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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • We pay anywhere from $200~$300 per day. 8~10 hour days, 5 days a week. roughly $25~$30 an hour for people that have more than a few months of experience. from my research it’s a fairly high wage for unskilled work relative to other jobs

    it’s just a few things

    a) our work is mostly nomadic. it involves staying at hotels all across the US for months at a time and then packing up and moving when finished. we pay for room & board, as well as provide a truck & gas. but even so, most Americans do not want to live like this. juan and pablo don’t mind at all though.

    b) it’s hard labor. pretty much digging holes all day. again, most Americans do not want to do this. they either perceive it as below their station or they don’t have the willingness to do hard labor in the sun for hours a day

    i’ve been doing this nearly a decade now. it’s pretty well known in the industry. you need a laborer, you get a central american (mexican, guatemalan, nicaraguan, etc). you need a supervisor, you get an americanized / assimilated latin american (typically Mexican). you need someone for the office, you get an American




  • There’s that infamous quote from Putin- “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain”

    People who actually grew up during the Soviet Union and went through the process of collapse and liberalization as an adult experienced quite a chaotic period of time. Your way of life was violently changed, the ideology you were taught disposed of, and you went through economic troubles. It’s no wonder some look back fondly

    I’ve seen similar statements from both Cubans and ex-Soviets. One of the main themes is how under liberal societies you are “addicted to money”, so to speak. For example in Cuba, you could not get what you wanted. For example you go to the store one day, there’s no shoes. Tomorrow, there’s no batteries. You could not eat beef, you could not just leave. There were many restrictions.

    But you were sort of guaranteed a certain minimum quality of life. You would have a place to live, you would have food. You would have a steady job without worrying about losing it.

    Whereas in the US, you have an exponentially higher purchasing power- even the lowest segments of the population. But there’s a catch. You have to be working all week to sustain that lifestyle. And the employer can more easily fire you- it’s not as stable.

    So they look back with nostalgia at what to them seems likes simpler and calmer times. Less stressful

    anyhow, to back up my anecdotal experience with data: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/

    78% of older Russians think collapse of Soviet Union was a bad thing. Majority of Russians view Stalin favorably.

    It depends on the country you’re from, but it’s safe to say many older people have nostalgia and look back at the Soviet Union fondly. I’ve seen the same thing with Cubans

    here’s a thread on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/esy6i5/russians_of_reddit_what_is_the_older_generations/

    where people share their experiences. Few of the top comments basically mirror what I referenced above


  • two major things to keep in mind

    a) majority of hispanics in the US have been there multiple generations. while they may hold some varying level of ties to their family’s home country, they’ve more or less been mostly americanized and are effectively just a different flavor of “american”

    add in the fact that these are a more socially conservative people who more likely to be religious and it makes sense why they have been moving to the right. GOP could have taken advantage of this a long time ago. I think it’s strange that Trump is the one to finally harness this group of people, but I guess reality is stranger than fiction

    b) the US isn’t stupid and it imports right-wing anti-left people. For example from Cuba or Venezuela. Miami has a massive Cuban population and they’re all descendants from people fleeing the communist Castro regime. The Cubans are bred from birth to believe the Castro regime was evil and they’re told all about the horrors (conveniently nobody remembers the just as brutal Batista regime, coincidentally supported by the US).

    So all it takes is for there to be a connection between “democrats -> left wing -> communist” and all the Cubans turn against the DNC.

    what I find fascinating is that you talk to a young Cuban who is one or two generations separated from Cuba, they have all sorts of horror stories and hatred for the Castro regime.

    But you talk to an old-timer, someone in their 60s or 70s and they have nostalgia and nuanced views. Sort of like how people view the Soviet Union.

    If we’re gonna summarize all of this I’d just say this- assimilation. We’re watching the process of how Irish went from “ethnic minority” to “white” and hispanics are going through a similar process


  • Can anyone copy paste the actual article here? It’s behind a paywall. I generally like Jacobin so I’d withhold judgement until actually reading the article.

    Although I’d disagree on “Bidenism” as a term simply because Biden has not had nearly enough impact or influence to merit that word existing.


  • my tip is just to greet people loudly with a smile. say good morning, talk about weather, whatever

    i’ve found that most people will do as you say. just try and look away and go about their day. some people can even look mean with a face that is not inviting at all.

    but if you say hi in a friendly way one day, they look at you surprised a mutter something back.

    the next time you see them, they have a smile on their face and they greet you more warmly.

    really this is the thing about human connection. someone has to bridge that gap. and it’s not hard to do



  • are you saying that those construction projects won’t get done

    No, but it would both

    a) slow down significantly

    b) costs would rise significantly

    The issue is it’s hard to find laborers. Americans simply don’t work as hard as immigrants. I’ve been doing this for about a decade now and that’s one thing I’ve learned. You don’t hire Americans to dig holes. They will work half as hard, complain 5 times as much, and leave as soon as they find something better.

    But Pablo and Juan will work with a smile on their face, don’t care about being nomads working from state to state without complaints, and they’ll work Saturdays and even Sundays if you let them. You gotta basically force them to take days off.

    Low-skill Americans prefer easy jobs like working at a cashier where they can stand around all day. That’s what they’re good for. Skilled Americans do office jobs, management, supervision, etc.

    So let’s say we get rid of all illegals. During a time where we already have a labor shortage, we would eliminate 10~15 million people from the economy that basically fuel key parts of our economy.

    What would happen? An exacerbation of the labor shortage and inflation. Large construction companies would see their costs jump up. Productivity would lower. Which would mean less demand for construction materials. Which would lead to price instability - aka more inflation. Small businesses would be most effected.

    That’s just construction. We would see effects in many industries such as landscaping or agriculture as well.

    I mean, this is they way the left makes it sound… as if, we DON’T support illegal immigration, our country is doomed… and it’s ridiculous.

    First, I want you to remember being pro-illegal immigration is a right-wing capitalist policy. Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to all illegals. His economic advisor, Milton Friedman, advocated for open borders.

    The reason being because immigration is essentially an extension of economic policy. The labor market is a market like any other. The more regulations you put, the worse it gets for business. Regulations include, for example, restricting the importing of labor or artificially removing labor from the population (aka mass deportations)

    Second, I would like to remind you that Obama deported more people than Trump did.

    This entire conversation has nothing to do with left versus right. Both parties are more or less in agreement on the general trends. There has been no significant immigration reform for decades, even though there have been multiple instances of GOP majorities and DNC majorities. Why?

    Because of the reasons I outlined above. It’s actually really beneficial to the economy for us to have an underclass of cheap labor that has less rights than everyone else. It’s essentially a mini and voluntary slavery. Sort of like how Dubai imports Indians. Lots of pros, very little cons.

    Thirdly and lastly, it’s only been since 2016 or so that we have seen the anti-illegal and anti-immigrant rhetoric in general start increasing. You want to know why?

    Because our society has been taken over by populists. Our country is in its death throes and vultures are already picking at the corpse.

    This once free market economy that produced the strongest country in the world is being destroyed bit by bit. They want to restrict the market as much as possible. First, you put in tariffs restricting the free flow of goods. Then you artificially freeze the labor market.

    The end goal? An economy designed for only the largest corporations who are allied with those in power. That is what we are becoming and they are accomplishing that by pulling the wool over your eyes.


  • There’s also obviously plenty of, for lack of a better word, entrepreneurs

    Yeah, it’s interesting.

    Over the course of the last two decades or so, the government has slowly been enforcing the I9 verification process. Where employers have to get some information from you when they hire you. Social security number, driver’s license, etc. This makes it so illegals shouldn’t be able to work most jobs.

    Of course, there are ways around it. I’ve worked for smaller sized publicly traded companies that simply look the other way. I knew a middle manager who was illegal and the company knew about it- but didn’t really care. So they just cooked the books, so to speak, so the employee could continue working. I remember when he got deported. His wife wanted her niece from their home country to come visit and stay with them for a couple weeks. Girl was 16. Customs officer thought it was suspicious, started asking girl some questions. Officer did not like the responses.

    So they waited at the airport with the girl until employee went to go pick up his wife’s niece. Officer then questions employee, he doesn’t have appropriate documents. 8 months later, after the standard deportation procedures (which involves going in front of an immigration judge, etc), he was deported.

    Moral of the story? If you have to pick up someone from the airport and you’re illegal… find a friend with documents and send them instead. Safer

    One way to get around as an illegal that seems to be very popular is just to start a company and work as a 1099 subcontractor.

    So for example, you don’t need documents to start a business. You start a business, apply for an EIN number with the IRS under that business. Then when you go work for some construction company, you don’t work as an employee. You sign up as a 1099 contractor.

    That way the company hiring you is not legally liable for anything - they are simply hiring a company to provide a service. They aren’t hiring illegals to do work- whoever the contractor chooses to hire or not is not a concern of the host company. Uncle Sam gets his taxes and everybody is happy.

    Vast swathes of the construction industry work using that system. I don’t want to name names, but some very big-name companies would suffer quite a bit should we actually deport even a small % of illegals.

    My main point is that the system is designed to keep undocumented immigrants in the “informal economy” by paying under the table

    I understand the point you’re making and I agree with you. It’s designed to keep them in the shadows. Although keep in mind, it’s not always under the table. Like I outlined above, a lot of it ends up being taxed and documented properly. I know illegals that get paid $2000 weekly salary, have a work truck assigned to them, and have their rent paid for. They do their yearly taxes and Uncle Sam doesn’t care because he’s making his cut.

    There’s a high demand for people that speak both English and Spanish and have both a) technical skills (aka can work spreadsheets, emails) and b) have construction experience. It’s really hard to find these people and many of them tend to be illegals.

    You want to really hurt illegals? Get rid of the ability to do what I just outlined. But then Uncle Sam would lose $$$. So that’s what I’m curious what Trump is actually gonna do.

    There absolutely are illegals being put in similar situations as Dubai does with the Indians. For example, the Chinese love doing this. They’ll start a Chinese restaurant and then import Chinese to live and work there for pennies on the dollar. Other examples are Mexicans working in agricultural in the SW of the country.

    But that certainly isn’t the only way and in my experience isn’t that common.



  • Undocumented immigrants don’t “do the work legal citizens aren’t willing to do” or “work harder than legal citizens”. Those are both racist liberal talking points

    majority of my life was spent as an illegal immigrant. i’ve been embedded in illegal immigrant communities my whole life. i’ve worked with many and have known many more

    it’s my experience that both of those statements are true.

    a) they do work citizens aren’t willing to do and b) they work harder

    i can elaborate on why I believe those things are true, but absolutely if I’m looking for a laborer for specific types of work… I will always avoid the native-born citizen.

    whole ecosystem of fear is designed to keep immigrants working jobs below minimum wage and/or in appalling working conditions

    believe it or not there are many illegals that make wages higher than what most americans make.

    there’s many types of illegal immigrants. there’s not one size fits all to make generalizations. but the majority of them are similar to oil drill workers.

    a working class male goes far away to a labor-intensive job that nobody wants to do. they do this because they can make a relatively large salary and then use that money to do something back at home.

    so for example Mexicans will come and work in construction. They can make upwards of $300+ a day of work with experience. this is many times more than what they could reasonably expect in Mexico. but not only that, they’re making more than many native born American citizens.

    it’s just lower skilled Americans tend to flock to low salary and low effort jobs like retail or food service.


  • I wonder if he’s gonna actually do it. An actual real concentrated effort to remove illegals would cause serious problems.

    Inflation would spike, lots of industries would slow to a crawl, certain commercial areas would be essentially destroyed.

    For example, in many different fields of construction the majority of the hard labor comes from illegals. Big companies hire contractors who then hire contractors who use illegals because they are much more productive than Americans and you can pay them less.

    If we get rid of them, they would have to both dramatically increase their labor cost and the projects would slow down.

    That would raise the price of doing business which is inevitably always passed down to the consumer. Then you have certain areas with ethnic markets and ethnic restaurants and such. Many of those would lose half or more of their business overnight.

    This would be so disruptive it’s hard to understate. And I know Trump knows this.

    That’s my burning curiousity right now. Is this whole thing similar to the Wall™ ? A symbol that isn’t meant to accomplish anything meaningful beyond giving the droolers something to point to? Or is he serious?

    If he’s serious, we’re about to begin a radical shift. He would not be doing this if he wasn’t ready to radically change things.