What Jobs American's Won't Do?

What Jobs American's Won't Do

One reason we're supposed to rejoice at the pitter-patter of illegal feet is that foreigners are only coming here to "do jobs Americans won't do." It's one of those basic assumptions upon which the argument in favor of forgetting we have borders, a culture and laws rests, and even President Bush mentioned this "truth" while speaking about immigration reform recently. And, undoubtedly, there are certain immutable laws of economics.

Only, this isn't one of them.

The next time someone mindlessly parrots this mantra, just ask, "What jobs would those be?" As you'll soon learn, the answer doesn't really matter, but sometimes we're shamed by didacts who oh-so-sternly say that illegals are the people who "pick our fruit for us." So, fruit picking - something that must be in league with being a rat catcher in Victorian London or Wile E. Coyote's stunt double - is as good an example as any.

Selwyn Duke does a pretty good job here of debunking the "jobs Americans won't do" myth. As he points out, it's not the jobs--it's the wages.

And what's so bad about picking fruit?

Its not only in the agriculture industry, but also the horse racing industry. Many groomsmen for the horses are Mexican because the job pays only minimum wage with long hours. The groomsmen travel with the horses up to 10 months a year and live in very spartan conditions during that time. Meanwhile, the owners can earn up to millions of dollars on individual races or a series of races, and when the horse finishes its racing career, it is using for breeding stock. And that can lead to millions of more dollars. All on the back of a person making minimum wage.

JDub

Actually, most of these illegals make LESS than minimum wage. There are plenty of young Americans who would love to get any job that puts some cash in their pockets. The problem is, you have to pay an American minimum wage.

Illegals, you simply slip them less than minimum under the table.

When I lived in central valley, California, after I got out of the army, I tried getting a job with the local almond farmers picking and helping them care for their almond orchards. They wouldnt even look at me. I didnt ask for much, just the legal minimum allowed, which at that time I think was 4.75 an hour in the state of california. In fact, it might have been lower, because agricultural minimum wage is lower than standard.

Which goes to show you how much they pay the illegal pickers. Ive heard 50 cents an hour in some place. Other, it might only be about five bucks a day. And these less than ethical employers can rest assure that their illegal slave labor wont be reporting them to the state.

Its all about getting away with less than nothing on wages.

Another example was, after not being able to find an agricultural job, i got a job at a concrete casting plant. I was paid about 5.50 an hour as yard labor. I was shocked to find out our two masons (brick masons, not fremasons) who were both illegal, made about 3 bucks an hour. The only Americans on the site were friends of the owners and were in the really high technical jobs. All the illegals were working below minimum wage, some working under the table.

Its not about what jobs Americans WONT do. Its about the money that American employers WONT pay them. Not when you have a silent, nonexistant cheap slave labor pool at your disposal.

Trust me when I say this, in my experiance, there isn't a job an American won't do if the money is halfway decent. I discovered this while working in all fascets of the commercial fishing industry. Both on the boats and the shore plants. All are dirty, cold, sometimes shockingly dangerous, and all have miserable working hours, even as a manager, my short day during the peak of a season was between 14 to 16 hours a day, for 2 to 3 months, every day of those months, unless a storm happened to interupt. It had to be a mother of a storm to shut down a big cannery, too. So it didn't happen very often. Yet we had no problem finding young, and not so young folks to fill the vacancies on the slime lines, and freezers.

So the false argument that Americans won't do this work is a bunch of... well slimey fish guts.

In an aside...anyone want to know what goes into those yummy fishsticks?