Immigration Mythbusting
On the rare occasions when I agree to talk politics with somebody, it can get really frustrating because there’s so much disinformation out there. People believe a staggering amount of things that simply aren’t true, to such an extent that talking with them feels like having a conversation about two entirely different things. I don’t mind differences of opinion – hell, for the most part I find differences interesting, but building an opinion based on two completely different sets of facts gives you little basis for conversation.
What Vicki calls my 'Work Face'.
Click to embiggen.
The other big one has got to be illegal immigration. People who get all lathered up about it believe so many things that are just dead wrong, that listening to them talk about it feels like being in a bad French film, where all the characters just start spouting nonsense for no discernible reason. That doesn’t mean people are stupid or anything, it just means they’ve been told a bunch of crap that isn’t true, but it feels true, and it reinforces what they want to believe anyway, so that’s good enough.
I’ve been involved with the construction industry in North Carolina for 16 years now, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the illegal immigration issue from ground zero. I decided to write this post to set the record straight on some of the more common myths Americans have come to believe. I don’t expect it to change anyone’s opinion, but at least maybe you can base your opinion on facts, and not on falsehoods.
1. “Illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes!”
As a matter of fact, something like 95% of them do pay taxes, including social security. And unlike you and me, they’ll never be able to collect on social security, which is why the government loves them and won’t address the illegal immigration problem in any serious way. Taxpayers who contribute to the system but won’t be able to take anything out are beloved by governments everywhere.
See, the vast majority of immigrants cross the border from Mexico and the first thing they do in Texas is buy a set of fake documents. For anywhere from $500 to $1000, they get a fake social security card, maybe a driver’s license, that sort of thing. When they go to work in the US, in the eyes of the employer they are US citizens, so the company withholds the same taxes as they do for all of their employees.
The only ones who don’t pay taxes are the ones who can’t afford to buy the fake documents, and that’s a very small percentage of the total. These are the people that the media refers to as “undocumented” immigrants. They end up working “under the table”, like your cousin Luther who is trying to dodge paying child support.
2. “Companies only hire immigrants because they work so cheap!”
I can only speak for the construction industry, but immigrants get paid the same as everybody else. As I mentioned in #1, in the eyes of the employer they are US citizens, or we couldn’t hire them in the first place. How could we get away with paying them any less than our standard rates?
3. “So why do construction companies hire so many immigrants?”
Because for the most part, they’re the only people who will apply for our jobs. Americans think construction work is beneath them.
See, there was a time in this country when construction work was considered a respectable way to make a living. Gradually over the last 30 years or so, we’ve transitioned to this attitude that construction is something you do if you can’t do anything else. Parking your ass in a cubicle and spending your life as a drone is apparently more admirable. Mexicans on the other hand, still have the outdated notion that working with your hands and creating something on a daily basis is a decent profession. Go figure.
4. “Companies could recruit more Americans if they really wanted to!”
A lot of construction companies tried that in the late-90′s and early 2000′s. Most gave up on it within a few years.
I used to work for a company that sunk a lot of money into recruiting Americans – mostly high school grads who weren’t going to college. Most of the ones we hired lasted less than 6 months, and I spent a year doing exit interviews trying to find out why they didn’t stick with it. I assumed the #1 reason for leaving would be the (relatively) low starting salary, but much to my suprise, most of the ones who left went to jobs that actually paid less. The most common reason I was given? “The work was too hard.” Most of those who quit went to work at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, where they wouldn’t have to work outside, and the work was easier.
5. “I wouldn’t have a problem with immigrants if they would just come here legally!”
Trust me, they’d love to be legal – it just isn’t possible.
See, the US government gives each foreign country an annual quota. “We will allow X-number of people to immigrate to the US from your country each year.” For Mexico, that number is about 5000. That’s 5000 people who can legally immigrate to the US. Obviously demand exceeds supply, so you end up with a big waiting list. The problem is that Mexico is a corrupt country, so if you can afford to hire an expensive, well-connected lawyer you get bumped to the front of the line. It’s so bad that one friend of mine had his name on the list, waiting for 5 years, and at the end of 5 years he was further down the list than he’d been when he started.
The practical upshot is that only wealthy people can immigrate to the US legally. For normal people it’s impossible.
6. “Why can’t employers check to see if someone is here legally before they hire them?”
Because we’re required by law to accept documents (such as social security cards) if they appear legitimate. Unless we have some prevailing reason to perform background checks on employees (like if we had people working in a security-sensitive position or something) then we aren’t allowed to do checks on everybody, and without that we have no way of telling if they’re legal or not.
The IRS could catch them easily if they wanted to. You’d think it might set off a few red flags somewhere when Manuel Ortega starts paying taxes with the social security number of some 82-year old widow in Wisconsin, but they don’t bother. As I said in #1, the government loves those sorts of taxpayers.
7. “But they are breaking the law!”
This one always amuses the hell out of me.
I mean, this is America we’re talking about here. We cheat on our taxes. We drink before we turn 21. We buy radar detectors so we can ignore speed limits. We smoke more pot (per capita) than any other nation on Earth. We download music and movies we didn’t pay for. We glorify criminals in our music and films, and we make legends out of the ones who pulled it off. I would say that thumbing our collective nose at authority, and gleefully doing anything we think we can get away with, is an American principle as fundamental as free speech and the right to privacy.
But the second some poor bastard (who is just a little too swarthy) hops a fence somewhere, we all turn into Elliott Ness.
8. “Illegal immigrants are destroying our society!”
Bullshit. These are people that work hard, believe in education, and are here trying to build a better life for their children. If that’s going to destroy our society, then maybe it deserves to be destroyed.
Most are devout Catholics, and they’ve got family values wired into them that make your average American look like a deadbeat dad. They are the new blue collar, and they came along just as our own blue collar people started self-destructing on a lethal cocktail of welfare, Meth and Oxycontin.
Try this – next Saturday morning, go to your local AutoZone and watch who’s in the store buying oil. At least in North Carolina, it’s almost 100% Mexicans. Americans are too good to change their own damned oil anymore. They’ll pay somebody at Jiffy-Lube to do it for them.
Personally, I think we need the Mexicans just as much as they need us – if not more.
- Ken
I read New Zealand’s immigration policy once and it would solve our problems here. It was simple. If you have an employer here that needs your skills, can speak our language, and you don’t have a criminal background, welcome to New Zealand. They had a point system and more details, but that was the basics. To the best of my knowledge, there is no immigration problem there.
As far as I’m concerned the problem is with our government. It’s easy to see the big business link to the government and the profits from this system are enormous. It wouldn’t be profitable to fix it. Mexico enjoys the system as well. A giant portion of their populace goes north and sends a bunch of money back home. Any talks I’ve ever heard of fixing the problem resulted in outrage from the Mexican government.
The immigration problem does differ from the point of view. I’ve worked with cubicle drones that were just downright frightened by anyone who worked for a living, so they would put anyone of any race down in an effort to somehow make themselves look better. I’ve had some close calls delivering loads to a construction sites because immigrants that won’t speak English.
The ultimate solution would be for Mexico to fix it’s problems and behave more like Canada, but that’s never going to happen. Part of that problem is the U.S. being willing to be part of Mexico’s corruption. There’s good money in it I’m sure.
I change my oil because it’s more convenient. To pay someone to do it, I have to wait around, get it changed, pull out of the bay and find that they were incompetent and find oil spraying from the loose filter, go back through, etc. The Mexicans might do it for that reason too.
My only real problem is the language barrier. Right now, and for the forseeable future, most of the country speaks English, and when a lot of the rank and file on a job site don’t share that common means of communication in causes problems.
As for the auto parts store… well, have you ever been to a self-service junkyard? Generally speaking, there are two varieties of people there: People who own old cars (hi!), and Mexicans getting parts to fix their vans. It’s the cheapest way to get the job done, and when you’re sending most of your paycheck back home so your kids can eat, cheap is the order of the day.
True and true. And of the reasons you list, it is the lack of “manual” that has partly created the whole we are in now, as a nation and state. That manual as in manual labor. Ken, you know I’ve spent practicly the same amount of time you have in this industry, and do arguably, one of the hardest as far as labor there is. I started at 20, and tried like hell to get more of our Hillbilly brethren who were close to my age to come to work. The reply I got mostly, “that’s too much like work”. And everywhere I’ve worked from Virginia, NC, SC, Alabama, GA, it’s pretty much the same story. Sad, and a lot of people don’t want to admit it, but at least in our industry, it’s a stone cold fact. People would rather take less pay working inside a climate controled environment, than sweat out a days living.
Ken, I could not agree with you more regarding the immigration issue. I worked in the lumber industry for 18 years and I saw much the same as you in your construction industry. I have some very good friends who have rental property; and since they were located near the “sawmill”, rented to many of the immigrants. Therefore, from my frequent visits to my friends, I met many of these men and got to know them. As you said, they all wanted the same thing–a better life for their families. And, since I worked the payroll dept. (as well as many other depts!!) I know for a fact they all paid taxes. Because they had such a hard time getting to the bank or getting a check cashed anywhere else, I also took their checks to the bank to be cashed for them. Their money and payroll check stub were put into the bank envelope–the exact same kind that we receive whenever we make a deposit or cash a check. Because of this simple fact, we paid our “Mexicans” in cash!! Again, I agree with you.
good post, Ken.
I’m with you, I respect people’s individual opinions when they are fact-based.
This country’s entire economy is built on the back of hard-working immigrants, legally documented or not, who do the bulk of the manual labor, watch the most children, build most of our buildings and homes, and clean the most houses and gardens. They work for little money, they care about their families, and they are in many cases role models for many of the people who say that they are somehow trespassing on the good will of our society.
It’s always awed me that these people run such a tremendous gauntlet: paying bribes, swimming through rivers of shit, dodging police, paying huge sums for fake documents, and all manner of other unsavory actions. In short, doing whatever they can to make a better life for their family.
That my friends, is true dedication. Anyone who would put up with that amount of shit to get something damn well deserves it. As Ken says, Americans could learn something from these folks.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/06q3/sail_to_the_u.s.a._in_a_chevrolet-feature
One of my favorite immigration stories. You can do a search on “Luis Grass” to find out more about it.
If a man can make cars ocean worthy, I think we want him as a citizen.
I know this post has been around a bit but I haven’t read it yet. Again, great post and definitely eye opening and lots of truth.
I’ve seen the other side of the coin to a point though. When I lived in Oregon, I knew some people who truly enjoyed working in the fields of the many farms and orchards. They were basically drummed out of the business by harassment, ridicule, and even sometimes a beating, because they were not Latino. See, the Latinos basically were of the opinion that those were THEIR jobs, and how dare some gringo work in a job they could bring their cousin from Mexico to do work too.
That, and there were a couple of rental properties I helped clean up after they were rented by a family, and then promptly occupied by that family and a few others, then completely trashed.
So, just like any other situation, kind of seems to me that there are the noble, hard working men and women who truly just want to make a better life, and those who are greedy and full of hatred, and feel they are “taking back” what America “stole” from them I guess.