First off, Bush's comments are pure BS because no one has picked cotton via manual labor in the United States for at least 50 years
Cotton is harvested and bailed by combine tractors and mostly automated equipment, which highlights the absurdity of importing unskilled, illiterate non English speaking manual labor into a high tech society based on increasingly automated methods of production
Seems to me that Bush's comments undercut the basic premises of his argument which is ultimately self defeating
I personally worked in a lot more than 105 degree weather ( for minimum wage, no less) doing a wide variety of jobs when I was young, including cotton farming so I'm calling BS on GW on this one too.
I dare Bush to try to produce a cotton picking illegal alien because it ain't gonna happen
Most illegals are working in non agricultural jobs and are displacing young Americans from entry level jobs like landscaping, construction, restaurant and other starter jobs that high school kids use to start their work careers
Illegals have destroyed the high paying skilled trades jobs that were the backbone of the working class American dream - and that's a fact
I'm a big proponent of merit based immigration to attract the worlds best and brightest to our economy. I'm also an employer so I like low wages as much as anyone, but I'm also smart enough to see that the economic dislocations created by the two tier legal/ illegal economy is unnecessarily destroying the foundations of the American economy
Probably intentionally
Can you imagine asking a Black to pick cotton? You’d be lynched!