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Do immigrants really do the jobs Americans don't want?

by Greg Slack

Created on: March 10, 2010   Last Updated: March 12, 2010

Perhaps immigrants DO take the jobs Americans don't want, or more specifically perhaps migrant workers and illegal aliens take the jobs Americans don't want. All the politically correct labels and groupings aside that is the real issue here.

You can find all kinds of polls, research data, and graphs or charts showing that immigrants come here and thrive all day long, but what those things show are about immigrants who have that goal in mind. The jobs Americans don't want are mostly done by illegal immigrants, migrant workers and such whose goal may not be to stay here at all.

Mexico has 4.1% of their GDP from agriculture, yet 15,1% of their workforce is in agriculture according to the CIA world fact book. That means basically that over 15% of the workers in that country compete for only enough jobs for a 4.1% of the total GDP.

That leaves a whole lot left without work for much of a year. Remember agriculture is seasonally dependent, so that only covers a little over 6 months anyway. So what happens to those without work in agriculture? They come to USA for seasonal migratory labor in a great many agricultural areas.

Here in Ohio we have a very large agricultural area just about 30 or so miles from where I live. They employ thousands of migrant workers seasonally. And why shouldn't they?

Migrant workers are cheaper to employ, require a lot less benefits, and they are more than happy to do work that would otherwise not get done by Americans.

The only real numbers of significance here are 13.64 (2009), $13,200 (2009 est.), and -7.1% (2009 est.). Those are in order; the rate of exchange Pecos to US Dollars, the GDP per capita, and the GDP real growth rate.

According to the CIA world fact book it took 13.64 Pecos to make one US Dollar in 2009. So a migrant worker can come here for one season and make US minimum wage, about $7.30 in Ohio currently. Which taking the exchange rate factor in to consideration we get 98.89 Pecos per hour.

The average minimum wage in Mexico in 2009 was somewhere between 58 and 55 Pecos per day according to Mexperience.com. Understand the problem here?

We have a group of workers making up over 15% of their labor force competing for 4% GDP worth of jobs, who will only make at best 58 Pecos per day for half a year at home.

These workers can come to the US for half a year and make $7.30 US Dollars per hour which was about 98.89 Pecos in 2009. They can stay home and IF they work they make 55-58 Pecos per day or come here and make about 792

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