GOP

static111 said:

Can we go ahead and use a term like undocumented people or something, non citizens maybe, idk but last I checked, illegals isn’t a type of person. In fact I don’t think it’s illegal to be a person.  I know some of you sure were happy about changing the name of the Washington franchise to Football Team. Let’s try not to use the language of the right.  Unless of course you think it’s ok to refer to a whole group of people as Illegals. Maybe we can change the name to the Washington Illegals. I mean since it seems to be ok to use everywhere else.

Pick the term and I will comply, that’s what it comes down to owning a business. 

static111 said:

Can we go ahead and use a term like undocumented people or something, non citizens maybe, idk but last I checked, illegals isn’t a type of person. In fact I don’t think it’s illegal to be a person.  I know some of you sure were happy about changing the name of the Washington franchise to Football Team. Let’s try not to use the language of the right.  Unless of course you think it’s ok to refer to a whole group of people as Illegals. Maybe we can change the name to the Washington Illegals. I mean since it seems to be ok to use everywhere else.

An illegal is an illegal immigrant.  Not a group unless it just so happens to be a group of them.  Undocumented, illegal, extended stay.  Same difference.

As for the govt not really caring about someone's hiring practices?  I would say that is true now unless it's public work or state/federal.

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

What about the ones that work for cash that don't pay taxes?  

They pay sales taxes... and the fault for them getting paid under the table is on their employers, who enable the law breaking and break the law themselves.  They are also not paying taxes required. Seems to me the undocumented immigrants are no worse, or even 'less worse'.  At least we can understand why they want to work and are working. 

Yes and the property they rent has taxes but it's not the same.  Local city and state taxes miss out on this.

This happens in pretty much every restaurant and landscaping business here in NY.  I remember reading an article where the workers mailed most of their money back home and none of it was ever spent here.

That doesn't pass the sniff test.  An undocumented worker will likely be working for less than minimum wage, or dirt cheap.  For them to be able to live here but still send "most" of their money back to Mexico/Central America doesn't seem possible.  

But again, it's about who is paying them.  They would not be drawn here if they could not work under the table. 

They make $150 a day standing outside of Homedepot when they do work.  The others that have the kitchen jobs and landscaping jobs get paid well too.  They aren't making under minimum wage.

Interesting that you know the going rate.  But it's irrelevant if they send the money back or not.  I'm just not buying "most".  Either way, the only reason it's happening is because criminal business owners are willing to pay under the table to undocumented workers, and then not paying their fair share of taxes.

Why is it interesting?  Information is key.

You mention business'.  Wasn't a law signed by Bush Dubya that penalized a company if they got caught hiring undocumented workers?  Did that go away?  

I doubt it went away, but I"m curious why ICE is raiding homes rather than the businesses that are drawing them here.  

Is $150 the nationwide rate, or just the rate where you live?

We got raided by ICE in 2017. Had to pay penalties on a couple of employees who our payroll department failed to obtain copies of identification on or lost them in the shuffle. For the employees listed by ICE who were not legal we were not penalized as long as we had copies of the identification they provided us and let them go. The ease of entering the country and obtaining false documents in an effort to make 10x the money is the biggest draw, not the businesses who you think are enabling the issue. We sent the government money for unknowingly hiring people who entered illegally and obtained illegal documents, who’s responsibility is it to keep this from happening? Obviously we could have avoided any penalty had those copies been obtained, but that is bound to happen when you have over 300 new hires a year.

If you are hiring people with fake IDs, your HR is either clueless or intentionally looking the other way.  We do I9, background check,  social verification and fingerprinting. 

Yeah that is it. Not sure if you have ever seen a legit fake ID or SS card, there is no noticeable difference whatsoever. Add to that Permanent Resident cards which are a List A on the I9 and constitute as the only form of identification required. I am willing to bet you have never seen one with the sleuth operation you are running. Certain contracts require background checks and fingerprinting, when they come in we are required to submit them.

Are you saying you are reviewing cards,  not using a third party to do your national checks?

I think you would be very surprised on how easy it is to obtain fake documents.  Did you read my story about the 42 people w false documents working on a federal penitentiary?
In Cali early 90's I knew people with fake documents and was surprised they could enter back in the country with them but they did.

Lastly most construction jobs that aren't public works don't do much vetting.  I have a SWAC card that did some serious deep vetting but not everyone is doing that.

Someone mentioned the Irish.  Besides them and the Vietnamese I have never seen tighter groups that look out for each other.

I don't doubt that it's easy to get fake documents, but those fake documents are worthless if a business spends the less than $50 to do a national background and social security check.  The illegal would have had to done full out identify theft in order to pass a check, and that's just not very likely.  
If a business were really concerned about hiring illegals, they could avoid doing so by conducting proper background checks and not picking up people at the Home Depot. 

If our government were really concerned about illegals they could do more than use small businesses to police for them and fund their failed programs. I am not concerned with unknowingly hiring illegals, I am concerned that if it happens I have done so by the law. There was a time when E-Verify seemed like it may be the future of hiring as a contractor, but after seeing the implications of trying to find Americans who will fill the jobs that immigrants do it quickly stopped becoming a requirement. You have our government who does a terrible job of keeping illegals out and the illegals who are knowingly breaking the law, but lets pass the buck onto small businesses. Makes perfect sense...

It's interesting that you don't think as a business owner, you have a responsibility to ensure that a person you are hiring is qualified to work in this country.  If business owners spent the less than $50 to properly verify a person, then the undocumented workers would cease coming into the country eventually. They come here to work.  If there's no work, they don't come.  My company does its due diligence, so can yours.  I don't complain that it's the gov't fault that they are here.  It's not.  It's the business owners who try to pay cheap wages along with the taxes. 

I do, that is why we require an I9 and the appropriate accompanying documents. Comparing the commercial construction industry to whatever industry you are in is probably the main disconnect. I imagine you are hiring a completely different demographic than me and if we only had to employ people who were not going to quit in a month your vetting process might make more sense. I don't think you understand the difficulties in managing a workforce that is constantly changing not only personnel but locations. We start laborers out at a minimum of $14/hour and will hire anyone at that rate as long as they provide what is required by law, I would say 1 out of 5 last more than a month. I am just baffled at your unwillingness to place any fault on our government, maybe it has to do with the business you are in?

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

What about the ones that work for cash that don't pay taxes?  

They pay sales taxes... and the fault for them getting paid under the table is on their employers, who enable the law breaking and break the law themselves.  They are also not paying taxes required. Seems to me the undocumented immigrants are no worse, or even 'less worse'.  At least we can understand why they want to work and are working. 

Yes and the property they rent has taxes but it's not the same.  Local city and state taxes miss out on this.

This happens in pretty much every restaurant and landscaping business here in NY.  I remember reading an article where the workers mailed most of their money back home and none of it was ever spent here.

That doesn't pass the sniff test.  An undocumented worker will likely be working for less than minimum wage, or dirt cheap.  For them to be able to live here but still send "most" of their money back to Mexico/Central America doesn't seem possible.  

But again, it's about who is paying them.  They would not be drawn here if they could not work under the table. 

They make $150 a day standing outside of Homedepot when they do work.  The others that have the kitchen jobs and landscaping jobs get paid well too.  They aren't making under minimum wage.

Interesting that you know the going rate.  But it's irrelevant if they send the money back or not.  I'm just not buying "most".  Either way, the only reason it's happening is because criminal business owners are willing to pay under the table to undocumented workers, and then not paying their fair share of taxes.

Why is it interesting?  Information is key.

You mention business'.  Wasn't a law signed by Bush Dubya that penalized a company if they got caught hiring undocumented workers?  Did that go away?  

I doubt it went away, but I"m curious why ICE is raiding homes rather than the businesses that are drawing them here.  

Is $150 the nationwide rate, or just the rate where you live?

We got raided by ICE in 2017. Had to pay penalties on a couple of employees who our payroll department failed to obtain copies of identification on or lost them in the shuffle. For the employees listed by ICE who were not legal we were not penalized as long as we had copies of the identification they provided us and let them go. The ease of entering the country and obtaining false documents in an effort to make 10x the money is the biggest draw, not the businesses who you think are enabling the issue. We sent the government money for unknowingly hiring people who entered illegally and obtained illegal documents, who’s responsibility is it to keep this from happening? Obviously we could have avoided any penalty had those copies been obtained, but that is bound to happen when you have over 300 new hires a year.

If you are hiring people with fake IDs, your HR is either clueless or intentionally looking the other way.  We do I9, background check,  social verification and fingerprinting. 

Yeah that is it. Not sure if you have ever seen a legit fake ID or SS card, there is no noticeable difference whatsoever. Add to that Permanent Resident cards which are a List A on the I9 and constitute as the only form of identification required. I am willing to bet you have never seen one with the sleuth operation you are running. Certain contracts require background checks and fingerprinting, when they come in we are required to submit them.

Are you saying you are reviewing cards,  not using a third party to do your national checks?

I think you would be very surprised on how easy it is to obtain fake documents.  Did you read my story about the 42 people w false documents working on a federal penitentiary?
In Cali early 90's I knew people with fake documents and was surprised they could enter back in the country with them but they did.

Lastly most construction jobs that aren't public works don't do much vetting.  I have a SWAC card that did some serious deep vetting but not everyone is doing that.

Someone mentioned the Irish.  Besides them and the Vietnamese I have never seen tighter groups that look out for each other.

I don't doubt that it's easy to get fake documents, but those fake documents are worthless if a business spends the less than $50 to do a national background and social security check.  The illegal would have had to done full out identify theft in order to pass a check, and that's just not very likely.  
If a business were really concerned about hiring illegals, they could avoid doing so by conducting proper background checks and not picking up people at the Home Depot. 

If our government were really concerned about illegals they could do more than use small businesses to police for them and fund their failed programs. I am not concerned with unknowingly hiring illegals, I am concerned that if it happens I have done so by the law. There was a time when E-Verify seemed like it may be the future of hiring as a contractor, but after seeing the implications of trying to find Americans who will fill the jobs that immigrants do it quickly stopped becoming a requirement. You have our government who does a terrible job of keeping illegals out and the illegals who are knowingly breaking the law, but lets pass the buck onto small businesses. Makes perfect sense...

It's interesting that you don't think as a business owner, you have a responsibility to ensure that a person you are hiring is qualified to work in this country.  If business owners spent the less than $50 to properly verify a person, then the undocumented workers would cease coming into the country eventually. They come here to work.  If there's no work, they don't come.  My company does its due diligence, so can yours.  I don't complain that it's the gov't fault that they are here.  It's not.  It's the business owners who try to pay cheap wages along with the taxes. 

I do, that is why we require an I9 and the appropriate accompanying documents. Comparing the commercial construction industry to whatever industry you are in is probably the main disconnect. I imagine you are hiring a completely different demographic than me and if we only had to employ people who were not going to quit in a month your vetting process might make more sense. I don't think you understand the difficulties in managing a workforce that is constantly changing not only personnel but locations. We start laborers out at a minimum of $14/hour and will hire anyone at that rate as long as they provide what is required by law, I would say 1 out of 5 last more than a month. I am just baffled at your unwillingness to place any fault on our government, maybe it has to do with the business you are in?

I'm in financial services.  One of the parts of the business we oversee is a network of call centers and collection agencies.  We require full background checks, fingerprinting, drug screening, OFAC check and social verification.  For this business, some of the attrition rates are 40-50% annualized.  Is construction up higher than that?

It's not that I don't blame the gov't, but there's a practicality matter at work here.  The gov't cannot be everywhere.  I see this as a supply and demand issue.  The businesses that are willing to hire or look the other way because they receive a clear financial benefit (employer taxes) are generating the demand that draws the supply over the border.  It's an economics problem to me. 

I can only speak for my company which has hired over 4,000 employees since 2002. I can also say that we are not looking the other way for financial benefit, our starting laborer wage has grown from $10/hour to $14 and masons $20/hour to $25. Undocumented workers will always have a presence until the government and businesses who are actually looking to cheat the system crack down, but I stand by the fact that getting into this country is on the government. Once here they both seem to do a good job at enabling.

tempo_n_groove said:

mrussel1 said:

FiveBelow said:

mrussel1 said:

It's interesting that you don't think as a business owner, you have a responsibility to ensure that a person you are hiring is qualified to work in this country.  If business owners spent the less than $50 to properly verify a person, then the undocumented workers would cease coming into the country eventually. They come here to work.  If there's no work, they don't come.  My company does its due diligence, so can yours.  I don't complain that it's the gov't fault that they are here.  It's not.  It's the business owners who try to pay cheap wages along with the taxes. 

I do, that is why we require an I9 and the appropriate accompanying documents. Comparing the commercial construction industry to whatever industry you are in is probably the main disconnect. I imagine you are hiring a completely different demographic than me and if we only had to employ people who were not going to quit in a month your vetting process might make more sense. I don't think you understand the difficulties in managing a workforce that is constantly changing not only personnel but locations. We start laborers out at a minimum of $14/hour and will hire anyone at that rate as long as they provide what is required by law, I would say 1 out of 5 last more than a month. I am just baffled at your unwillingness to place any fault on our government, maybe it has to do with the business you are in?

I'm in financial services.  One of the parts of the business we oversee is a network of call centers and collection agencies.  We require full background checks, fingerprinting, drug screening, OFAC check and social verification.  For this business, some of the attrition rates are 40-50% annualized.  Is construction up higher than that?

It's not that I don't blame the gov't, but there's a practicality matter at work here.  The gov't cannot be everywhere.  I see this as a supply and demand issue.  The businesses that are willing to hire or look the other way because they receive a clear financial benefit (employer taxes) are generating the demand that draws the supply over the border.  It's an economics problem to me. 

What FiveBelow is getting at is it appears that the vetting you do costs a wee bit more than what it is worth to keep a worker around whom might be there for a month.

We would go through a labor company so we didn't have to put up with all that because it is annoying to put forth all that effort and they quit after a day.

Russel what on earth are you fingerprinting for?  I know of 3 jobs that is required for, a police officer, teacher and security guard.  How financials needs to do that is interesting.

One of my clients who is a multi-national financial institution requires it.  Fingerprinting is the way you effectively hit the Interpol database, HMS, and other services around the world that track criminal activity.  I agree this one is overkill, but the client relationship makes it a no brainer.  
When you deal in financial services, you are touching non-public/confidential personal information all of the time.  Names, addresses, socials, bureaus, all sorts of data that would make identify theft a breeze for someone so inclined.  My company, and my supply chain, cannot hire someone with any felony or breach of trust misdemeanor on their record without some serious hoops.  All employees are bonded which cannot happen if you have that type of criminal past.  

tempo_n_groove said:

static111 said:

Can we go ahead and use a term like undocumented people or something, non citizens maybe, idk but last I checked, illegals isn’t a type of person. In fact I don’t think it’s illegal to be a person.  I know some of you sure were happy about changing the name of the Washington franchise to Football Team. Let’s try not to use the language of the right.  Unless of course you think it’s ok to refer to a whole group of people as Illegals. Maybe we can change the name to the Washington Illegals. I mean since it seems to be ok to use everywhere else.

An illegal is an illegal immigrant.  Not a group unless it just so happens to be a group of them.  Undocumented, illegal, extended stay.  Same difference.

As for the govt not really caring about someone's hiring practices?  I would say that is true now unless it's public work or state/federal.

What about the person themselves is illegal?  Right wing framing. Right wing narrative.

mickeyrat said:

tempo_n_groove said:

static111 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

static111 said:

Can we go ahead and use a term like undocumented people or something, non citizens maybe, idk but last I checked, illegals isn’t a type of person. In fact I don’t think it’s illegal to be a person.  I know some of you sure were happy about changing the name of the Washington franchise to Football Team. Let’s try not to use the language of the right.  Unless of course you think it’s ok to refer to a whole group of people as Illegals. Maybe we can change the name to the Washington Illegals. I mean since it seems to be ok to use everywhere else.

An illegal is an illegal immigrant.  Not a group unless it just so happens to be a group of them.  Undocumented, illegal, extended stay.  Same difference.

As for the govt not really caring about someone's hiring practices?  I would say that is true now unless it's public work or state/federal.

What about the person themselves is illegal?  Right wing framing. Right wing narrative.

If you don't understand what part of them is illegal then we will just go around in circles...

their point is its the action thats illegal not their person

Thank you! I’m glad that at least one person gets it.

static111 said:

Merkin Baller said:

Undocumented immigrants are in this country illegally. That's the reality of the situation and it's ok to say that. 

Referring to people as "Illegals" however is dehumanizing, which history shows us, leads to bad things.

Exactly my point.  Maybe people will understand this coming from you and Mickey. Rather than defaulting to right wing framing.

There are certain things I get and others that exhaust me, this is one of that exhausts me.  Is calling someone a criminal whom breaks the law dehumanizing too?

It just gets a little too much.

Can we move on and agree to disagree?

Get back to discussing real problems?