Repetition As Truth
There is a phrase I keep reading in the newspaper and hearing on the television. It is a mantra, a chant, a ward against thinking. This phrase is:
Jobs that Americans Don't Want.
Every time I hear that phrase I cringe. There is no such thing. Sure there are many jobs that a person would rather not do. I can not say that I delight in the idea of a job at a fast food restaurant or on an assembly line job. Don't think I'd do to well crawling around in a sewer or having anything to do with human waste disposal.
Both sides of the political fence claim that immigrants who do these jobs are doing jobs that Americans don't want. Bull Fecal Matter. They are working at wages that Americans wont accept. If these jobs paid a living wage every time a new McDonalds opened up you would see lines around the block not for the food but for an opportunity to fill out an application.
I support a more open Immigration policy. Almost every born here descends from an Immigrant and while Ellis Island may no longer be the gateway to opportunity anymore it ought to stand for more than a monument to a time when we accepted the huddled masses.
And when those people get here they ought to be pay a fair wage for a fair days work. I'm grow tired of our cultural acceptance of this exploitation. I have yet to see the movie A day without a Mexican, but I understand the purpose is to show us how dependent we as a society are on Mexican labor within the United States. I think a deeper truth may be our economic addiction to cheap labor.
In Summary: There is no such thing as a Job that an American Doesn't want, there is only a scale of pay we are not willing to work at. More importantly we do not need a crack down on Immigration we just need to make it Illegal to pay somebody like an Immigrant.
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Jobs that Americans Don't Want.
Every time I hear that phrase I cringe. There is no such thing. Sure there are many jobs that a person would rather not do. I can not say that I delight in the idea of a job at a fast food restaurant or on an assembly line job. Don't think I'd do to well crawling around in a sewer or having anything to do with human waste disposal.
Both sides of the political fence claim that immigrants who do these jobs are doing jobs that Americans don't want. Bull Fecal Matter. They are working at wages that Americans wont accept. If these jobs paid a living wage every time a new McDonalds opened up you would see lines around the block not for the food but for an opportunity to fill out an application.
I support a more open Immigration policy. Almost every born here descends from an Immigrant and while Ellis Island may no longer be the gateway to opportunity anymore it ought to stand for more than a monument to a time when we accepted the huddled masses.
And when those people get here they ought to be pay a fair wage for a fair days work. I'm grow tired of our cultural acceptance of this exploitation. I have yet to see the movie A day without a Mexican, but I understand the purpose is to show us how dependent we as a society are on Mexican labor within the United States. I think a deeper truth may be our economic addiction to cheap labor.
In Summary: There is no such thing as a Job that an American Doesn't want, there is only a scale of pay we are not willing to work at. More importantly we do not need a crack down on Immigration we just need to make it Illegal to pay somebody like an Immigrant.
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posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 2:09 AM
3 Comments:
We do what we have to, but the part of me that never ever wanted to be an activist, never much cared for politics, is coming around to the opinion that do nothing is to accept a reality that is almsot unlivable (at least sober). No future finacial security. The middle class disappearing. Thats sort of thing. These more politically minded rants are a haphazard way or organizing my thoughts and ideas into a an ideology, a common sense (in the thomas pain sort of way) for this age. It beats staning on a street corner handing out leaflets.
Hmmm...I don't know if I agree with you on this one. Well I do, but it is an impossible dream. It seems to me that most of these illusive "Americans don't want them" jobs that immigrants are doing (in the meat and ag industries) are jobs that humans should probably not be doing period. The book Fast Food Nation comes to mind...and specifically the guys who clean the cow slaughtering warehouses in the middle of the night and generally either die from the danger of the work itself, the chemicals they use or the lack of protective equipment...for no money, with no insurance, no nuthin'. And we couldn't afford meat without these people (at least not without a serious system overhaul).
Americans will definitely take shitty jobs for decent or sub-decent pay (my dad raised us on a truck driver's salary--hauling herbicides and pesticides, many of which were later banned. it pays fairly well for a job that requires no education, but we saw him basically 1-2 days a week at most throughout our childhood, he has been in zillions of scary accidents and near-accidents, has had chemicals spilled all over him and has had to go to the emergency room a bunch of times, his "co-workers" are very scary individuals who have robbed him and threatened him before, his health is awful because of how physically taxing and stressful it is and you can't really eat healthy when you are driving a giant vehicle--no pulling up to the Whole Foods to eat at the salad bar).
But I think Americans are less likely to take shitty AND really dangerous jobs for any amount of money because it seems to me that the illegal immigrants who are doing this work are doing it not to get ahead in life, or even to live comfortably or pay the rent...they are doing it so that their family (in a different country) has enough to eat from day to day and doesn't die. That's a whole nother' level of motivation that the overwhelming majority of Americans will never have, thank God.
I wish I could say that I remember a time when we worked to improve working conditions.
I think the recent coal mining accident might be a good example. It was big news. The company got a lot of bad press for a few days. Now no one talks about it. I haven't read anything about improvements in workers safety or corporate liability.
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