Restaurant Startup Information

And The Spin has begun! Does anyone dispute that Immigration is good but that the issue is ILLEGAL immigration should not be reward with amnesty? No one is saying round them up all at once… but you can pick them up a little at a time and what about the Identity theft these criminals are committing. Steel workers are not considered low skilled wages and immediately after 9/11 Steel workers were lined up around the corner looking for work.

NO AMNESTY

Business weighs cost of immigration failure
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070614/us_nm/usa_immigration_employers_dc

Sheridan Bailey is offering workers $20 an hour to raise the steel building frames that are giving the U.S. city of Phoenix a taller skyline. Only thing is, he can’t find any.

"When we advertise, people don’t show up, or if they do, they are not qualified," said Bailey, the chief executive officer of Ironco Enterprises.

"We were paying $15.50 last year," he said. "We are now paying 20 bucks an hour and we’re still not getting enough of what we need."

The builder is one of hundreds of U.S. employers hoping an immigration overhaul will survive in Congress to legalize up to 12 million undocumented workers to fill jobs they say are going begging.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said this week the worker shortage was especially acute for low-skilled jobs, and warned of a "very detrimental impact" to the economy if it were left uncorrected.

Undocumented workers account for 1-in-20 employees in a country of immigrants, a figure rising to 1-in-8 for construction firms and 1-in-10 for the leisure and hospitality industry, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Many employers agree. They complain they are unable to fill vacancies, despite offering pay above current U.S. minimum wage levels of between $5.15 and $7.93 an hour depending on the state.

One of them, Texan vegetable grower J. Carnes, found just half the 450 workers he needed to lift onions from the fertile fields around the town of Uvalde in recent weeks, even though he offered pay of $7 to $13 an hour for piece work.

"We are doing just about what we can to get the word out … but U.S.-born workers really don’t exist at prices the American farmer can pay," he told Reuters by telephone.

David Cortez, a restaurateur from nearby San Antonio, said he also came up short, unable to find 25 to 30 servers, busboys and dishwashers for his family’s landmark Mi Tierra eatery.

Too bad,poor companys may have to hire Americans,waaaaaa.If they paid a living wage they might not have so many problems but their greed wont let them.