One out of every two Americans are considered "poor", yet immigrants earning $15-$20 doing jobs "domestic workers don't want to do

Isn't 15$- 20$ per hour considered 'poor' / 'low income' anyway? I mean given the cost of living expenses how much of it are you going to actually have at the end of the week.

MIGRANT workers return to their own country after the work season.IMmigrants are here to stay.

My rich uncle hires Mexicans at about $40 an hour. Yet his nephew is having probelms finding a job with a 4 year degree, Army veteran, tons of experience in almost all fields...
This is why this country is failing

its the same story in the UK. eastern europeans will work in the agricultural industry, legally travelling over from their native countries for a few months to earn £80 day (some can double that with target bonus). meanwhile lads will kick about on estates in London, Birmingham, Manchester, complaining they have do work.

as far as i'm concerned, the hard *working* immigrant is welcome. once upon a time it was normal to move to where work is - the whole US was built on this - but nowadays people want work on the door step, not too dirty, short hours for more than minimum wage.

Yes, the ones that are here legally...but if you read the article, you see that apparently they have a hard time determining who is actually here legally and is migrant versus an illegal immigrant who may stay here after the fact.

If you can't hire legally, then you shouldn't be in business.

There used to be family farms. The families did the work and hired a few local people to help out at harvest time.

Then the corporate farm showed up. The 'farmer' spends all day in the office filling out paperwork. While his many illegal alien employees did all the work. Get rid of the illegal aliens, and we would be forced to go back to small family farms.

There are people who are willing to farm. But very few have $1,000,000 to buy a small farm. The corporations can afford to pay that amount, the small farmer cannot.

It depends on the area you live in, if you're supporting any dependents etc. I can live by myself on $20 just fine and still save up at least $500 a month if not more after living costs. $20 an hour is about 38,000 a yr on your typical 40 hrs a week, throw in some overtime and it's an easy 40k+.

This is it, but according to the article the farmers are fighting it and it sounds like they do not even want to give any Americans that may want to try the opportunity because it would require training. I guess I just don't understand how much training would be required in order to do these things and why someone from Haiti or Mexico would be able to do it, but someone needing work from America could not.

Many migrants LIVE in the US. We have a large population of them here in south Texas...there are even special classes so their kids can catch up with the missed work. I don't know the stats, but many of them are legal/US citizens.

Almost anyone can be trained to do farm work. I say almost, because their are people with physical and mental disabilities. It's racists to say that someone with white skin is unable to pick tomatoes or hoe out weeds.

The Mexican Mafia has put a strangle hold on much of agricultural hiring in the US.

You start with a workplace that has all American citizens. Then one hispanic gets hired. He works really hard for a while. When he is seen as a model worker, then he starts sabotaging his coworkers. Sometimes by lying about what they did or did not do, sometimes by messing up their work.

Then when a job opening comes up, he advices the boss to hire his cousin. Now you have two hispanics, both working hard as can be. Whenever there is a job opening, they brink in another cousin.

Because of his work ethic, the first hispanic gets promoted. He now makes all the hiring decisions. Only hispanics get hired at this point, and any little thing will get a non hispanic fired.

Once the workplace reaches 100% hispanic, then the work slows down. Where you used to be able to get the job done with 12 employees, now you need 14. Whenever the owner shows up, they are all working hard. But when he's not there, then they hang around and do nothing.

In some places, the hispanics actually have to pay a third party each month for the job that he has.

I'm not saying that all hispanics are like this, but I've seen this pattern again and again in my area. The fake farmers who work in their office are happy being the lord of their plantations. But they live in a unsustainable bubble.

Every other workplace in the world expects to do some sort of training of new employees. But for some reason, factory farms are too special to???

I hope they close the border and then all my factory farm neighbors go out of business. Then all the local family farms that are left will have a chance.

Go ahead and hate me, I'm a 3rd generation Oregon farmer who's sick of my way of life being destroyed.

What job exactly does your uncle pay $40.00 an hr. to do?

I'm wondering as well, how is it that they are allowed to discriminate against US citizens? Is that legal? The lady in the article even admitted that it's not difficult work, it's just work that they don't want to train people for.

That's just the whole point they take the money back where the cost of living is lower and live like kings.
It's the same all over the western world.
We're stuck having to circulate our measly $$$$ in some of the most expensive cities in the world to live.

If you do the math, you realise there is way more to this urban myth than meets the eye.

We have migrant workers encouraged to come out here for fruit picking season and they get a lot of SUPPORT with housing, tranport etc.
the poor old aussies earn the same money but have to fend for themselves.
It's done on PURPOSE as far as I'm concerned to discourage the locals from applying for and getting the jobs.

A lot of politicans these days are using migrant working schemes in leui of sending foreign aid to a lot of developing countries.
they won't publcly admit this or the local unemployed would cry blue murder and they'd be out on their asses.

There's a lot more to this scam than just the locals being bludgers. There's a lot of blocks put up to keep the jobs open for migrant workers.

Not realistic. They must live near where they work, that is their 'cost of living'. But many do live much cheaper by not eating convenience foods, by not owning/maintaining a car and by utilizing living space to the maximun, 15 to 20 people in a 3 bedroom apartment.

$20 per hour time 2000 hours standard work year is $40,000. That is almost twice the poverty level for a family of four.

The only people getting rich in this country is the one percent. Quit trying to divide the people.

Get back to work you lazy hicks!

I'm fairly certain that the farmers or the state provides for their housing, though some probably do rent.

I always hear this Americans not wanting these jobs. Who says that that true because when I used to live in the farm community forty years ago the people doing these kinds of jobs were all Americans. So I dot see how this is really true.

Americans don't want to do those jobs because it would lower their social status and alienate them from their facebook followers.

There should be a program to have people who are on welfare or struggling college students do these jobs I'm sure they would love the opportunity.

What about the folks who work at Mcdonalds though?

That's the thing, with this economy, how is is that there can be businesses out there that are importing immigrants of questionable status when there are plenty out here that need jobs? They keep saying there aren't people out here that will do the job, but I had always thought the assumption was that they wouldn't do the job because it was much lower than $15-$20 per hour.

Six hours was enough, between the 6 a.m. start time and noon lunch break, for the first wave of local workers to quit. Some simply never came back and gave no reason. Twenty-five of them said specifically, according to farm records, that the work was too hard. On the Harold farm, pickers walk the rows alongside a huge harvest vehicle called a mule train, plucking ears of corn and handing them up to workers on the mule who box them and lift the crates, each weighing 45 to 50 pounds.

“It is not an easy job,” said Kerry Mattics, 49, another H-2A farmer here in Olathe, who brought in only a third of his usual Mexican crew of 12 workers for his 50-acre fruit and vegetable farm, then struggled to make it through the season. “It’s outside, so if it’s wet, you’re wet, and if it’s hot you’re hot,” he said.

Still, Mr. Mattics said, he can’t help feeling that people have gotten soft.

“They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much,” he said. “I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks.”
[link to www.outsidethebeltway.com]

You can't 'see' how something can be true unless you open your eyes.

A quick search of the net will find several stories like this one. Many Americans are not willing to work hard, even for a decent wage.

Some jobs are not worth $15-20 per hour. If, say, Mcdonalds paid all their employees that much, and the suppliers (bakers, ranchers (meatpackers) and produce farmers), a hamburger would not be afforable to as many customers, sales fall off, stores close, suppliers lose sales.

If migrant farm workers are making $15-20 per hour they are either doing piecework at a fantastic rate or doing very high-level work. This is NOT what they make in the fields of CA picking lettuce. That's probably about $8 per hr.

And I think most employers would hire Americans if they came and applied for the job. If someone dropped a busload of prisoners or ex-cons off, that would be different.