I have friends and relatives living in Chicago and Las Vegas, Building Contractors and have to go to other parts of USA like Montana or Alaska cause they can't compete on bidding of jobs due to other contractors using cheaper labor, and cheaper labor does come at a cost called lack of experience, knowledge of building standards and stealing what is not installed. These jobs are seriously not low paying for carpentry, plumbing, steel, welding, masonry. Down here I been to jobsites where workers are wearing masks cause they belong to gangs of illegals. Stud uprights put in not 18 inches centered but wherever they will fit. Some never put down black felt for roofing or it is spotty where inspectors might crawl up two stories, but lack of building inspectors come for 5 minutes/off to next site. Contractors haul in wiring as they never can leave copper wiring on a site. You would think in Vegas it be easy to get a electrical job, think again and learn Spanish. Twenty years in West Texas use to have 15,000 illegals capture each day, El Paso wall was built for 30 miles and border patrol agent sits every 3 blocks along the wall and catch about 100. It not only Mexicans coming across, our enemies from desert regions, many Chinese now(they usually come through from Canada) bit these others are very small percentage. ICE and Border Patrol still capture a trailers loaded with illegals every year in region, not ever truck gets inspected and illegals are crammed between pallets as high tech xray machines used on every truck and yet they still get through. What was just a border problem has become a National problem. You know what would be great, Mexican family of 26 move into 3 bedroom house next to you, listening to same music 18 hours a day, you wonder why you now have cockroaches everywhere in your home, cars coming over all hours of day and night, yea doesn't this sound very nice. What was once your home and quiet place to be has been invaded by your "foundation of capitalism". YEAH baby.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage Not sure how accurate. Couldn’t imagine working for 2.30 an hour. Of course my wife does have a few friends who waitress at nice restaurants/bar and grills and they can make more a year then my friends who are engineers which seems wild. Guessing Sonic employees aren’t killing it on tips.
Trust me on this...The whole lawbook on tipped employees/minimum wage needs to be burned and thrown out the window, and the employers of tipped employees need to be burned at the stake. It is all the most utterly utter bullshit in the history of employment, ever. https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
Looks like the wall is a good idea but it's not enough. People are risking their lives and everything to come to United States illegally for a reason, survival (except the Chinese; they are coming to United States for benefits). No walls is going to stop people's will to survival; that's the strongest force on earth. What Trump needs to do in addition to building walls is 1) spreading some "economic stimulations" to the other side of the border too, to help Mexico rebuild its economy, create some jobs there so people will stay put. Trust me, between immigration to a foreign strange land and staying put, people will ALWAYS choose to stay put unless they absolutely have no choice but to immigrate. If you can help them create some jobs there, trust me, people won't want to move. 2) there should be more effective and efficient removal of illegals once they have permeated through the wall and the border control. No wall is 100% infallible; there would always be somebody who falls through the cracks. What is important is catch those illegals who have fell through. America is better at blocking the illegals but once the illegals enter the country and settles in, America is not that great in catching them and sending them back really. And to catch and deport the illegals, relying on one agency ICE is really not enough. US should immobilize its citizens to assist in ICE's efforts in enforcing its immigration policy, perhaps by offering rewards to citizens for tips IF the government really wants to do something about ensuring all entrants to USA are legally permitted to enter. 3) With regards to the cheap shoddy construction quality issue, that's a government regulation issue; that happens regardless whether there is illegals or not. Plenty of America-born contractors cut corners and build sub-standard buildings, so Trump would just need to toughen up on the building regulations and inspections.
And some additional comments about illegal immigration: I mean I sympathize with the plight of some of those illegals but really USA is a country who has the right to protect and manage its sovereignty just like any other and allowing illegals into the country unconditionally does undermine that. And it also is not fair to the countless of immigrants who do choose to enter USA legally by following all of the required procedures and processes and now only to find themselves delayed or even denied entry because of those illegals. By the same token that nobody appreciates people who skip lines just to get ahead while everyone else is waiting orderly in line, nobody should appreciate potential immigrants who skip the lines in immigrations just trying to get ahead of everyone else to enter USA first. Finally this may sound harsh to some people but I absolutely don't think it's right to keep children of illegal immigrants behind in the USA while deporting the parents under this "Dream" thing being promoted by the Liberals. I absolutely support family first and if you want to keep the family together, then since the parents entered the family illegally in the first place, then the children of those parents who are illegals should also be ruled illegals; they shouldn't be considered bona fide citizens or permanent residents just because they were born in America because if those parents had been blocked at the border and never made it to America or got captured in America and deported back to America before they were born, then they would've never been born in America in the first place. Those children were only able to be born in America because their parents were able to enter the country illegally, evading border control and ICE before giving birth, being able to evade authorities by their parents or by anybody shouldn't be considered valid criteria in deciding somebody's eligibility to citizenship. And if want to keep the children in USA to give them more opportunities and a chance at the "American Dream", then after deporting the parents, you risk separating the families apart which is not right. Between family and prosperity, you can only choose one and not both, at least not in this situation and family should come first.
The fact of the matter is it is a criminal offense to enter this country illegally. Period. America has bent over backward to accomodate enonomic refugees, even going so far as every or nearly every administration giving once and for all, last time ever, this is it, amnesty to all illegals already here. Missed it? Just wait until the next final ultimate, amnesty. There is a job in this country for every American or legal resident that wants one. There is a worker out there to fill every open job. We do not need foreign imported workers. We do not need to support able bodied people who won't take a job. We need to let vacant positions remain vacant until employers offer a wage that will tempt an AMERICAN to take the job. And as an AMERICAN worker gets hungrier and hungrier, that less than perfect job will start looking a little better. THIS is a free market. Importing people willing to work for peanuts to escape poverty at home is not free market. It is unfair competition and is un American. It is counterproductive. It cripples the biggest potential market for American goods, which is, <drum roll> the American consumer. Legal American workers need and demand decent wages. Yes, this drives prices up. However, the money stays home. It changes hands here in America. It reinvigorates the economy. It boosts productivity. It enables Americans to buy the very goods that they produce. It increases govt revenue, funds infrastucture and essential services. That foreign worker pays income taxes, yeah, and then some, since he probably won't be filing for a refund. But half his or her money is going to his native country, instead of circulating right here. Remember "trickle down economics"? Doesn't work that way. Think "trickle UP economics". Empower the worker, the producer, and the consumer, who are in fact all the same person. Money changes hands over and over for goods and services. Companies take a profit. Shareholders benefit. Sure, the current corporate model is one of exporting jobs overseas, and selling shoddy disposable products that require frequent replacement or upgrade. It is profitable, at least in the short term. But it also increases the gulf between the haves and the have nots, creating all manner of social ills and destroying the REAL economy which is all about the American worker making enough money to buy stuff or get things done or just have a good time once in a while. It is about striving for self improvement and the chance of upward mobility, It is about incentive for efficient production, dependability and trustworthiness, and loyalty to a company. It is about having as many people as possible participating in this great big exchange of goods, services, labor, ideas, and security. It is about everyone playing his part as another small cog in a sometimes confusing and complicated but incredibly developed social and economic machine. Not putting down what we are doing here, or what we want to do here, but let's face it. Trading doesn't really produce all that much. It doesn't do much to increase the collective wealth of the nation. You close out your positions at the end of the day and it is as if you were never even there. There is no car or refrigerator or television or computer rolling off the assembly line with your craftsmanship evident without or within. There is no food on the shelves or clothing in the store that you helped produce. The American Worker built this country, not Morgans or Rockefellers or Rothschilds. Screw the worker too much, too hard, too persistently, and it will bite you in the ass sooner or later. Eliminate the worker altogether, and let me ask you... what do you get? And back to the rebel Sonic crews, hats off to them. Worker solidarity and collective bargaining and job actions are the only way to fight abusive and exploitive employers. If those guys had been treated fairly, they would still be on the job, making your drive thru shakes, burgers and tater tots, paying their rent and buying their beer and groceries, playing their parts as tiny cogs in this big economic machine. I will never buy anything from Sonic ever again. I would short their stock but I think maybe it is a bit late to chase that one.
Your idea of establishing local economy only works when there is a huge population base like China and has positive population growth where the birthrate increases faster than death rate. But in the USA and the majority of the developed countries, the birthrate is declining and is growing slower than death rate so this is a problem. Unless you build robots and advanced technologies eventually the local economy model would become unsustainable because the productivity would eventually not be able to catch up the nominal GDP due to not enough workers to do the job no matter how high the pay; there is only so many hours you can work in a day and there is only so many people available to work. Eventually inflation will set in and will seriously erode the economic well-being of the country. This is the strongest rationale for importing labour force aka immigration and this is what is happening in all developed countries all around the world with USA getting the illegals and Europe getting the migrants. The only two developed countries in the world that are trying to solve the decreasing population growth issue without massive immigration is Japan where people literally work 12 hours a day or more (they go to work at 9 am and don't come home until 9 pm and just literally only have enough time to sleep and then go to work the next day) and men die of exhaustion at the age of 40. In South Korea, people commit suicide because of overworking. So before the advent of robotics, if you don't want to be like the Japanese or the South Koreans then you are going to need immigrants, just not illegal immigrants; people who have not been authorized to enter the country legally. With controlled immigration, you strike a balance between needed labour force to increase productivity but not overpopulation where it becomes a burden for social infrastructure. Honestly, once the robotics and the advanced technology is here, all those cheap labour provided by those illegals who entered now would not be needed then you are going to have massive overpopulation and social unrest to deal with especially during the beginning when the robotics technology has not been productive enough to support the entire population and yet is already starting to displace human jobs. From that point of view, it is essential to defend the border and control immigration now. With all those Liberals can see the importance of this.