I worked for Asplundh and Davey Tree and illegal immigrants literally destroyed the industry:
Just a video I have uploaded already (before people act like I'm making this up), I have thousands of my funny interactions with illegal immigrants coming up to me while I was on my phone and just recording them asking ridiculous questions and stuff.
Asplund and Davey both got fined heavily because of this, and it was only because Trump got elected. Our working conditions became dramatically higher paying and safer once they started to purge the illegals.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tree-co...llegal-hiring/
https://www.wsav.com/crime-safety/co...r-murder-case/
Always cracks me up when people say it doesn't affect Americans, or that Americans are just lazy and don't want to work. Most of the time what they mean is that Americans can't afford to work for the wages that illegals are. They will literally cram 10 of them into a hotel and pay them minimum wage, and they'll be happy AF.
Working with Mexicans was super dangerous because they can't speak your language (2-way communication is critical for tree work, lack of communication is what kills most loggers and trimmers). Imagine being 200 feet in the air of some tree you climbed, when all of the sudden you hear a chainsaw below you, and realize a Mexican who doesn't speak english is cutting down a tree next to you. You scream at him, he doesn't speak English, so he thinks he's in trouble and starts cutting down more trees.
I've literally had trees cut down on top of the tree I'm already in, pulling the power line with them, into my tree. Terrifying moments. Can't train these guys because they don't speak english, and they really have no reason to want to learn anything since they're just there for the free money.
The company you're working for doesn't care because they can hire 10 of them for the cost of one skilled American arborist, and then charge the company that contracted them more because they have "10 men on the job." In reality it's one American working with a bunch of illegals standing around doing nothing. Can remember when my boss was giving me a hard time b ecause I was on a jobsite that had 120 trees that needed to be climbed.
Boss said it needed to be done in one day. I complained I didn't have enough people. So he sends me a bunch of non english speaking Mexicans and makes the situation 10 x worse. None of them had ever touched a Chainsaw or climbed a tree before. It is what it is.
The factories in my area also started hiring felons and black people who had been unemployable for 10+ years because illegals were cheaper. Once the illegals got kicked out, people I knew who had been unemployed for 10+ years suddenly had their pick of many jobs, and suddenly had money, but they still hated Donald Trump because that's what they were told to do. Had no clue that there sudden employment was only because of him. Sad really.
Edit want to point something else out. We would hire an American worker. Turned out to be a star employee. 2 weeks later they would come back and fire them because they found out they were felons over stu pid shit from 10+ years earlier, which they mentioned during their application and interview process. Meanwhile we had actual self-admitted pedophiles who were fugitives from 3rd world countries getting hired on the spot because there's no background checks for illegals. Really messed up system.