“Fueling opposition is a concern that passage of the bill would encourage more illegal immigration in the future.”
“…just 15% disagree..”

“The view is held by 68% of the nation’s….”

Fifteen Percent (15%) don’t think so.
Yet the 68% “agree” and the 17% who are “not sure” together we total 85% who AGREE!!!!. BUT they can’t make a FINAL decision? 85%??? Now thats a HUGE number.
.
as for the kids-

play the emotional card of “look at the hurting kids” in order to justify yet another amnesty.

If we could honor the 14th amendment as a real part of the Constitution, obey the 14th amendment as written, we would NOT have this problem much longer. Anchor babies are NOT and should NOT BE LEGAL CITIZENS. Not now, nor EVER AGAIN.
The parents would stop sneaking kids in illegally in such enormous numbers.

Woody

Assuming for argument you have just a lawn , no calculations for landscape plants trees etc.

Now to take care of the lawn you have seed, fertilizer, bug treatments, water expense, mower costs , edger cost, weed eater costs, leaf blower cost, leaf bags and gasoline or electricity to power the tools.

Average without a big boy toy riding mower may 5 or 6 hundred tied up in equipment. Leaf bags per season maybe 20 bucks unless you have a lot of clippings and leaves. Gas lets say 60 a season. Equipment costs are spread over how many years the stuff survives the war.

So the annual cost of the equipment and supplies to cut the grass are still a small portion of the sodding, fertilizing, pest control and water to maintain the yard.

Sod it a couple grand for an average yard, and unless you are good at growing it maybe even replace it every 5 years or so. Fertilizer maybe 100 to 200 year, pest control self done 60 per year depending on your pest threat level where you live water ranges from 30 to 100 per month depending on water costs and just how much you choose to water. Also we could add in the cost of a lawn irrigation system if you have one.

Looking at all that with you as free(slave) labor the cut, mow , clip and blow portion of the bill hits maybe 6 to 7 % of the monthly cost.

Let the guy down the road mow it, you drop all the equipment cost and pay his labor. But then you don’t have the wear and tear on the equipment or you and you can spend your time on that honey do list. Peace in our time!

Any way you deal with it the labor/equipment cost is not going to be a large chunk of the overall cost of the yard unless you splurge for Cindy’s Bikini Gals Lawn Service.

You fell for one of the classic traps of the illegal worker issue.

The labor cost for planting, harvesting and pack and ship of the crop is only a minor part of the bill and wages paid to the labor portion do not reflect in the top line retail cost in a direct ratio.

Of course the farmer (which are by and large corporate farms now) wants the lowest labor cost he can have but it is an overblown issue as to end user costs.

Citizens won’t work the jobs simply because in many cases they can’t make ends meet on what is offered.

I can remember when kids would actually “earn” money for college or a car or whatever and thus learn the value of a dollar earned for a dollars labor.

The larger costs of farming are land mortgages, property taxes, seed costs, fertilizers, water expense, gas / diesel, trucking costs , containers, farm equipment etc. oh and crop insurance.

When I see farmers on a medium size farm having their crops rot in the field (they say because the illegals are afraid of ice won’t come) and then say well I offered 7 bucks and hour and still no body wants to harvest I say DUH.

So you want to let 1.2 million is sunk costs go down the tubes as a tax loss because you don’t want to spend 18,000 buck instead of 8000 to get the crop to market.

They only budge when the price for the crop rises enough to cover their additional labor costs which is only in small percentage increases to recover the small additional labor increase.

If illegals would do it for 5 they are happy , when the illegals dry up they offer 7 which nobody will take , they offer 12 and guess what people show up.

His labor cost goes up, but the price of the product changes by 1/2 of 1% or .05% almost lost in the roundoff error so your 15% increase talk is music to the middle mens because they say hey joe we gotta a live one here we can rake it in from. And they sure will take advantage of it if they can.

What is stupid is that if the price of lettuce goes up then it competes with foreign lettuce that’s how markets work unless you restrict imports artificially (like sugar which here is over twice world prices)

Funny how we can import lettuce for nearly the same price as growing our own and labor costs there are near .40 per hour compared to our illegal 5 or offered 7 or need to pay 12.

want someone to explain to me how this is cheap labor…after you include all their entitlements the governments have handed out to these ILLEGAL ALIENS.

It’s cheap for the businesses that employ them and pay then under-the-table wages. The expense is on the government, and thus ultimately us.

If the Republicans can’t cause use this and his calling US troops Nazis to run this bast*rd out of the Senate, they deserve to be in the minority.

GogglesPisano on October 30, 2007 at 1:34 PM

you know what they say 6 times a charm……..

wait a minute don’t they have a visa just for Agriculture workers but people figured it out cheaper to hire illegals not do what is called for by the visa program.

To be clear,

I oppose the DREAM Act and I oppose amnesty or any form of rewarding people who break the law with the gift of USA citizenship, etc.

I oppose any form of amnesty because it is a violation of the rule of law.

I am only saying this DREAM Act is an emotional issue. It emotionally tugs at the heart simply because we all know decent kids with lousy parents.

This article stated the following:

Here’s the sad reality: kids pay a big price for having lousy parents. If dad commits a murder and goes to jail for 20 years, he’s separated from his family. Is that the fault of the system or the fault or the murderer? If you have a single mom and she’s too lazy to work for a living and ends up sponging off of everyone else, the kid is going to be poor and embarrassed by the situation. Whose fault is that, the system or the parent? If the parents have terrible moral values, get a divorce, or just plain old aren’t good parents, the kids get hurt by that. Did the system create those problems or did the parents?

And if you come to the United States illegally, you’re putting the kids you have here or bring with you in a bad position because the law requires you to be deported if you’re caught (and that has been the case for a long, long, long time). So, the problem these kids have isn’t the law, it’s that they have lousy, irresponsible parents. If they cared more about their children, they wouldn’t have put them in this position in the first place.

I agree.

Emotionally, I can readily identify with these hurting kids. But the fact that amnesty has already been given to illegal aliens 7 times SINCE 1986 provides another reason for my opposition to all forms of amnesty, even the Dream Act. I believe there are far sinister elements in the USA who are more than willing to play the emotional card of “look at the hurting kids” in order to justify yet another amnesty. These same sinister elements are evil, and they only want to profit from the impersonal and immoral system of illegal immigration, and ultimately, they do not really care about the hurting kids.

A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that only 22% of voters support the proposal introduced by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). The Dream Act

any guess on how many of 22% were illegal ???
did they take the survey in spanligsh

Those polls can’t be true! Nancy Pelosi says the American People want this!

ctmom on October 30, 2007 at 1:11 PM

And Harry’s friend Tommy wants it, too!

JimK on October 30, 2007 at 1:01 PM

Thanks; I’m not signed up with them but checked in with them frequently during the lastest debacle to see how it was progressing. Will go ahead and sign up.