Posted on 05/01/2006 1:20:55 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Which Americans Won’t Work?
J. D. Pendry
The yearly per capita income in Wyoming County, West Virginia, the place of my birth and much of my youth, is $19,110.00. In neighboring McDowell County, it’s $16,483.00. The state average per capita is $23,794.00. It costs more money to attend school for one year at the University of California, Santa Cruz than the per capita income of my state. It’s also interesting that West Virginia has the highest rate per capita of military veterans in the country. Seems people who work hard for what they have are willing to serve and defend our country while the spoiled brat classes who have never worked for anything chase military recruiters away.
The joke’s on us, however. Taxes paid by people making 19 thousand a year, some of them serving in our Armed Forces (psst, being a Soldier is one of those jobs most Americans don’t want to do), find their way to the University of California, Santa Cruz in the form of federal dollars. Since I’ve clawed my way up from dirt poor to middle-class, I’m willing to fight to keep what I’ve earned and to prevent my small piece of West Virginia hillside from becoming part of the Islamic caliphate. If everything is given to you, you’ve never had to earn anything and you are left to want for nothing, you probably take it for granted that what you have will always be there and that the job of protecting it falls to others of lesser status than you. Lord help me for agreeing, but when John Edwards said there are two Americas out there, he may have been on to something.
Wyoming County is coal mining country. There’s currently a shortage of skilled miners in the state. Federal mining safety regulations require extensive training for this physically demanding and inherently dangerous job. Coal supplies more than half of our country’s electrical power and has the potential to lower prices at the pump through coal liquefaction if some wide-butted millionaire Congress people I know would actually work for our state – and America. Yet most Americans won’t work in the mines. Wait. What did I just say? It’s only a matter of time until Senator McCain sends the illegal immigrants; there I go again, undocumented guest workers here to do the job most Americans won’t do. He may need to do that to keep your lights on because I hear the miners are packing up to head to Yuma, Arizona for the five-month lettuce-picking season. McCain promises these lazy Americans fifty bucks an hour to do that job. For five month’s work, that’s better than forty grand a head. Bring the buses John, when you get to Wild Wonderful, head south on state route 10. We’ll be waiting for you at the McDowell-Wyoming county line.
There is another reason the good Senator from Arizona is worried about lettuce pickers:
“YUMA, Ariz. -- Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, Tom Nassif did something few law- abiding citizens would ever think to do: He called the U.S. Border Patrol here and suggested agents stop manning a highway checkpoint intended to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.
A former U.S. ambassador and currently the president of a powerful farming association, Mr. Nassif told officials that the agency couldn't have picked a worse time to beef up enforcement. Didn't they know it was lettuce season?” – Miriam Jordan, Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2005, As Border Tightens, Growers See Threat to Winter Salad Bowl
Senator McCain again proves to us that pandering is the first priority of politicians. I have to tell you though he’s in the minor leagues compared to Pander-in-Chief Hillary.
"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants. We might have to move towards an ID system even for citizens.
People have to stop employing illegal immigrants, I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau Counties, stand in the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx (and) you're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work. You know, this is not a problem that the people coming into the country are solely responsible for. They wouldn't be coming if we didn't put them to work." – Hillary Clinton to WABC Radio's John Gambling.
That’s what Miss Hillary said before she made her faces of the people who clean our toilets speech at an immigration protest. She thanked the mob for doing the jobs Americans won’t do - watching her kids, cleaning her house, doing her laundry, cleaning the hotels and washing the dishes. Incredible. She told the gathered crowd that she wants to keep them as the permanent under-class, which is the same status they held in Mexico and elsewhere. The truth is socialists like Hill need a permanent and dependent under-class to keep them in power. I wonder. What would the reaction have been if she made the same speech to a group of Black Americans? I envy people who work hard, but I pity people who cheer at the prospect of forever doing Hillary’s laundry. Now that’s pitiful.
You may not surmise this from my reading my words, but I sympathize with people who come here and their only motivation is to provide for their families. Those of us who’ve raised families and survived by doing the jobs Hillary, John and others claim Americans won’t do are their kindred in spirit. Unfortunately, well-meaning, often poorly educated people have again been duped by politics and pro-communist organizations with agendas and affiliations that should alert immigrants that they don’t give a rat’s ass about them except as their potential usefulness in pushing a political agenda or harming the United States. Waving an American flag is meaningless if a communist places it in your hands and the colors aren’t in your heart. Organizations like A.N.S.W.E.R. and spineless, pandering politicians are doing immigrants more harm than good. I’m afraid my feelings on this matter are morphing from sympathy toward anger. At some point, if they haven’t already, Americans will stop seeing poor immigrants looking for work and start seeing tools used by people who want to harm our country.
I once was a registered Democrat, now I’m a registered Republican. I’ve never voted a straight party ticket. I cast my votes for America. Voting, by the way, is another of those jobs many Americans won’t do. The politician that wants my vote will show leadership by standing on principles and standing up for America. They’ll get my vote by first securing our borders. By registering and accounting for all illegal immigrants in our country and doing it within 90 days – before Election Day. By immediately deporting, without hearings, illegal immigrants found here that have serious criminal records. By deporting those that cannot show gainful employment. By providing a program that allows hard working, honest people who can clear a criminal background check to come here on work permits that require them to return to their country once each year - permits for which they or their employers must pay processing and annual renewal fees. If instead, the politicians give us amnesty, then I’m for flushing the whole kit and caboodle of them on Election Day. Let’s clean house of the people who wont’ work for America.
And day without illegals, great! Century without illgeals, Heavenly, NO amnesty for any of them and no fastrack to citizenship PRICELESS!!!
I signed up for the McCain $50/hr program figuring having not worked in about a year this would be good jingle. Come to find out he wasn't offering near that amount. Now I'm sitting back waiting for the settlement on my false advertising lawsuit against McCain.AWB
We should all skip eating/purchasing lettuce and let the lettuce growers take a financial beating ... maybe they'll get the hint and stop hiring the illegals.
Unnecessary. Their predictions about the price of goods is vastly overstated.
Let's use your reference to lettuce, I have seen that one in the media too. What are those workers making? Minimum wage or thereabouts? Let's say it is just 5 bucks an hour just for the sake of arguement. I watched those pickers in some video on tv, they are pretty speedy.. tossing a head of lettuce about one every 2 or 3 seconds. But lets also be generous and say that for this example, they are screwing around.. picking only 1 head every 15 seconds. That would be 240 head of lettuce in an hour. Increasing the price of a head of lettuce by just ONE NICKLE, will mean that the workers could be given a $12 per hour raise.. for a total of around 17 bucks per hour. I know a LOT of Americans who would beat the doors down to get a chance at a job that pays 17 bucks an hour. At the REAL speed at which they pick lettuce, they could give that $12 an hour raise by increasing the cost of a head of lettuce ONE PENNY.
the way our gubmint works(or doesn't) we'd end up susidizing them to not grow lettuce.
Do you mean immigrant...or illegal immigrant?
You need to be VERY clear.
ROFL!
susie
Illegal construction laborers in NE Virginia, hanging sheetrock for example, were making $14/hour last summer. Unskilled, undocumented, under the table.
I work part time for an armored car company, which required I already hold a state pistol permit; pass DOT physicals and drug screening; background check; range qualify to company standard; and de facto provide my own weapon (not strictly required, but company weapons are garbage). Starting wage: $11/hr, but of course after all the witholdings more like $7.50 or so. There are people in that company with 3-4 years experience who wish they made $14/hour.
There is something fundamentally wrong when working Americans only pray to be paid like an illegal alien.
"I know a LOT of Americans who would beat the doors down to get a chance at a job that pays 17 bucks an hour."
Well, you don't know me but count me in; see my post #29.
*crickets*
The 14 bucks an hour an immigrant makes isn't steady work. No doubt if the employer had full time work paying 14 an hour he'd hire legal workers.
Go to any public housing project in America and see droves of people who won't work.
Read my tagline.
Watched a major network bit on the danger of eating lettuce on TV last night. No more lettuce for me after learning the truth about eating lettuce and other uncooked vegetables.
That's the key. A legal"guest worker" program that can be enforced and pays for itself. Bush gets it, but the panderers in Congress don't. And since they pander to several different groups, nothing is likely to happen. Shame on all of us.
After reading the first two paragraphs of this article, I thought it was some kind of joke or parody. The guy complains about his Federal tax dollars going to support the University of California, yet he's from West Virginia -- which has long had a reputation as the welfare capital of the U.S. filled with taxpayer-funded monuments to Robert "Sheets" Byrd.
Aha? Ros banez yache benefuce "ironhead."
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