This is the value in immigrants. They generally work their butts off and will do anything you ask, without complaint. That is, until they get into a government system and learn the ropes, then they become the biggest abusers, complainers, and defrauders.
I will limit that comment to only what I have seen, but in my career as a California state transportation engineer with Caltrans, some of the worst abuses I’ve seen from engineers are among immigrants who are permanently vested and can’t easily be fired.
I’m talking disappearing from work for hours at a time, charging overtime not worked, stealing work items to bring home, using state vehicles for private trips, etc. But hit them with discipline and they know every single union rule protecting them.
Your comments on immigrant workers coincide with my experiences.
Most of them do work endlessly; like they are living their Horatio Alger
life-story. (for lurkers, that’s strong praise for them).
Additionally, some family members in the academic world of agriculture have
seen immigrants (all legal) be real producers and some real laggards.
One undergraduate student ditched her commitment to do the field work necessary
for her research project and switch to another major.
At least she was honest. Her parents told her that such sweaty work
on a research farm was “beneath her”.
I had to hide my anger at this excuse. The student and her parents came from
a certain country where the soil is drenched in the BLOOD of Americans
that hoped to save their country from an invasion by North Vietnam.
It's these type of problems that led us to minimize our workforce and contract out the work. We're just a small real estate operation and about 25 years ago we had 16 full time employees. Today we have 3 and everyone else is a contractor.
My experience with contractors though has been in non union jobs you don't find very many Americans. Our bricklayer is Irish. Our roofer is Polish. Our plumber/heating contractor is Croatian. Our electrician is Bosnian. All these guys have built very successful businesses and are immigrants. All these guys will take on part timers, but they have to show up on time, work late, constantly learn and have a good attitude.