Several years ago I was building small but tough generators for export primarily to the Caribbean and Central America. The business grew beyond what myself and the other owner could handle. We needed fairly low skill workers, welders, lathe operators for cutting down armatures after dipping, painters and the like. Couldn’t find any locals that would show up on a regular basis and we were paying the prevalent wage for the jobs. The local folks weren’t interested in learning or were baked half the time. We ended up hiring recent immigrants with dubious immigration status. They were great and where their skills were lacking we sent them to training courses which they did in their off time with minimum pay. We paid them a percentage of profits in addition to wages just as we had offered the local guys. We moved some of the operation to the DR but eventually we sold the S. Florida business to the original workers and they did much better than us because they had the contacts for labor and sales. NONE of the native born S. Floridians worked out which was especially disgusting to my business partner as he was born in Key Largo
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