(NT) has anyone seen or heard from toni?

I kinda like the saying this way, the squeaky wheel gets "greased!" Sorry, I get a little irate, too.

Tom

and screw the pc crowd

In addition to that 14 mil illegal aliens currently in the US, there were up to 5 mil given amnesties from 1986 - 2000. I believe year 2000 is the latest figures from this web site, so it may be more since then:

http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/amnesty.html#eighthamnesty

for minimum wage (or lower) and no benefits, Toni? Or make hotel beds? Or wash dishes? Or dig ditches? That's not "fourteen million legal Americans who aren't working" -- that's at least 13 million necessary jobs that wouldn't be done if illegal aliens weren't doing them. And, FYI, the government stats say there are only 7 million unemployed Americans altogether, and from economic theory "full employment" (a 4% rate) is now only one million jobs away.

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

there are alot more Americans who have been losing their homes due to 'cutbacks' and lost their educated and/or 'qualified' for jobs would take just about anything they can get, DK. That may not have been true ten years ago when jobs were plentiful, the dot com industry was going gangbusters and college grads were able to find work in their fields easily. This was also true back when welfare recipients didn't have the stringent rules set down that are in place now. We have more homeless people than ever before in our history, and if they are willing to stand on street corners and wash windshields for tips in order to feed their kids who are living in cars or worse now, they would be willing to do just about anything else, including pick fruits and vegetables....if they could find the money to travel to get there.

If nothing else, send home the illegals and see what happens to our own country without them....we survived without them before, and we can do it again. Just as New York survived the transit strike, and the USA survived the air traffic controller strike back in Reagan's day. We don't just knuckle under, DK......but the first step is to take our country back and stop taking this crap that keeps getting rammed down our throats by politicians who are afraid of standing up for what's right.

TONI

with Bush's taking office! But seriously, the stats I cited show that there aren't large numbers of Americans without any job at all, and the jobs the illegal immigrants take are mostly at the very bottom end in terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions. What may be true is that their willingness to accept such jobs keeps the pay scale lower than it otherwise would be -- but the Republicans' refusal to raise the minimum wage even once in the last six years is much more to blame. To keep up with what it was before Reagan took office in terms of purchasing power, the minimum wage would today have to be about $7, rather than about 35% lower at $5.15.

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

Try telling people in rural areas who no longer have factories or restaurants or construction jobs available anymore. The people here would gladly take those jobs, including seasonal work such as farming, picking, planting, and cutting/trimming Christmas trees for your holiday wreaths, but we are so overwhelmed in our area by illegals doing the work so much cheaper and living twenty in a house sharing the rent that the locals are now selling their personal possessions to keep going. Even willing to take a minimum wage job in this area can't compete with illegals taking the same job for a dollar or more less per hour.

This isn't pride keeping these people from doing what they are willing to do....it's the competition that gets to the point where the gas to get back and forth from a job at even minimum wage barely gives you anything extra after taxes when the illegals all go to the same job all crammed into one car, sharing the gas expense, and working for less than minimum wage.

They may refuse to speak our language, but they know how to beat any system put in place....and they do it on a regular basis and most work for cash under the table with no taxes taken out, which the locals can't do.

I can't tell you how many times I have hired locals to work for me on my land recently cutting brush and clearing my fields....paying much less than I would have to pay up north. I could pay a bunch of illegals alot less to do the same work but refuse to deal with them because I've seen on a personal level what's happened to this county financially because of them. People are willing to work at any job because they have pride in their ability to provide for their families. You don't give them enough credit, and instead find excuses for the illegals when they take that pride away from them and make our own feel hopeless, helpless, and useless.

TONI

Dave K wrote: " but the Republicans' refusal to raise the minimum wage even once in the last six years is much more to blame. To keep up with what it was before Reagan took office in terms of purchasing power, the minimum wage would today have to be about $7, rather than about 35% lower at $5.15."

For some situations what you say may be correct, I will agree with it. The problem though is the same people that hire the illegals have already shown they are willing to "cheat" when it comes to wages and I believe it means they are also willing to cheat when it comes to every other aspect of doing business including paying their taxes. Too often they pay the minimum wage, give the worker a cash bonus that isn't counted into the wage/pay/SS/tax structure and this lowers the cost to them by twice as much. The employer cheats the SS fund, he lowers the taxes gathered through the IRS income tax structure, and basically is paying off the worker to keep quiet about it. The illegal in essence gets some untaxed wages in addition to what's on the books to satisfy the goverment and make it all look legit. The loser is the American worker and our government. These companies who hire the illegals are THIEVES and deserve to be treated as such. Maybe if some of their highest officers, members of their Board of Directors get to make their own cots and look out for Bubba on the prison floor for awhile, they and others will decide the cost of doing business that way suddenly became too great.

There used to be a lot of Americans doing that. It was called a family farm, or in tight money times a truck farm. Now it's all big corporate agri-business who get federal subsidies and need cheap labor so they can increase their profit line. You know the Colorado River that's supposed to provide Calif with drinking water? Three guesses as to who's getting the lion's share and on Uncle Sam's nickel!


Tom

It's the plantations all over again, driving the family farm or truck farm out of business. If the government doesn't mind these big agribusiness using cheap labor, bring back the prison work gangs, let them get some use out of Americans incarcerated. Maybe it will teach them a work ethic and let them start paying that debt back to society better than sucking down $50K per person incarcerated per year.

being needed for jobs that Americans won't take say that a minority of the jobs are held by illegals. Most are still held by Americans.

Diana

We purchased a new stove, one of those ceramic tops. Paid for the 5 yr warranty and $50 rebate type of delivery. Guess who shows up to deliver the stove? Two people, father-son team, who have about 20 words of English between them. Now understand, they are supposed to take away the old stove, and INSTALL the new one in it's place. Turns out the old stove was direct wired instead of having a pigtail plug going into a receptacle. I get the hands and motion explanation of the situation, where I do the same sort of hands and motion of telling them to remove the pigtail plug on the new stove and direct wire it too. I have my teen turn off the power to the stove line and show them it's not hot. FINALLY the decide they will do that. Turns out the old wire is too thick to fit the new stove's fittings. The whole hand motions thing again as I try to explain the meaning of the word "receptacle" and "socket" etc. Their final thing is "you call Best Buy, good bye" and they leave. So, I have a stove that isn't hooked in and my old one is gone and no one but me and them know this. Pissed I am over the whole matter, but went to ACE hardware and found the 3 prong receptacle I needed and walked my teen through the process of wire stripping, evening, and getting the two 110 lines to the correct terminals and the neutral or ground where it belonged and we then install to the floor where clearance for stove and plug is best.

Stove doesn't work properly. Burners and warmer area ll work fine, clock's fine, timer is fine, looks great, but bake and broil cut off after a second and get error F30.

Today, on line with Best Buy for the warrantee service. I tell them of the experience and told them to ONLY send out a tech who can speak ENGLISH tomorrow and if the person can't speak ENGLISH I won't even allow them to work on it and instead insist on my 30 day total refund or complete new replacement. I adamantly let them know I want someone who can communicate with their customer. She swore that request would go in on the service order and tomorrow I will find out if it did.

The upshot of this all is I although I don't know if these were illegals or just new immigrants with no English ability, but part of service to me is the ability to effectively communicate with the customer. I you can't do that, or until you can do that, get a job where language skills aren't necessary. I also can't believe there aren't ENGLISH speaking American citizens out there who aren't willing to deliver new items and remove the old ones at $50 per. Even if you only do 4 per day for the week, that's $1000 a week or $50,000 per year before taxes and 2 weeks off. Now, if instead that's split 60-40 with a company that does assignments, that's still $30,000 per year and I KNOW there are American citizens out there who will work for that kind of pay, even common labor jobs.

You are right, there must be Americans willing to do the jobs, but aren't being hired. Why? I think it's so in cases like this whoever is sending out the illegals or recent non English speaking immigrants are keeping more than their fair share of the split on the delivery fee.

in Orlando because the customer service people don't speak English.

I don't know how many times on the TurboTax help desk I would answer and the person on the other end would say Thank God someone that speaks English. The Sales and Service went to India.

Diana

That's what you get with Mexican or India-n based service centers. I tossed a fit on the phone the other day with the Best Buy person about sending "no speakee inglish" out to install and not able to interact liquistically in AMERICA in English. I got a REAL American for the tech today.

might only get 1/2 that

That's what I figure. They are supplied the truck and gas, the owner takes 40-50% and does the paperwork.

Continuing saga. The tech guy comes, American speaking English, checks the NEW stove all out and determines the heat sensor in oven is OK but the Electronic Control unit for the oven is not working correctly. Tells me he can have one by Wednesday. Remember it's already been several days with the microwave food for suppers. I insist on exchange, he gives me ticket which I take back to Best Buy service center. You'd think I'd get next day service after such an experience, maybe even same day to bring the new unit out. No. I will get a call on Saturday morning BEFORE 8am to set up appt so they can bring by on Sunday. After church or during? I'll find out tomorrow. Any bets on whether it will be the same two non English speaking guys?

James, I have a suggestion, if I may. Reading your original description of the installation attempt I get the impression that they were doing "electrical work" when they fooled with the house wiring. In most locations, messing with the house wiring requires that the worker be an electrician who has a license. If they didn't speak english, I must wonder if they had the training and permits that allowed them to work on house wiring professionally.
See where I'm going? I wonder if you called Best Buy and asked if they were licensed to do electrical work, and asked for their license number what would happen. I dare say that the person who dealt with your call would "choke" and freeze up. Then I would ask for their supervisor, and when they "choked" I would be quite reasonable about it. I would mention that I have wasted too much time already and I wouldn't care to waste more time dealing with the government agency dealing with contracting and permits, I just want a new, working stove Right Now.
I'm not saying to threaten them with if you don't do this, I will do that, I'm just suggesting pointing out the "problem" I mentioned and pointing out that solving your problem immediately and to your satisfaction might save time and trouble for both you and them.

I'll keep that in reserve for this weekend if I don't get satisfaction. I hate to be the harda--,but sometimes that's the only way to get what you were supposed to in the first place. My wife was planning on having a nice meal Saturday, steaks on the barby and trying out the veggies on the new stove. Maybe we can postpone that till Sunday if it seems promising. As it is now, I don't want to use this one, even for the burners in order to not give them the excuse to try and swap a repaired/used one for it. The only thing we've done so far is turn the upper burners on as we checked each item and of course the oven elements NEVER made it to on, since that's the problem. The tech guy warned me the ceramic tops aren't as tough as they'd like everyone to believe and it seems about half our cookware won't work properly on it. Hmmm, that's things they leave out in the brochures as I recall, I'll have to check on that one. I and my oldest wanted the standard coil type burners but my dear wife insisted she'd not clean/soak/replace one more burner pan and wanted the ceramic top. I'm not sure she's going to be as happy with it as she thinks since at least boilover could hit the pan on the other, instead of the top and running wherever.

about a year ago, two English speaking men delivered it and said they couldn't install because the dryer had a different male plug than the house installed receptical. They said I needed a new receptical installed and left.
I went to the hardware store, bought the needed materials and installed myself.

Surely the non English guys of yours were not electricians like mine. From your writeup, it seems to me you were encouraging them to be electricians that they were not qualified to be.

The receptacle. I cut new wire back from the old part, wrapped more insulation and installed the receptacle myself, like you did. When I order something and pay for it to be delivered and INSTALLED, I expect them to send someone out qualified to do the job. Failure in that regard is no mine, but theirs.

Tech came by today, checked it out, determined the EC for the oven is not working. He checked the temp sensor and tried another so the problem is in the Electronic Control. He gave me paper for exchange since he'd have to order the part. I'm still eating by microwave.

Took his paper to Best Buy service to have my exchange setup for delivery. They wanted another $20 if they give me next day service. You can imagine my reaction. Supposed to call me Saturday before 8am to setup a Sunday delivery, hopefully of a NEW stove since that's what I paid for. I will not accept the same model that's been repaired from some other return. I paid for a new working stove and that's what I expect to get, eventually.

that Americans wouldn't do that work

breast reference