Election season is behind us, but the illegal alien debate is swirling around again due to the election results. My position with regards to immigration are pretty simple:
You should generally uphold the laws of countries you visit, including border, residency, work, sovereignty, etc.
Living and working in a country in violation of its immigration laws is not a one-time act of crossing a border. Rather, it is an ongoing, perpetuated fraud.
As someone who has dealt with the ramifications of having her identity stolen by an illegal alien, I am keenly aware of the damage that can be done by those who disregard our laws. As the mother of someone whose first car—scrimped and saved for and bought with cash by a college student—was totaled by an unlicensed, uninsured illegal alien, I'm painfully aware of how others pay the price for those who don't respect US law.
To add just a touch of drama to our (true) story, the same daughter was a passenger in a coworker's car totaled by another illegal alien, almost exactly one year to the day after her own accident.
Funny thing is, people who justify breaking laws for personal gain, have an unsurprising tendency to justify breaking laws for personal gain.
I'm a bit disillusioned with the constant cries for “compassion” when they are only directed at those who are committing the fraud and never directed toward the law-abiding, hard-working, legal citizens who are the victims of that fraud.
In the ongoing immigration saga, one of the most common defenses for allowing people who are here illegally to stay here illegally, is that “they do jobs Americans won't do.” I've wracked my brain for years over that, and I can't for the life of me figure out what those jobs are.
I went through the list of jobs I've done in my life—sometimes for a pittance. Here they are:
- Door to door greeting card sales
- Fence staining/painting
- Picking fruits and vegetables for local farmers
- Babysitting
- Door to door candle sales
- House cleaning
- Laundry and ironing
- Flier distribution
- Phone solicitation
- Lawn mowing
- Weeding
- Sod laying
- Power raking
- Landscaping
- Fast food cook
- Fast food cashier
- Cafeteria dish room
- Cafeteria food prep
- Cafeteria server
- Jewelry store sales
- CAD designer
- Desktop publisher
- Accountant
- Business owner
Next, I created a list of jobs my husband, Sam, has done:
- Alfalfa farm hand
- Trench digger
- Construction worker
- Grocery bagger
- Electronics sales
- Door to door sales
- Oil rig roughneck
- Bookkeeper
- Research assistant
- Programmer
- University professor
- Business owner
There are a heck of a lot of dirty, low wage, menial labor, ugly uniform jobs on those lists. So, what am I missing? What other undesirable jobs are there? What jobs are supposedly only done by illegal aliens because no one else will do them? Are the garbage men all non-Americans? Do septic system companies only draw employees from the undocumented?
If we're going to have an honest debate about immigration reform, we need to do it with honest rhetoric. That should include not only the difficulties people face in other countries and the perplexing problem of those who were brought here illegally as children by their parents, but also of the damage and harm done to law abiding American citizens by all illegal immigration and the truth that Americans—at least those who weren't raised to vote for freebies and handout—will work hard at just about anything in order to take care of their families and improve their situations and the world around them.
Only with the full impact of illegal immigration and the status quo can we make reasonable decisions.
1. Dumpster cleaning and power washing
2. septic tank cleaner
3. Toilet licker
4. Bar Back
Possess a set of skills and try to market them or put them on a job application in an unrelated field. You are unhireable. Possess skills that require years of experience to fine tune, but employers will train house wives to do in a matter of a week, then sell those services as highly trained professionals for $9 an hour. Apply for a job where now it is mandatory to be bi-lingual to communicate. Possess skill where every one wants them for free or wants to offer you what they want to pay not what your skills and the equipment you bought to do the job demand. If you’ve ever made more than $9 an hour your chances of getting a retail job based on the information required on an application are nil. If you’ve never worked in a retail environment your chances of being hired are diminished greatly. If you are over the age of 45 don’t plan on working again ever……..
David, thanks for reading and posting. I have cleaned way more than my share of toilets — and there is something very unpleasant about other people’s toilets — but I don’t even want to know what a “toilet licker” is.
I partially disagree about unrelated fields. Sure, Sam’s work on an oil rig wasn’t on his resume by the time he applied for professorships, but as one works their way up in the world, having a history of hard work is a good thing. If I’m hiring someone to do a job that requires a particular skill, they do need to possess that skill, but I’ll also be impressed to see willingness to work, consistency in employment, etc.
If an employer can train a “housewife” to do a job in a week, then they aren’t the same jobs that require years of fine tuning, right?
It’s certainly true that language fluency can help you in many jobs — in some fields more than others — and it’s really not my forte. If there comes a point where I’m being held back by being unable to speak anything but English, I will learn another language. But it’s going to be painful, to be sure!
Could you elaborate a bit here? If I read this correctly, it’s just the market at work. If no one is willing to pay for a particular skill set — or not as much as it costs to develop the set — then it’s not a marketable skill. At least not on the level you want it to be.
How do you resolve that? My solution would be to gain a more marketable skill set or show employers/customers/clients the value in what you offer.
The progressive solution would be…I don’t know…require employers to pay what some higher power (unions? government?) decides “should” be paid.
I don’t see how that’s reasonable in any sense. But if it it, I want to make $100k annually for singing in my shower. You have no idea how awesome it is. 🙂
Again, maybe you can clarify this? What info on the application are you referring to? Not sure if I’m misreading, but I make many times $9 per hour and I promise you I could get hired in retail fairly easily if that was a desired course.
Certainly when competing against those with retail experience, you might be at a disadvantage, but every single person in retail was once hired without retail experience. 🙂 My first foray into retail from an employee perspective came after working mostly labor jobs.
I’m 48 and Sam is 53. Life isn’t close to being over. 🙂 Keep your chin up!
Alison Moore Smith recently posted…Up with Walmart – Down with Idiots
Thank God someone has the common sense to confront the liberal talking points. You may be a dying breed.
Thanks for dropping by, Pantywasted. I hope you are wrong! 🙁
Alison Moore Smith recently posted…Finish 2012 Strong
Just want to add to this that my deductible for $400 a month insurance plan is $7,500 for maternity. I know a lady I’m (sadly) distantly related to who flew in from Venezuela to have her baby in our hospitals so her baby would have US citizenship and then claimed that she was on SS so that our country would pay for the hospital bills. If a person I know did this, imagine how many are doing it. I, a US citizen have to pay almost $8k to have my baby here and a visitor doesn’t have to pay anything and her kid gets citizenship, that is just sad.
Allison, reading what i posted some 3.5 years ago, the job market has diminished rather than improved. Allow me to update the situation. If you hired me as a “Photographer” and I showed up for work you would expect me to have a camera. But you don’t want to pay for the use of the camera which I had to buy. You assumed, dangerous word, that was all inclusive for the position you posted. Without doing any research, you just randomly offer to pay $10.00 per hour since “Everybody” is paying that and it is above the minimum wage. In the course of the job I need to use a flash, zoom lens, and a tripod. In your world, it’s all part of doing the job, and suddenly this $10 an hour you graciously offered to pay has suddenly dropped drastically since I have to cover the expense of additional equipment. After working for you for 5 hours, I walk away with $50 in my pocket ,minus equipment expenses,minus taxes, minus the time I have to spend to edit these pictures. At what point do you pay me for my experience? But you’re happy because you got it for $10 per hour, which you thought was a little excessive just for pushing a button. Then you take my work and use it in your advertising to sell pot holders for $20 a piece that you imported from china for 50 cents. If I wanted you to clean my house, use your own tools, prepare dinner for my family and you had to buy all the food, I’d pay you $8 an hour since a house cleaner is an unskilled labor job, but it’s what the market bares. You wouldn’t do the job, because you wouldn’t make any money.
Reality…I am a photographer, I will photograph your pot holders for your web site and do all the retail POP stand up’s, edit,color correct, and lay out everything you need to go to press. My services will cost you $2500 and i will bring everything I need to table to do the job. After the fact I will pay taxes on what you pay me, turn a profit, put some good work in my portfolio, your pot holders fly off the shelf,people ask who did your advertising and you refer me business. You decide to update your pot holders with a deluxe model with the profit’s you made and you call me…..You don’t have to provide all the tools your mechanic needs to fix your car because it’s built into the price. You pay $100 for a stake dinner because it includes the guy to cook it, they guy to serve it, and the building you went to to eat it. People these days, want what i do for $5 but don’t bat and eye at paying $50 for lunch. Why? because they see no value in what I do. They love my work they just don’t want to pay for it.
David Neesley recently posted…Head Shots/Portraits
David, honestly, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. You seem to be bothered about how the world works and I can’t figure out why.
When my oldest was married, we spent well over $3,000 on the photographer ($3,600 if memory serves). When my third was married we spent about a third of that. In both cases my daughters looked at portfolios, compared packages (including—here’s the kicker—the prices the photographers offered), and then determined how much of their pre-determined wedding budgets they wanted to spend on photography.
No one forced either photographer to accept the gig (neither of my daughters is homosexual, so they can’t demand services rendered…yet…). They were both arms-length transactions.
So? No one is obligated to value your work the way you value it. As a business owner, it is your job to convince customers that the exchange of money for product/service is worth they money you are asking. I looked at your site. Your work looks great, but does that necessarily mean any particular person has to value it at the offered price? More to the point, if they can get something they are pleased enough with for $20, shouldn’t they be able to make that determination?
If I’m hungry, maybe a $1.20 Wendy’s value menu bacon cheeseburger is good enough today. Maybe on my anniversary I’ll spend $100 for the steak. (Probably not. I almost never value that is consumed and gone enough to pay such prices.)
My oldest has a major in film editing and a minor in graphic design (and computer science and ballroom dance). She sees details in quality that most of us don’t and was willing to use more of her budget for pictures that met her expectations. My younger daughter is a music dance theater major and just wanted some nice, fun shots to remember the day. Both were equally pleased with the results.
Look, I’ve owned a business since 1987. I understand perfectly about taxes and overhead as well as competition. That’s just life. And freedom.
Alison Moore Smith recently posted…Emotional Labor – The Injustice of It All