Posted on 05/21/2005 5:50:30 AM PDT by B4Ranch
I enjoy Thomas Sowell's columns very much and agree with him almost all the time. His article on May 6 was about "illegals in America taking jobs away from Americans and those who say we need them to do the work Americans will not do." He ended by saying, "Americans worked as laborers before there were undocumented workers to do the work and they can do it again."
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
As Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you". Believe it or not, there really are some people that don't want to work, and there are millions of jobs most Americans won't take.
All I know about Americans it that we're the hardest working country, I'm not going to say we're smarter than everybody else because I don't know that that's true. I just don't understand where this mentality originated, that Americans are too superior to do certain jobs.
If the laborers stop working today, the supermarket shelves stay empty and your money becomes worthless. People sitting in offices don't fill the stores with food and merchandise. They don't produce it, they don't package it, they don't ship it, they don't stock it, they don't sell it. If we're too good to work the fields and pack meat then we must be too good to fight for the country on a battlefield. It's a good thing our grandfathers didn't think so, or we'd be working the fields right now except the Germans and Japanese wouldn't pay us anything.
When it comes to US born workers, over the years I have seen a few characteristics they have in common. I'd say they break down into three categories:
Category A: The Low Maintenance Pro
He shows up on time, asks intelligent questions and tries to see the big picture. He spends a great deal of effort making sure he understands exactly what the end result needs to be. These guys enjoy what they do and have fun doing it. When he makes a mistake, he will own up to it and fix it. A future business owner who knows every job is a potential reference that can help him later in life.
Category B: The Chip-on-the-Shoulder Bitter Guy
This guy is a unentusiastic, mean tempered (alcoholic?) who takes instruction grudgingly. He thinks his ideas are the best and will bitch and moan when forced to do it the way he is told. Works painfully slow but usually does what you want him to do - if you keep an eye on him. In his mind, he is the underpaid, unappreciated and misunderstood victim of life. Master of knowing where all the shortcuts are and reliably takes the path of least resistance. You have a sense he has hocked all of his tools for beer and cigarette money at least 10 times in his career.
Category C: The Dreamer
This guy wants to be paid to do your job while he plans his next move. Spends most of the time on the job wishing he did something else for a living. Makes many mistakes, mainly because he doesn't pay attention to instructions or details. Will hide any mistake or take any shortcut he can get away with.
Category A guy is who we want when we have a job to do but the CatB and CatC guys are who we usually end up with because they comprise the majority of the talent pool. After a few days of stress dealing with these high maintenance dudes, you start wishing you hired those quiet, hard working brown dudes you saw doing a job down the street.
Auto insurance requirements and taxes aside, there are no laws preventing you or me from going out and getting an unskilled job today. I am completely confident we could be employed TODAY as a landscape laborer, shelf-stocker, a grocery bagger or some other low skilled job. If that is what we wanted to do - we could do it.
There are also no laws preventing you or me from letting our entire extended family move into our house. Heck, my brother-in-law would have his truck loaded and be at my door ready to move in tonight if I let him.
The unescapable fact is we have made choices regarding each of these hypotheticals so it is disengenuous to pretend otherwise.
I, on the other hand, see things from my side of the fence. And when they build a huge new mall west of Des Moines and you need to be bi-lingual to communicate with all the different "workers", it becomes frustrating. Now Des Moines and Omaha are like San Antinio, Houston and Dallas were twenty years ago. The gubmint could solve the problem overnight if they had the gonads to enforce the very laws they enacted with the last amnesty and immigration law "enhancement" and go after the the people who hire these illegals. Believe me, the message would get back to the border in one helluva hurry if there weren't no yobs Chee-cagoo.
Bingo. The illegals are merely filling a void that Americans have created. Let's see... break your back in the farms and eat beans & rice, or get welfare and enjoy frozen pizza & steak with those food stamps? Incidentially something like 80% of deaf people live on SSI and you'd be appalled at how much they can afford with those supposedly super-low wages.
I REMEMBER when people mowed their own lawns, raised their own children, cleaned their own houses, did their own remodeling, bricklaying and so forth.
The influx of illegals to do these jobs has permitted the yuppie designer culture to think of themselves as a privileged class with servants. Even their kids are designer accessories for them.
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