Author: Tony

“Myth Busting: Jobs Americans Won’t Do”

Michael W. Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Ret.)

Senior Fellow, Californians for Population Stabilization

For many years, advocates for immigration anarchy aka “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” have devised a fallacious statement about “Jobs Americans won’t do” to convince Americans that illegal aliens are not taking anyone’s jobs because they do the work Americans won’t do.

The reality is that each and every day American workers of every race, religion and ethnicity trudge off to work on jobs that are filthy, arduous and, in fact, dangerous. Consider how many Americans work as coal miners, construction workers and firefighters. Consider how many Americans work in steel foundries, shipyards, drive garbage trucks or serve our nation and their communities as law enforcement officers.

Consider how many Americans volunteered to serve in the five branches of the United States military.

On August 18, 2013 the local CBS News station in NYC reported on how hundreds of hopeful carpenter apprentices had camped out for more than a solid week outside the Carpenters’ union hoping that they might become apprentices. This was no “reality show,” but reality!

The title of the article was: “Carpenters Persevere In Camping Out For Union Training, Better Life”

My dad was himself a construction worker- a plumber. I literally grew up on construction sites and my role models were my dad and his buddies in the construction trades, for whom no job was too tough or challenging.  They worked in the bitter cold of winter and the sweltering heat of summer and suffered more injuries than law enforcement officers. My dad will always be my biggest hero!

Their determination, talent and grit not only enabled them to support their families but helped build America!

Today’s American workers are no different, if they are given the opportunities.

The only thing exceptional about foreign workers is that they are willing to work for exceptionally low wages. Day laborers often do jobs that should be done by skilled tradesmen, but their employers know that they can slash labor costs by hiring illegal alien workers who lack the skills but are easy to exploit.

The quality of the work that these workers do does not compare with the work of tradesman but the unscrupulous employers who hire them don’t care about quality of work only what their profit margin will be. For them the bottom line is the bottom line!

These employers will whine about how they cannot find hard working Americans, so that they have no choice but to hire illegal aliens. Of course what they leave out of the conversation is that they want to pay their workers minimal salaries- “off the books” and know that not only will illegal aliens acquiesce and accept substandard wages, but that these workers will also ignore safety violations and other such transgressions of labor laws enacted to protect American workers.

Homer Hickam, the author of the book, “The Rocket Boys” that became the basis for the excellent film, “October Sky” was the son of a coal miner in Coalwood, West Virginia. 

The book and film were autobiographical and told the story of Hickam’s childhood in the 1950’s when the launch of Sputnik motivated him to become involved with rocketry. He went on to become a NASA engineer. Because of his background and eloquence as a writer, he was called upon to address the memorial service for the miners who perished at the Sago Mine disaster in 2006, During the course of delivering his eulogy he stated, “There is no water holier than the sweat off a man’s brow!”

Contrast Homer’s reverence for hard working Americans that his eloquent statement reflected, with the contempt of those who derisively claim that Americans apparently won’t do hard work!

Nearly every candidate for political office promises to create jobs- the time has also come for the government to liberate millions of jobs, by enforcing America’s immigration laws to get Americans and America working!