor's tent, despite the promise of higher pay and benefits. Many of Denver's undocumented Latino construction workers remain wary of the union, concerned that joining up will complicate their already difficult lives. Recently, the union effort has attracted the attention of the Colorado Minutemen, an activist group that opposes illegal immigration.

Union construction workers are expected to endure spells of unemployment rather than wield their tools at nonunion job sites. Many undocumented workers in Denver are intent on sending a steady stream of money to family members in Mexico. They tend to take whatever jobs they can get.

Some also worry that joining the union will increase the risk of being fired, or even deported. Unions don't ask members for proof of their immigration status. Employers are supposed to do that. Contractors who hire union workers often go by the book, requiring workers to supply Social Security numbers. Many undocumented workers rely on fake Social Security cards, and tax authorities sometimes alert employers to problems. That usually results in dismissal.

Contractors who hire nonunion workers, on the other hand, often pay undocumented workers off the books, no questions asked.

Cesar Avitia, a 32-year-old Mexican without immigration documents, has been doing concrete, drywall and siding work in Denver for 12 years. Six years ago, an organizer for the carpenters' union persuaded him to join. For three years, he enjoyed union pay, family health coverage, a retirement plan and paid vacation. Then his employer received a letter from authorities -- Mr. Avitia isn't sure which ones -- indicating a problem with his documents. He was fired.

"I knew I couldn't fix that problem," he recalls. So he took a nonunion job. "I can't run the risk of getting a union job and then being fired two months later when the contractor finds out and lets me go." Mr. Avitia is currently working on tract housing in a Denver suburb.

Such scrutiny of immigrants' documents "creates a difficulty in retaining these workers in the union," admits Mr. Gleason of the carpenters' union.

Mr. Gleason hopes to surmount this problem by pressuring builders and contractors to hire only union carpenters. That way, more workers -- and more immigrants -- would have to join the union to get work. To force the issue, the union has been campaigning against construction employers in downtown Denver, picketing job sites that it claims offer inadequate wages and benefits to nonunion laborers.

Union leaders have been trying for years to stop the steady erosion of their ranks. Strains over waning clout and membership came to a head this summer, when four unions abandoned the AFL-CIO to form a rival alliance, "Change to Win." The new federation, which counts the carpenters' union as a member, has pledged to devote more resources to recruit low-wage workers, a group that includes many immigrants.

In 2004, 12.5 percent of all workers in the U.S. were union members. But only 9.5 percent of foreign-born workers and 6.2 percent of Mexican-born workers were unionized, according to an analysis of federal population survey data by Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles.

As the U.S. moves from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, sectors such as food, lodging and construction are generating jobs, and many are filled by Latino immigrants. "The future of the labor movement depends on the ability to reach out and organize immigrant workers," says Kent Wong, director of the Center for Labor Research at UCLA.

The Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, has led the way. In 1985, the union launched a major campaign to organize Hispanic immigrants, beginning with janitors in Denver. Eventually, it expanded the program, which it called Justice for Janitors, nationwide. SEIU's membership more than doubled to 1.8 million between 1995 and 2004.

That campaign's success "dispels the notion that immigrants, especially illegal ones, are unorganizable," says Ms. Milkman. "Nobody believed you could organize this population until this happened."

Latin American immigrants have stirred anger among some old-guard union members, just as the Southern blacks who migrated North to seek work in heavy manufacturing did in the 1940s.

Some 15 years ago, roofer James Hadel was videotaping Hispanic immigrants on construction sites in Kansas City, with the aim of getting them deported. "We were looking at the Hispanic worker as our enemy," says Mr. Hadel, now vice president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers. These days, he's trying to sign them up.

At the recent carpenters' union meeting in Denver, veteran carpenter Ken Sanchez objected to reaching out to illegal immigrants, whom he viewed as lawbreakers, he said. They would weaken the union by accepting substandard wages and flip-flopping between union and nonunion jobs, he argued. "By catering to undocumented workers, you will find the union itself driving down wages for skilled carpenters," he said.

The controversy has spread outside of the union. Two weeks ago, Robert Copley, co-founder of the Colorado Minutemen, requested a meeting with carpenters' union organizers. The Minutemen have drawn attention for sending civilians to patrol U.S. borders in an attempt to curtail illegal immigration. Mr. Copley, a former union pipe fitter, says he suggested an alliance between his group and the union to picket job sites that hire illegal immigrants, who he said were "depleting the labor market." The action, he claimed, would elevate wages for union members. Eddie Canales, the union's head organizer, informed him that the union doesn't check immigration papers.

Union carpenters were first drawn into the debate over immigrant laborers in California during a construction boom. In 1992, a group of Latino workers who install drywall inside homes initiated a wildcat strike that crippled home construction from Los Angeles to San Diego for six months. About one-quarter of the strikers were illegal immigrants.

Eventually the local carpenters' union embraced the militant work force, and about 3,000 drywallers joined that union. But 12 years later, nearly half of them are gone, many lost to nonunion jobs, says Jesus Gomez, the Mexican drywaller who led the strike. "If only we could make immigrants understand that the union is the only way they can be respected as workers and human beings," he says.

Through the late 1970s, about 70 percent of the interior construction work in Colorado was performed by union workers, according to carpenters' union leaders. But builders, eager to control escalating labor costs, hired more and more nonunion workers, reducing the union's influence.

In the 1990s, the union got a reprieve when construction of the Denver International Airport supplied work for hundreds of union carpenters. While union members were tied up with that massive project, thousands of nonunion Latino immigrants snapped up jobs in the booming residential sector. Contractors say many of the newcomers were smuggled across the Mexican border by labor brokers and offered to subcontractors for low pay.

The carpenters' union regarded the newcomers as unskilled laborers, and assumed their job opportunities would be limited to less desirable work like house framing and asbestos abatement. But gradually the immigrants began getting jobs on large commercial buildings, which union workers had considered a haven.

Mr. Gleason, an East Coast organizer, arrived in Colorado in 1998 with a mandate from the union leadership to beef up membership in Colorado and New Mexico. He recalls encountering hundreds of unorganized Latino immigrants working long hours for low pay. They seemed ripe for organizing.

He hired Mr. Canales, a bilingual Mexican-American with 12 years of organizing for the SEIU under his belt, to draw up a plan. Mr. Canales enlisted another five Latino organizers. They began visiting construction sites, making house calls and conducting information sessions at the union hall.

A seasoned union drywall worker in Denver earns $17.25 an hour, and receives benefits worth an additional $5 an hour, union leaders say. Nonunion drywall workers are typically paid as little as $13 an hour, and receive no benefits, they say.

"The pitch was 'You want better wages and benefits? You want to enhance your skills and build some retirement money? Let's unite with other workers,' " says Mr. Canales.

But seven out of 10 immigrant workers weren't interested, he estimates. They told him they were concerned only with getting jobs. "Even if I am making less than I deserve, I'm still able to send money home," he recalls being told. Some suspected him and other organizers of having links to immigration authorities.

Javier Marquez, a 40-year-old former Mexican police detective, has been working construction jobs in Denver for the past nine years, without documents. He is not in the union. "If I join the union, the employer might ask for papers and then I'll be out of work," he says.

Jose San Miguel, another illegal immigrant from Mexico, sought help from the union in 2000 for what he says was bad treatment at the hands of a Fort Collins, Colo., subcontractor. He credits the union, which he joined, with helping to solve the problem, gaining him a $60,000 legal settlement in the process.

Nevertheless, when he found himself without work three months ago, the 40-year-old father of three took a nonunion job. As an undocumented worker, he says, it's harder for him to find jobs than it is for his documented union brethren. "When you don't have work," he says, "it's harder if you're undocumented."

Last year, Mr. Gleason and his team began trying a different approach to draw more immigrant workers into their ranks: forcing nonunion commercial jobs in downtown Denver to go union. Their theory is that more union jobs will mean more workers will join the union.

To that end, the union has deployed union laborers to interior construction sites in some upscale buildings to take nonunion jobs and gather intelligence. It has threatened building managers with bad publicity for using nonunion contractors who pay substandard wages. It recently sent picketers to a downtown commercial tower to protest a drywall subcontractor.

"People don't like being targeted," says Peggy Moretti, a senior vice president at Maguire Properties. Maguire owns the 52-story Wells Fargo Center, a property the union has threatened to picket over use of a drywall contractor it says exploits workers. To stave off union action, Maguire told the union that in the future, it would act as a "facilitator" to steer tenants toward contractors that use union labor. Recently, it informed Mr. Canales, the union organizer, that it had recommended to a tenant doing remodeling work that it use a drywall company that pays union wages and benefits, Ms. Moretti says.

Since starting its campaign against employers, the union's share of high-rise remodeling work in the targeted area of downtown Denver has jumped to 7.5 percent from less than 1 percent, union leaders say. The union has increased membership in Denver by about 150 workers, to 1,400 members.

One of the new recruits is Oscar Alvidrez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had dropped out of the union in 2003. This time, he said, "I'm going to try and stick with the union."

[Pigwax]

Originally Posted by JamaicanHerb

they only commit a few percent of the crime so thats ok then? sweet so if i go and kill your whole family it's cool cause theres a few bad white seeds? BADASS i love yur thinking man u should run for presidente

wtf are you talking about?

the good comes with the bad. crimes are going to be committed regardless of race. you can't say mexicans commit more crimes than whites and visa versa

[JamaicanHerb]

Originally Posted by Pigwax

you know... if they got rid of all the low paid mexicans, many companies would go straight down... there have been companies that have tried it, and alot of companies can't afford to pay higher standard americans.