The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Peter Robinson ·
Oct 9, 2010 at 8:00am
That's the headline of Abbey Wisse Schacter's column in today's New York Post, which is thoughtful, just, and (if Meg's folks are paying attention) useful. An excerpt:
[W]here the reform debate has bogged down over demands for amnesty, the political solution may be to get the current system working -- with real border security, but also a visa system that's attuned to our nation's labor needs -- and figure out later what to do about the illegals now here.
Read it all here.
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Aug '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
I was very disappointed by Whitman's response to these revelations. I would like to have seen her use the opportunity to say "This situation clearly illustrates the problems faced by employers across this state," and then enumerate the difficulties and how to resolve them. Instead, she accused Brown of engineering the events and played the victim card.
Jun '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
What a brilliant article. Not to mention that 90% of the content is quoting our own wonderful host...a guy named Peter.
Thanks Peter.
Jun '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Well said, thank you too. I was trying to verbalize that concept in my comment, but it just didn't sound right, so I deleted it.
Jun '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Sep '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
The linked article has this paragraph: "The problem, however, is that there is no program that now offers a way for "employers to hire all the high- and low-skilled labor they need." The notion that big business will be the determiner of how much low skilled labor is needed is objectionable. Finish the fence, enhance E-Verify and require it for all employers are the things that must be done first. Then, after we've waited for five years or so to see how things settle out with the illegals already in the country, we can start a discussion of how many work visas should be issued for low skill workers.
The left and big business are using the notion that "there are no Americans willing to take these jobs." What's not appended is "at these low wage rates."
Aug '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Patrick in Albuquerque:
The left and big business are using the notion that "there are no Americans willing to take these jobs." What's not appended is "at these low wage rates."
Complicating the matter is the minimum wage -- I believe one of the advantages of hiring illegal workers is being able to occasionally get around minimum-wage laws, no?
So "these low wage rates" may not be the whole problem. Part of the problem might be that it illegal to pay low-skilled citizens wages that reflect what their labor is really worth, and this contributes to the attractiveness of hiring illegals.
I say this without rancor or judgment. I went through a period of illness where I wasn't productive enough to be worth minimum wage. I eventually worked around this problem by finding a part-time job where I could prepare over half my work at home on my own time, thus making my real hourly wages much lower than my "official" hourly wages -- and lower than the minimum wage.
With minimum-wage laws in place, it's rather more difficult to figure out what the natural price of low-skilled labor ought to be.
Sep '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
I write this in response to MFR in #6, and should be viewed in no way as questioning the truth of what she says.
My own example is from a ride on a ski lift at Aspen a few years back. Mexican music was playing on the construction site of a mcmansion right beneath the lift. Suspicions aroused. And then I found a huge trailer park barrio in nearby Carbondale. Suspicions confirmed - I guess. Anyway I refuse to believe that there aren't local people who want to build houses if the wages are right. Especially with the unemployment rates we're at.
MFR's comment points to the difficulty we're going to go thru since we've become so addicted to cheap labor in the last decade or more.
Jul '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Whitman's deer-in-the-headlights moment demonstrates what an inept communicator she is. The facts were all on her side:
If Whitman had taken a day to record an advertisement, in English and Spanish, laying all those facts out clearly and then flooded the airwaves, reasonable people would move on. A lot of Hispanics, hearing that $23 an hour number, would probably be more sympathetic to her.
Instead, by stuttering around, she's made herself look defensive.
What a pathetic campaign.
Edited on Oct 9, 2010 at 11:23amSep '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Whitman discovered she had employed an undocumented worker for 9 years in June of 09. If she had come out with that information in a release along the lines suggested by Kenneth and Anneke9 at that time Brown never would have had the opportunity to use it. Instead she chose to remain silent and hope it would not be discovered. I am relatively sure she was advised to get it out on her terms. Perhaps her ego prevented her from doing so.
Aug '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
That was brilliantly articulated. Business is often given a pass to act merely on what can be done. In our individual lives many "can be done-s" are "must not be done-s," for moral reasons. The fact that plenty of people are willing to do--or pay for--something that is, say, detrimental to our national identity, cultural integrity or common morality, is argued to make these things unavoidable, coming realities and foregone conclusions. These cheap business people and wealthy consumers are eroding the fabric of American justice, national sovereignty, the rule of law, and trampling upon the social contract that on the other hand protected their fledgling enterprises with property laws paid for with the blood of so many of those working class folks wearing a military uniform.
Edited on Oct 9, 2010 at 9:58pmAug '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
Peter Robinson:
...the political solution may be to get the current system working -- with real border security, but also a visa system that's attuned to our nation's labor needs -- and figure out later what to do about the illegals...
Peter, as others are pointing out here in other words, what is the expected response of the economy when the people with "proper visas" command higher wages and salaries? The present advantage that the illegal invader has is his willingness to work cheap, sans benefits. With a work visa--or other device to allow them to work legally for a time or towards naturalization--they will essentially have all of the working rights of American citizens in the marketplace. Then what? A new bout of big & small biz hand-wringing about "being forced" to disregard the social contract with Americans as well as the newly visa'd immigrant workers, and--once again--to hire new waves of illegal aliens. Well--I can just hear the business community's jowls blubbering: "The (new) illegals do the work that Americans--and the visa'd immigrants--just won't do!" (as Patrick added, "for cheap"). Convince me to the contrary.
Edited on Oct 10, 2010 at 7:54amAug '10
Re: The Message Inside Meg's Maid Mess
I am trying to think of this in a systems-engineering sense, or a physiological sense. A nation is strong when the activities of the various classes of people are integrated. I have an uneasy sense that, despite our hoped-for trimming of Democrat power, things are not really well with conservatives. I lay most of the blame for this upon the intellectual and the mercantile classes within conservatism. These leaders are just...not...getting...it. The Tea Party patriots are sensing that the GOP is setting the Tea Party and working class people up for another exploitation, the dismal cycle of Republican foolishness. Let me spell it out nice and clear: c, l, o, s, e the border without consideration or promise of amnesty, certainly not now. Some of illegals will self-deport. Mexico needs these "hard" workers with "family values" for the development of Mexico. At some point we need to examine why "employers (supposedly) can't find enough high and low skilled employees" here already. Illegal invasion is only a symptom, the malady is general and cultural: the cure must likewise be general and cultural. Are the leaders ready? If so, when?