Maybe times have changed, but in the 1980s, I supervised jobs where entire crews of Americans were in 8-foot deep trenches installing sewer lines and making live sewer connections. Not a single illegal among them. I take that back, there is no way for me to know. Not a single man among them didn’t speak normal English without any hint of a hispanic accent. The math there says, none were illegal immigrants.
Ex-cons with felony convictions have a tough time getting jobs. What jobs they are allowed to do, many employers don’t trust them or want them around. In bridge construction on the San Francisco-Oakland bay bridge work, we had a lot of ex-cons with felons on the construction crews. The ironworkers were heavy on ex-cons. All union. Tough guys.
Illegals need not apply. I’m not saying we had no illegal aliens in construction. We have a bunch of hispanics and I’m sure a good many of them were illegals with all the right forgeries. But ex-cons need work at liveable wages too, and the flood of hispanic illegals has hit them right between the eyes.
For anybody who feared for my life on the project, don’t forget that a lot of felonies are paper felonies or at least are not violent crimes.
When Baby Bush said illegals do jobs Americans won’t do, he forgot there are plenty of very different kinds of Americans who need jobs and lose them to illegals.
That’s not to mention the fast food and light construction work that teenagers used to do. Both parties are selling us down the river.