Posted on 12/30/2025 6:16:26 AM PST by MtnClimber
In the eighties, I had a friend who worked for me on and off. He was a competent handyman and could do an oil change without screwing it up, something that was always useful in an auto shop, which I ran. Eventually, however, he got a better paying job as a drywaller.
Anyone who has ever done a home project with even a small drywall repair knows how difficult it is not to have even a small repair stick out like a sore thumb. Stevie was good and patient. He has that ability to measure with his eye. And so he was a very good drywaller, making a respectable wage with some benefits.
But about a decade later, he came back to my shop, needing work. He explained that his business had been taken over by mostly Hispanic workers, who worked as sub-contractors and were paid not by the hour, but by the number of sheets of drywall they hung. No benefits, of course. Their work may not have been great, but it was acceptable.
In all likelihood, many if not most of these new drywallers were illegal aliens. And in a one-decade cycle, drywalling became one of those jobs Americans just won’t do.
There is no such thing as a job Americans just won’t do. There are jobs Americans don’t want to or can’t get hired to do at the prevailing wage.
Some guys have the balance of a cat. They can walk on a 60-degree slope as easily as I walk on a treadmill. They tend to make good roof, chimney, and gutter masters if these are the fields they choose to enter. A fair number of guys would do this work when it pays a fair wage with benefits to cover the risk.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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I had a relative who was a roofer. Very good craftsman. Shut down his business and started doing one man roof repairs because he did not want to work with illegals but could not compete without them.
I’ve seen Americans doing all sorts of jobs so which ones won’t they do? Granted that some pay better than others. Some don’t pay what they should, others may overpay.
This is a more subtle but perhaps ultimately more damaging effect of illegal immigration than wage reduction: the reintroduction of strong class prejudice in what was in all likelihood the least class-conscious major society in world history.
I went to high school with a girl who lived down the road from our place whose father was a law professor at the Ivy League university in the town where the high school was located. She, of course, got free tuition there, so that's where she went to get her degree.
I came back on summer break and went to fill up my car at a gas station in town and there she was, working as a cashier for her summer job.
It's just about unimaginable today that the daughter of an Ivy League law professor would work as a cashier at a gas station. That was considered a good life-lesson for the children of the upper middle class then and being a snob was a grievous social sin.
Americans don’t want jobs. They want an RV paid for by the taxpayers so they can spend all their time in Montana and Wyoming poking the Grizzlies and the buffalo. They all are now “disabled” and have turned the Walmart parking lots into what looks like used Wallymobile dealerships.
If your life is shot at 35 because 20 year-olds can do your job, you aren’t doing life right.
half the construction jobs in Arizona went to illegal immigrants after Reagan’s amnesty, and the wages did not rise for 15 years, which is why Americans stopped doing them. $9 per hour in 1983 is one thing. $9 per hour in 2000 was another thing. Homes in Arizona got bigger and bigger. none of these jobs were jobs Americans did not want to do, they were squeezed out of them because of how little they began to pay and because preference was to give the jobs to immigrants,especially when speaking English was not a qualification for getting hired, and after a while, speaking Spanish was a job requirement of managing Spanish speaking workers and customers.
It is as if our whole system were run by a Jewish mother who demands her kids be college educated professionals who wear suits to work and don’t ever get their hands dirty......but it is ok for immigrants.
But hiring mostly foreigners is happening in companies such as Intel. American companies sometimes have foreign born CEOs and even are foreign owned because the USA allows foreign ownership of land and businesses that most countries do not allow. Even our politicians are sold to the highest bidder these days.
“Jobs Americans won’t do” created by George W Bush, circa 2003....
The people are forgetting that the prices aren’t going up, necessarily.
I mean yeah, there are business owners out there taking WAY to much of the profit but the ultimate truth is that the value of our dollar is going down.
And we’re still getting 90s paychecks.
We need fewer buying into the lie that they need to go to college. There are far better options for most people.
They’re not used to working after they spend 5-6 years in college. It takes 5 years for the average student to receive a bachelors degree.
It’s one reason why many illegals flourished. They were taking hard working jobs while our young were being fed useless crap at many of our colleges and universities. And they want us to pay for them not working while they were being fed useless crap.
We’ve got to hold the colleges and universities accountable.
We’ve got to limit the funds we’re offering for unproductive degrees. If a school is not offering a return for their students, we need to limit the taxpayer funds they can take. A lot of these places of higher learning need to be shut down.
I still remember a column I read in which a Vermont Democrat accused Vermonters of needing illegal aliens because they don’t want to wipe their own butts.
I like to see them use forfeiture laws. Like they do for people who sell drugs from cars or try to pick up hookers in their car. The car gets seized. Seize any business that knowingly uses persons ineligible to work in the US. A couple of well publicized seizures would change the landscape OVERNIGHT.
People not involved in business need to realize this: Illegal workers are like nuclear weapons. Once one business starts using them, they all have to use them.
In addition to harsh penalties for the owners. See if they can run a business in prison.
Most Arizona has a busy season and a slow summer season for restaurants, golf courses, supermarkets, resorts......so some companies will hire temp workers during busy season, most of whom are illegal immigrants laundered through temp agencies who never become actual employees of the company they are working for. But jobs like meat cutting and sales go more and more to Mexicans, because there is no training or advertising and Mexicans like to hire family and friends. Hire illegal as a temp, then the other Mexicans train him to be a meat cutter, then he can eventually get hired as a meat cutter and not be illegal anymore. Americans would do these jobs, but never hear about them. Even back in the 1980s, some companies hired mostly foreign nationals instead of blacks for over $15 per hour manufacturing jobs, and people complained and even signed petitions about it. It made no sense except to stop unionization
That's the key IMHO.
Agreed, many need nothing more than a H.S. education - call it 20% -25% of the population. Another 25% would benefit from a 2 year trade school for a specific trade, from electrician to plumber to "other". Another 25% would benefit from a more technical type trade school education - Nursing, PA, charter school teachers, etc. About 20% could go to a "college" for engineering, science, pre med, etc. That leaves 5% that can continue to get worthless liberal arts degrees.
IMO, we are already paying more to NOT have the American labor.
But the cost is not paid in the price of the home or the construction work. It is instead divided a thousand times over across other areas— taxes to fund a welfare state, government services like maintaining roads spread too thin, longer wait times at Walmart or the DMV, etc.
And we can afford to pay more for American labor, so far as the quality and price are transparent. Even if only Americans are doing the job, we would still find a continuum of both. There would still be competition fighting for the work to the benefit of the consumer. But we can’t get that now because contractors who hire and pay illegally are not forced to play by the same rules.
She was telling you that you did slave work.
Liberals love their slaves, when its not family.
“In July 1981 I did some of the stupidest construction work imaginable in North Texas and got $8/hr to do it.”
My sister’s friend’s husband made $12/hour in 1968 doing sheet metal work in Albany, NY.
I does not always work out that smoothly. The general Contractor (GC), the jefe, will hire an Hispanic sub for tasks likes drywalling and tiling. The sub will then hire illegals, who will do a hit or miss job. The GC will then hold back some of the payments and ask for unpaid change orders. The sub is now struck, unable to pay for its materials, the suppliers file liens, causing the GC to hold back more money. Then, wage-hour attorneys will get one of the workers as a client and file suit. While the worker may ony get a few thousand in damages, the attorney is entitled to court-awarded fees often reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I have seen this happen many times, both in the construction and restaurant industries.
A fair number of guys would do this work when it pays a fair wage with benefits to cover the risk.
The counter to this is if you do good work, people will pay for it. I do.
Part of the problem is big business, big govt and too much tech.
Too many want to be employees rather than self employed. The place for good one man shops still exists.
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