Flight Pundit

We keep hearing this catch phrase from the pols. It’s the fashionable new statement that makes Americans THINK we need (Illegal) immigrants. They’re doing us a favor. They’re here for a reason. They’re willing to do the menial jobs no one wants to do.

Are they so sure of this? John McCaint got an earful yesterday when he was asked about this:

The first questioner seemed to challenge his commitment to organized labor. When McCain started to praise a particular labor group in Arizona, the crowd booed again.

“Stop!” he said with a smile, drawing laughter from the crowd. “I surrender.”

But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.

“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

Some in the crowd said they didn’t appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.

The response- “You can’t do it, my friends” says a lot about the mindset of these politicians who are really out of touch with those who voted them into office. Who is McCaint to make such a broad statement?

As the FT reports:

Similarly, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank in favour of tighter controls, argues that the influx of low-skilled immigrants has already harmed native-born competitors. As the proportion of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the labour force has risen, the proportion of relatively unskilled natives in work has fallen (see charts). Moreover, many unskilled natives have left the labour force: they are discouraged workers.

A standard counter-argument, wearily familiar on both sides of the Atlantic, is that immigrants are taking jobs that natives are unwilling to do. This is doubly wrong. First, the supply of labour is dependent on its price. Business people must know this: after all, it is the argument they use to justify soaring executive pay. Without the illegal immigrants, people would have to spend more on nannies, cleaners, farm workers and so forth. Second, most of the workers doing the jobs done also by immigrants are native-born. The obstacle is not the absence of native-born workers, but that they would have to be paid higher wages if immigrants were absent.

In trying to find the simple facts about all this one comes up with so many confusing reports and biased points of view. A question that should be asked more often, but isn’t:
Who USED to do all these menial jobs before this immigration issue got so big??

Blog brother Ogre sets the record about as straight as it can get:

And dammit, stop already with the complete and total LIE that Americans don’t want those jobs! It’s a damn LIE.

In North Carolina, for example, landscaping and yard care is a seasonal job — it’s only really needed in the summertime. College students and high school students aren’t in school during the summertime. Those jobs used to be filled by the students. THEY WERE DOING THOSE JOBS. It is very simply a lie to claim that Americans “don’t want”, or “won’t do” those jobs.

Yes Ogre, this is the truth. WHAT?? Are America’s HS and college age kids too GOOD for these jobs? Or do they expect more pay than the illegals? Most states have reduced pay rates for these kids so that’s NOT an excuse.

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