Reply #29: Saw this in your neck of the woods this past weekend

[southlandshari]

I drove down to the Florida panhandle to drop my child off to spend a few days with grandparents at the beach, and there was a huge crew of hispanic laborers working on the ground floor (hurricane Ivan reconstruction stuff).

A contractor van dropped them off early each morning and picked them up about 14 hours later, well into the evening hours. It all seemed very organized and streamlined.

I'm more liberal than most when it comes to immigration law. I'm married to someone from another country, and have dealt extensively with the INS (now the BCIS) on our own case, and in the past decade, immigration issues for friends and family. Those who think legal immigration is easy are kidding themselves. If you do it right, you are in for years of headache and scrutiny, while those who ignore the rules have it easy by comparison. But I don't begrudge anyone who moves to the U.S. (legally or not) trying to make a better life for themself and their family. I'd do the same in their shoes.

That said, the only winners in what's going on in your area (and countless others, no doubt, in the US) are the big companies who can afford to set up this kind of imported slave labor system. Local workers lose; in the end, the immigrant laborers aren't winners, either. It's not like they make enough to send any significant funds home. It's wrong and it is oppressive. I wish I had some ideas of how to combat it.