immigration protests in USA

[dostacos]

Please discuss this topic with respect and good taste. This can be a very "ugly" topic if not handled like it is, thanks for keeping it above board.

I would say that all the killing of us Natives,[ great, great geanny on both mom & dad's sides were full blooded Cherokees] I should be yelling for all ya'all to go home, the problem with that is I may have had some relatives that didn't just MARRY into the tribe

 

[Socke]

I suspect that many people think that the companies that use migrant or illegal labor have a huge sack of money in the form of ill-gotten profits that they can just dip into in order to pay real wages and benefits, and that they will not pass those costs on to consumers of whatever it is that they make.

I'm living in a region where they grow asparagus, it is harvested by hand which is realy hard work.

The harvesting is typicaly done by polish workers who take their holidays to do it. We had teachers and engineers harvesting asparagus for some 5 Euro an hour for years on the fields next to where I used to live.

The money they earn here is an extra for them at home and makes a big difference. Most built houses with the money or used it to finance their childrens university etc.pp.

One year the german government decided that it can't be that polish workers harvest asparagus while we have some 5 million unemployed germans. So they subsidized the wages to 10 Euro an hour and educated long term unemployed in asparagus harvesting. The farmers had to employ germans first and the number off polish workers granted a work permit was limited.
This lead to desaster!
Most of the germans reported ill after two or three days, they were uneficient on the days they did work and most of the asparagus roted on the fields.

Since then we know that the germans want to eat asparagus but don't want to harvest it.


The asparagus they grow here is delicious but expensive even with cheap labour, they can't compete with asparagus from Taiwan or Israel and when the farmers had to pay what german unemployed consider fair for this type of work, nobody would buy the product! Even now a kilogram is around 20 to 30 Euro and I don't know a farmer who is wealthy.
The average income from farming is around 50% of the income from unscilled labour, it's bearable since farmers usualy own their farms and thus don't pay rent and they can live from their land, but without holidays (somebody has to feed the animals) and with workdays from sunrise to sunset from spring to autumn.


When I was young, we all worked on the farms in autumn harvesting potatoes and wheat. I could drive a tractor with two trailers carying 20 metric tons when I was 14, two years before I could get a limited driving license

 

[bmattock]

I would say that all the killing of us Natives,[ great, great geanny on both mom & dad's sides were full blooded Cherokees] I should be yelling for all ya'all to go home, the problem with that is I may have had some relatives that didn't just MARRY into the tribe

I'm a native - I was born here in the USA.

If you mean Native Americans, one can argue that they were not the first to come here, that they came from somewhere else, and that they displaced earlier cultures themselves. Cranial bones found in North America date to 12,500 years ago and now even older (pre-Clovis Settlement) and are not Indian. In fact, the characteristics we recognize as Native American did not appear until about 7,000 years ago. So certainly Native Americans have been here a very long time - longer than anyone else in fact - but they were apparently not the very first.

I mean no disrespect - it is a point of academic interest to me only, not a political issue.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks