Immigration reform: Building costs could soar

[DaveColorado]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/06/12/8379210/

Immigration reform: Building costs could soar

Up to 40% of home building is done by undocumented aliens. But no one's talking about what a crackdown could do to new home costs.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Jon Birger and Jenny Mero, FORTUNE
May 31, 2006: 3:36 PM EDT

(FORTUNE Magazine) - For the home building industry, the immigration debate raging in Washington is anything but abstract. It's the biggest issue nobody wants to talk about.

Frank Fuentes, president of the Hispanic Contractors Association, queried his 20 largest member firms about speaking with FORTUNE, and not one was willing.

"They're scared to death of being raided," says Fuentes.

By FORTUNE's estimate, up to 40 percent of new-home construction in the U.S. is being done wholly or partly by undocumented immigrants. Fuentes suspects the percentage in his home state of Texas is closer to 80 percent.

[Elwood P Dowd]

1. The poor contractors would be forced to pay US citizens a living wage

The prices of new homes wouldn't go up that much, but the obscene profits sure would go down.

[unlawflcombatnt]

3. Poor Contractors

That would just break my heart to see the poor contractors have to reduce their profit margins to hire Americans at a higher wage.

I don't really see how the prices of homes would go up any. The price of homes is determined by what the market dictates. Building costs are far less than prices on homes these days. The difference between the 2 is the contractor's profits. I think they can afford to pay workers just a little more without going bankrupt.

[Elwood P Dowd]

6. But, but those poor contractors could no longer afford their Bermuda trips

or their new Rolex watches or Cuban cigars. Just think how it would hurt the US economy if that happened. It will all trickle back down to us. Didn't you know that? ;-)

[Bridget Burke]

13. So--only US citizens would be allowed to work here?

What about immigrants who also want better working conditions & are not being threatened with deportation?

[quickesst]

2. One of the reasons...

I'm sitting at home laid off. Contractors save money and I get to collect unemployment until something breaks and my company can get a decent job going. If I say anything at all about how this affects my family though, I'll be tagged a racist. It's funny to me in a sad way that it seems A-OK to bemoan the loss of white-collar jobs to outsourcing and outshoring, those rotten corporations. Although those jobs are going to poor people of a different race just trying to make a better life for their families. But, because they are poor, and for the most part uneducated, the illegal Mexican immigrants are trying to accomplish the same goal as the Indians, but with my blue-collar job in sight. If I'm racist because of the desire for a decent quality of life for my family, what does that make anyone who has ever bitched because their job was lost to outshoring or outsourcing. Of course it will be said this is not the same thing, but it's only different in that you have to more or less look the illegal Mexican immigrant in the eye. It's like comparing an apple to an orange, but you only have two apples. Just my o2. Thanks.
quickesst

[MrTriumph]

4. Total BS article. Americans will fill jobs illegals leave behind

only wages will be better than the wages pd. illegals. And with living wages, these American workers can participate in the economic system.

Ridding our economy of illegals will contribute to an economic boom.

[cap]

5. yup total bs...

it will just cut into the company's profit margins ....

[MrTriumph]

14. Without remittances, US dollars stay here to help grow our economy

x

[High Plains]

7. And we assume the contractors are NOT going to pass on the

increased labor costs to the final consumer? Fat chance.

Look, if you don't like cheap labor, be prepared to pay higher prices. People keep talking about the simple economics of the labor market; increased supply drives down wages. Well, there is more to that simple economics: Higher producer costs = higher consumer costs. Perhaps it is a cost we are willing to endure. Doesn't look like it so far, though.

And it wouldn't be just the price of new homes going up.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. Bullshit. Everybody I know is tapped out

The building contractors are getting fucking rich building piece of shit houses and charging a fortune. They will have to go back to making an honest profit like in the old days. The American people don't have the incomes to pay higher prices, so the suppliers will be forced to accept lower profits. Your same argument was used to pass NAFTA, GATT, WTO, CAFTA, and other such crap. "We couldn't afford those products if they were made in the USA".

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. I am willing to pay 9cents more for a head of lettuce

if the person picking it was a citizen making $8 per hour.

Farmers pay far more for fertilizer and transportation than they do for the labor at harvest.

[harlinchi]

10. Have they passed along any savings?

It appears to me that the prices have not been significantly lowered by the use of immigrants with no legal status; the benefit seems to have remained with the contractor.

[PublicWrath]

11. But hasn't new home construction been at record highs for the past

several years? What will happen when the boom is over?

[treestar]

12. And undocumented AMERICANS paid under the table.

Construction companies must need a tax break so they can survive. Other types of industries get these favors. Construction guys must not have enough cronies in DC.

Nobody ever talks about how many jobs Americans might lose if certain immigrants don't come. Everybody takes the shallow, easy view. One job, one person, as if the economy never moves or changes. As if we live in this big USSR-type economy that is so static it would have broken down long ago.