re: #295 lostlakehiker

ABUSING the workers you hire injures them. If you do that. HIRING them, assuming you honor the contract you enter into with them, doesn’t hurt THEM. If it did, if they would rather not have that work than have it, they wouldn’t take it.

How can this possibly be so hard to understand?

The punctuation does not enhance the clarity, for one thing.

Hiring illegal aliens, assuming you pay them what you promised, and at least the legal minimum, and assuming your working conditions are safe enough to pass OSHA inspection, is something the illegal alien who takes the job will prefer, both before and after the transaction, to not being hired.

Big assumptions, and a funny. What’s the legal minimum wage for an illegal employee?

We wouldn’t have the kind of flow of illegal aliens we do have if their universal fate, upon getting here and getting a job, was to be put upon so severely they wish they’d never come. It happens, granted. Some employers are rats and they cheat their employees. But the ones who pay the wages as promised and protect life and limb on the job, well, the arrangement works to the advantage of both employer and employee. The third party, the guy who would have had the job at a higher wage, above board, is the one who is hurt. And more generally, the public, through the erosion of the whole idea of rule of law.

The legal guy who didn’t get the job, if he exists, is hurt by not getting the job, I can agree with that. But your generalizations about working conditions are a joke. I certainly would not assert that “their universal fate, upon getting here and getting a job, was to be put upon so severely they wish they’d never come”, but I believe you are underplaying the possibility that a significant number of illegal employees are abused, whether by poor working conditions, or theft of wages and/or deductions. I don’t understand why you do that.