Thread: Opinions: Top reasons to hire illegals

Opinions: Top reasons to hire illegals
by Jed Dougherty
published on Tuesday, May 29, 2007
It's summer, it's 105 degrees outside, and mini-me could get lost in your front lawn because you haven't cut the grass in two months. Your sewage pipes are corroded, and you need new pool decking. Somebody needs to re-shingle your roof, and the paint is peeling off your walls. So who you gonna call?

Immigrants.

Thirty years ago, these miserable tasks would have been the job of the neighborhood 16-year-old and his friends. Back then, young men could work all summer at hard, honest labor. They could get some calluses on their hands; earn some money for an end-of-summer trip or a car. Now, the jobs go to the friendly fellas outside the local Home Depot.

Why the change? And is this change hurting the cultural fabric of America?
After discussing the issue with several local construction and painting contractors, I came up with three reasons why people hire immigrants to do their lawn care and household maintenance instead of local teens.

1. Today's youth are lazy. I remember getting paid $20 to mow my neighbor's lawn. I would venture to say that I was more physically active than most kids my age, but it was still torture. I whined and griped and took a water break every nine minutes and generally did a half-assed job. This work ethic seems to be instilled in many kids my age and younger. We are the first generation to be raised by a middle-class that made its living almost entirely without physical labor. We are not the sons and daughters of carpenters, welders and masons like prior generations. Instead our parents were teachers, lawyers, businessmen or journalists. The baby-boomer desk-jockeys who brought us up taught us nothing about the value of manual work, because they didn't do any themselves.

2. Immigrants do a better job. Immigrants are not stealing the jobs of America's youth; folks are just hiring the people who do the best job. Immigrants are willing to work harder and at a higher standard than the average high school kid because their lives and the lives of their families depend upon them getting paid. It is market capitalism in action, and the people offering the best product are the ones in demand.

3. Illegal immigrants, by necessity, work outside the law. High school kids do as well, to an extent, but they can always fall back on their rights as citizens if something really quirky is going on. For example, at my apartment complex there are eight people living in a two-bedroom apartment on the floor below me for free. In exchange, they do landscaping and are in the process of painting the complex. This isn't so bad, but if the manager of my complex wanted to kick them out, she could do so with no legal repercussions if they are illegal immigrants.
The point is because illegal immigrants have no rights as citizens, it is less of a risk to hire them. After all, if they do an unacceptable job and the contractor refuses to pay, the immigrants have no means of retaliation. Since Proposition 102 was passed in November 2006, illegal immigrants can't even sue for punitive damages if they are hurt while working.

So basically immigrants are getting the jobs because Americans are lazy, immigrants do a better job and there is no legal risk in ripping off an immigrant. It seems pretty simple, but the repercussions are widespread. Most of my generation will never physically exert themselves for money, never see the finished product of their labor, never understand what it means to go to sleep sore from a day's work.
If toughness and hard physical work ever part of the cultural fabric of America, it is safe to say that the shift to immigrant labor is helping to tear them out of it.

Jed Dougherty will not mow your lawn for any amount of money. To complain, email him at: john.dougherty@asu.edu.




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http://www.asuwebdevil.com/issues/2007/ ... ons/701156

Gee I guess we don't fill the bill My husband is a mechanic and I work with preschoolers and clean houses. My son has all sort of manual chores to do because we are too darn broke to afford someone to cut our grass or do the other grunt work around the house

By and large, this artical is right about our youth. We have grown too accustomed to hire illegals when all the time we should have been either doing the work ourselves or hiring legal people. This has to stop and the best way to do that is to get them to self-deport by going after the employers. We would then pick up where we left off 25 years ago and start doing those physical chores ourselves. We don't want to be dependent on these illegal aliens anymore. If you have kids, train them at something and teach them everything you can. I'm a carpenter of 20 years and both my sons can operate power tools and do things like mow the yard and hang shelves just to name a few things. GET THEM AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER GAMES AND TEACH THEM SOMETHING..DON'T BE LAZY ABOUT THIS..FOR GOD'S SAKE, THEY ARE YOUR KIDS AND THEY WILL INHERIT THIS COUNTRY.

There is a lot of truth to what this man is saying, but I think the lust for illegal immigrant labor by U.S. corporations and some members of our federal government, goes far beyond fiilling the gap left by lazy, spoiled teenagers.

There is some truth. The kids don't do the jobs like they once did. The jobs are not there for them to do.

In the area where we lived, the young boys worked in the chicken houses. That is tough work, folks. They pitched watermelons, bucked hay, worked the dairies. They worked in construction, etc.

When the illegal came, the kids were told they were no longer needed and they were not hired when they asked for work.

My son worked weekends picking up eggs. He walked about a mile and arrived at the houses at 6am, and worked all day. One Saturday morning he got there at 6 and the lady who owned the houses, told him she wouldn't be needing him to work as she had hired some illegals - she said Mexicans.

About 2 weeks later on Sat morning she came knocking on our door frantic for my son to work. Her illegals had run off in the night.

He stood there, with his arms across his chest and told her he would work for her that weekend because she needed the help. He told here, however, to find herself some more illegals. He told her he would not work for her after that weekend because she didn't even have the courtesty to tell him he wouldn't be needed and he knew she would just replace him when she found some more illegals.

As she walked away, looking kinda sheepish - he called after her, 'You do remember you didn't pay me for the last weekend I worked?'

Why apply for jobs you know you aren't going to get?

nntrixie, I feel your pain;

Just wants to make me puke. Your son has a heart of gold but the woman is a witch. She typifies how businesses operate today and that's what is adding to the demise of America whether businesses know it or not. Take take take and no give. Kinda reminds me of the deplorable working conditions before labor laws and unions were established. This woman should try and get a job at the Council of Foreign Relations. She's a match!

This analysis may seem reasonable at this stage but look at what will happen in the future. As the idea that work is not necessarily hard physical exertion continues to grow in our society, there will be increasing demand for illegal laborers to actually do some REAL work.

IT WILL SNOWBALL!!
From twenty million illegals now, we will have a demand for fifty million and then in the next generation 150 million. Unless those jobs become mechanized. Then we will have the illegals who are already here scrambling and plotting to get economic security somehow, even if it's robbing banks.

By my definition I am not saying that people like physicians are not working. This is both acute mental and physical exertion. What I am saying is that there has been created in modern society a vested interest that promotes "work" which would never have met the definition two hundred years ago. And a swelling population increases the demand for this service sector. I believe the educational industry is at the heart of it. Education is fine, but turning out too many university graduates who are convinced that they will never endure physical labor has created an unrealistic expectation. Like other groups the educational industry has sought to preserve its turf and that means to grow in influence.

What brought the US to the top and will it continue in the twenty-first century? We had enough technological and organizational breakthroughs to garner raw materials from other countries, educate and train craftsmen here and export products that other people needed to improve thier own societies. A classic "workshop of the world" scenario.

I think the need to have a competitive advantage in exporting products will continue, probably because US social institutions will not change. The basic alternative to earning income through selling products or services abroad would be to form cooperative organizations, domestically. Microsoft is probably the latest example of a unique American product or service that can be widely exported. What's next---which cannot be done cheaper in some other country?

Well, our kids better figure out how to make the next exportable products or services--or band together in self help affiliations. Otherwise they will be a bunch of duds.

My neighbor was teaching his son how to mow the front yard lawn. After a day lesson it became the boy's job to mow that lawn once a week. But every time the father came home after the boy mowed the lawn, the father was frustrated with the crooked rows and missed patches. He would call his son out of the house and make him re-mow the lawn correctly.

One day, the father came home and the lawn was beautiful...rows were straight...no missed patches. This continued for weeks until the father came home early one day and saw a Mexican mowing the lawn. Come to find out, the son was hiring an illegal from Home Depot once a week to mow the lawn for him!

True story!! I wonder where he learned to do that??

I hope he took that kid to the woodshed.