Bob Price - Editor, Breitbart News Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven, twenty two's time, you're on Houston's Morning News. So
the construction in the industry is worried, I think, maybe unnecessarily,
but they are worried that mass deportations would lead to
them not having enough workers. Bob Price joins us editor
Breitbart News. You know, I've talked to two or three
different economists, Bob, in the last forty eight hours about this,

(00:21):
and none of them agree with the construction industry. They
don't think that these fears are well placed. That they
believe there are thousands upon thousands of Americans and the
building trades who just aren't working right now because they
can't make it a good enough living doing it, and
that if we get rid of the illegals who are
working on these projects, they'll have jobs that pay better

(00:42):
than they did before.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well, that's very true, and I think that we're going
to see that happen. Workplace enforcement has been excuse me,
sorely lacking for many years now, going back to the
Obama administration, and so I think you're going to see
a crack down at some point from the Trump's administration
on employers that are illegally working migrants that aren't authorized

(01:06):
to work in the United States. We've been fighting against
this for years in Texas, where you have a lot
of companies, particularly construction companies, that will hire people as
day laborers or as contract labor when in actuality they
meet the rules, they should be considered employees, and as such,
they don't get paid overtime, they don't get work with compensation.

(01:28):
If they get injured on the job, they just get
dumped at hospitals and put on the taxpayer's expense. That
kind of thing. So this unethical employment behavior has got
to stop.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
You know, one thing that you find in defense of
some of these companies, I guess to a certain extent,
you do any project here in the Greater Houston area,
if you hire a company to put a roof on
your home, chances are good that everybody working on that
home is going to be I don't know what their
status is, but they're probably going to be Mexican. Most
brick layers in the Greater Houston area are Mexican. Do

(02:02):
we have enough people still interested in American building trades
in order to be able to get these positions filled.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
We have a capitalistic society here, and if companies are
paying a fair wage, for the work that they are
needing to have done. People will come out and do
the work. Right now, the wages are depressed to the
point because of all the illegal immigrants that are working
to where Americans aren't going to do those kind of
jobs for the wages that are being paid.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
So bottom line is they have to pay more. But
which of course they would say to us, well, that's
just going to make an already expensive home that much
more expensive.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
But you have to look at the other side of
the coin, is the cost that is offset by not
employing those illegal workers and sending them back to their
home countries. Right now, you have increased housing prices because
of illegal immigration, you have increased healthcare cost you have
increase education costs. Those factors go away when you get

(03:01):
back to a more normal society, and that offsets the
increases in labor that you would be paying. Now. That
particular employer, yeah, he's going to have to pay more labor.
But the other side of the coin, as a society,
we are offsetting those costs and making it a neutral
or even a positive experience.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Great point, Bob, as always, thank you, sir, appreciate it.
Editor breit Bart. That is Bob Price. It is seven
twenty six