By Daniel A. Roberts
There's been an ongoing phrase in the media that "Illegals do the jobs that Americans won't" and besides this being total hogwash as Americans will work any available job for a proper wage, there is an excellent reason why Illegals will do mundane, supremely low wage jobs under the table for those willing to risk employing them. I'm not talking minimum wage, which is over seven US dollars an hour. I'm talking for as little as three dollars and hour.
The first question is why. Why would an undocumented worker from another country like Mexico be burning with desire to work hard and get so little in return? It's simple. The money they earn while living in group homes is sent back to Mexico to their families and friends.
Let us look at this from another angle. Say you go into a restaurant with a help wanted sign in the window. You ask about the job and what it pays. They tell you you're going to wash dishes and the pay is $37.98. Would you want the job? Of course you would. And if you do well enough and work the job for one year, you could get a raise to $50.63! With those wages in mind, it would be almost impossible to get you to leave that high paying job, right? Washing and scrubbing dishes is hard manual work, but with that amount in mind, bring on the scrubbers and hot water!
Using today's currency rates, an Illegal employed at only 3 US dollars and hour is 37.98 Mexican Pesos. At 4 US Dollars, that raise we wondered about, goes up to 50.63 Mexican Pesos. What would normally be minimum wage for Legal Americans is cheaper for the business owner by far to hire an Illegal Worker, but for the Illegal Immigrant from Mexico, it's very high pay.
In order to compare what they make in Mexico at their jobs, we can go to http://www.ueinternational.org/shop/index.php and use the pull down menu to compare the pay and jobs in Mexico and the United States. It's here this starts to make sense.