Nope...but I've worked with a lot of Mexicans, am married to one, grew up in Southern California, and have spent a considerable amount of time in Mexico traveling and enjoying their culture. Mexicans, in my experience, are the hardest working people you'll meet. Why would it matter if I were a Mexican?
My experience with Mexican trades in the building business: They show up on time, and sober, work their asses off, take pride in their work, redo or refine what they are asked to without argument or debate or bitching, follow through on everything they say, and are completely easy to work with. In short, they are a GCs dream come true. P.S. - They get paid well, too. It's not slave labor like the media portrays. It's not like we have indentured servants on the job.
I remember sitting in my first economics class in college over 20 years ago. The professor told us that the federal reserve is able to print money. I thought this surely was untrue, I had never realy heard of inflation or understood what it meant. My point is that having no understanding of economics I thought it was blasphemous to create more dollars as obviously that would make things less valuable. Credit is a strange thing, I have seen a lot of people over the years paying mortgage rates that would shock you. The problem here is deflation which has occurred in Japan in real estate. This is where you really get stuck as there is no "monopoly" money to play with. The federal reserve is in a pickle, a rate cut won't make people any more fiscally responsible; its not like Uncle Sam is leading the charge. Inflation will always be there for the average joe, making his ass hurt as he struggles to pay the mortgage, put the kids through school, etc. Deflation of any US asset class on the other hand scares the s**t out of me, my conclusion is that the fed will cut at some point to save housing; the greenback will probably go down but it will then be cheaper for the govt to borrow its own created money. Politicians aren't going to lose their jobs on a cheap greenback, but homeless suburbans probably won't fly too well with the electorate.
That's exactly what my husband says too. The stupidest Americans are the ones that do not realize that keeping these people out hurts us more than helps us. And the Immigration Act of 1996 made sure that these Mexicans are deprived of all welfare and federal assistance of any kind. So it's even more ignorant to keep them out on the grounds of them costing us money. They cost us nothing but keep our economy humming doing the jobs Americans don't want and will not fill. I really want to smack people who complain about illegal immigration and Mexicans in particular. If you don't like it, send your kids to go pick the fruit rotting on US farmer's fields or butcher the meats you buy at the grocery store. Few Americans want to do this work, but don't want to see their grocery bills quadrupling either. You cannot have it both ways. So ignorant.
New homes are only 15% or so of home sales but these charts suggest the outlook is grim: http://jessel.100megsfree3.com/newhousing.jpg -courtesy of Jesse
The funny thing is that you think you'd be able to afford the fruit if it weren't for illegal workers in this country!