There was an article in my local paper today about Mexican workers here doing landscaping working on short-term worker visas. You need to register to read it (
http://www.dispatch.com) but here is what I took away from it.
"They paid about $910 each, were tested for drugs and checked for a criminal past. Then they endured a 42-hour bus ride from Monterrey to Columbus.
All for landscaping jobs that pay $8.60 an hour.
It's an opportunity the Mexican men welcome. They are here legally under a federal program that provides short-term visas to semiskilled and unskilled workers. They will return home by year's end, after completing their jobs with Five Seasons Landscaping."
"If we had local people who would be willing to work," Leidecker said, "the need for this type of program would not be around." His company employs 103 people.
Inexperienced young Americans demand $12 to $13 an hour, he said, and the Mexicans not only work for less but have an excellent work ethic.
All the workers say that they regularly wire money home.
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The landscaping company is wrong. There are US citizens willing to do the work,
just not for $8.60/hour. They are correct that if they paid $12 or $13 they could find locals to do the work. But instead, they hire foreigners, using a federally funded program to do the work (below market wages), AND THEN THE MAJORITY OF THOSE WAGES ARE WIRED OUT OF THE COUNTRY.
If these companies would see the bigger picture and realize that if they paid locals market wages THAT MONEY WOULD STAY IN THE LOCAL ECONOMY.
