Immigrant raids leave Long Beach leaders upset

": they saw it as a secretive and ham-handed approach."

Secretive....as in sneaking into a country and hiding and dodging immigration officers?

Ham-handed...you mean like sneaking into a country illegally, and then demanding all kinds of rights?

Yes and don't think most around here in California haven't noticed. Everyone is doing these jobs now. It's really not that bad a jobs. Think about it, I have the same legal maintenance guy for years now, he spends maybe 15 minutes on my yard each week for 90 a month. He has 10 yards for parking once. So, generally he makes about 900 to 1400 a month for about 40 to 45 hours of work, different prices for different yards but they seem to all take the same time. He has about 80 locations he tends to for which he tells me before expenses he gets about 10,500 each month with about 750 a month in regular expenses. I don't know about the other jobs but, I thought that was pretty good for him. Another friend of mine makes over 140,000 a year before expenses for his pool cleaning all by himself. Not too bad I thought but maybe I'm wrong and everyone thinks that's not worth it.

I noticed it just yesterday - another obvious white guy doing gardening/maintenance work...AMEN to that!!! He is going to be able to feed either himself or his family another day. Those jobs are great and yes you do make a good living when you hustle at it.

Key word is "hustle". It doesn't just come to you.

...manufacturing...

Manufacturing? Tons! Manufacturing employs machinists, fitters, and welders among many different jobs, and these guys and gals can make damn good money. These are skilled jobs that Americans can and WILL do. Now, the orange-picking thing? I don't know about anybody else, but I'd pick oranges if I could. I'm looking for a job right now, and I'd do anything at this point as long as it'll pay my bills. That's the key though...

I used to pick raspberry's on fields with all my friends during the summer with I was younger. Was the job to have for many of us... then... one year the family who owneded several fields.. decided to stop there decade tradition of hiring us high school / college kids and decided to employ Mexicans. Apparently paying us 8 dollars and hour was to much to ask and probably paid the other help cheaper. Point I'm making is.. American's will do those jobs. Just watch "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe". Americans always have.. and always will do the jobs. Millions of us are out of work right now... and why the @!$%# should any illegal immigrant have a job when legal citizens are out of work. That's wrong... totally wrong.

Don't forget that the legal workers are paying taxes and overhead for the illegals. If you stop taxing the legal worker, they will do the job for much less. When they stop any medical treatment at all (emergency also) to illegals, stop educating, stop feeding, stop housing stop having the criminal activity of illegals and stop the drug carrying illegals from coming here, we can cut way back on our overhead. Problem is that the government will find a new way to spend it. Just saying.

"American's will do those jobs. Just watch "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe". Americans always have.. and always will do the jobs. Millions of us are out of work right now... and why the @!$%# should any illegal immigrant have a job when legal citizens are out of work. That's wrong... totally wrong."

Well said, S.R.! Like I always say, before the huge influx of illegal immigrants, Americans ate fruit, didn't they??? Someone was picking it...yes, Americans! Someone was mowing lawns and doing landscaping and construction work!! Americans always have and always will do what is needed to get work done and put food on the table.

Par, I will agree with you that in many industries the unions are no longer needed (auto, airline, electric, plumbing, etc). But in many, they still are. However, that does not mitigate the fact that you can't completely blame unions for this mess. Corporate greed has to take a big part of the responsibility also. The stockholders and corporate officers want to make more money. The fastest way to do this is to cut labor costs. That's not rocket science.

It's got nothing to do with average Americans outpricing themselves. All we want to do is make a decent living for our families. I don't think that's out of line or in any way wrong. Now, however, of course we're going to be "outpriced" when we're competing against Jose Blow. The employer doesn't have to pay out any taxes toward him like they would the "overpriced" American.

and of course they protect the bad employees as well as the good, because an employer has to jump through hoops to get rid of a bad one..

I have seen this multiple times in my life.

I was living in Cincinnati when GM closed the plant there. They had spent millions the year before upgrading that plant.

The UAW local president came on the local news the day before the announced closing and said that he had an offer that GM had to accept on the major sticking point.

He promised that if GM left the plant open that they would cut absenteeism down from 25% to 12%. That was their FINAL offer and if GM did NOT accept it they were not bargaining in good faith.

Think about that..................................

To run that plant they had to hire 5 people, at union wages, to do the job of 4.

Having cousins who retired from GM, I know how the absenteeism works also. We used to go out drinking all night, when I was home on leave, and they would tell me that they needed to go to the doctor that day. I would ask "what's wrong?" and they told me nothing, but after having been drinking all night they didn't want to work, so they were going to the doctor and it would be an "excused" absence. There didn't have to be anything "wrong" with them, they just had to show that they went to the doctor. I asked and was told that they had unlimited "excused" absences like that.

Not just that ....

"We don't want criminals running in the community," Quintana, the executive director of Centro CHA said. "If (ICE has) specific information, if they're going to homes and they know who they're picking up, that's their job. That I fully understand. But when they go to Targets and Superior Markets and Walmarts and places heavily frequented by Latinos, that's a concern."

So when sales to criminals drop at Wal-Mart, that is a problem?

If certain people stay away from places patrolled by ICE agents, those people probably have a good reason to!

Piletre,

you wrote" "Sooo, I suppose the more illegals that are counted, the more money the city gets."

Well aren't you forgetting that they take our jobs and flood our cities with their thugs and hoodlums. They overwhelm our schools, hospitals and social service agencies which equals a net loss to all Americans. So all is not well as your comment would suggest.

That's not why they are upset. They may say it is but everyone around here knows that they are the lead informers to illegal aliens. When ICE gives notification to those officials, they immediately call the illegals they want to keep in this country. There is no link, everyone here knows it because we see them scatter almost a full day sometimes before ICE shows with their crew. How do they always know? Let me guess, they are psychic or the officials are tipping them off.

The same goes for the Ag business. Even as competition is fierce between the largest growers here - the minute one gets raided OR gets wind of a raid. They call the other business owners, supervisiors tell the crew leaders where to take breaks/lunches that are different from the normal area....the car access gates are kept locked....the executives in the office staff are notified. Its all fu@king smoke and mirrors. Hell...even when the white transport busses/vans enter any part of the town the calls come in. What is going on is wrong and it needs to stop!

True that!