Last week I had a causal contact with someone who was working in the construction industry and doesn't have a SSN. In other words, an illegal alien. Imagine that you're in the country illegally and getting paid minimum or below hourly wage. On top of that you don't speak English very well. This is what I found out.
So you get two different forms of pay for your work. One is based on the traditional hourly wage, ie so much per hour. The worst is based on the job. What the employer does is to tell the illegal workers they get X amount of dollars for the job. It doesn't matter how much time or how many workers there are. When the job is finished the employer gives them X dollars that are then divided amongst all the workers. This worked out to be $4.00 for one day of work in one of these cases.
But that is only the beginning. When the paychecks are cut the employer takes out all of the taxes: income, social security, medicare, L&I, etc. Who knows where this goes. I'm guessing that it never reaches the government but stays in the pockets of the employer. But the worst is that the employer also takes out money for a 401K and I will bet that the money goes directly to the employer. It just reduces the cost of doing business for the employer.
This seems to me to be the best possible scenario for anyone who uses illegal workers. First they give them the minimum hourly wage or pay them for piecework. Then they substract taxes and 401k from what little they owe them.
This is barely a step up from slavery. It made me realize how profitable it is for businesses to use illegal workers. It should be the businesses we go after and not the illegal workers. No wonder the businesses claim that they can't get US workers to do the jobs. A US worker would see through the scam and say something about it.
On an aside I went with this person to get a prepaid cell phone. His English is heavily accented but he can communicate. We went to the cell phone store and he talked to the first person who said that the cheapest phone was $50 and showed us the prepaid plans. They had two choices, $50 for 350 peak minutes billed at 14¢ per minute or $70 for 700 peak minutes billed at 10¢ per minute. This person left and the manager came up. He said that the total cost would be $150 to get the phone, the $50 plan and to activate it for $35. I was only listen up to this point but I said that only adds up to $135. His response was 'Oh, I can let him have it for that amount'. So this is another way that businesses exploit these illegal workers or legal ones with poor English skills. Charging them extra when they think they can get away with it. Good thing I can do math in my head.