'Jobs Americans Won't Do' — the Lie That Broke a Nation and the Economic and Social Devastation It Hid

PJ Media ^ | 11/20/25 | Jamie K. Wilson

[SeekAndFind]

Charlotte, N.C., is making headlines this week because dozens of construction sites have gone silent. ICE swept through the region, and the labor force evaporated almost instantly. A major American city discovered, in real time, that its building boom was being held together by workers who couldn’t legally be there. Watching that footage hit me hard, because I’ve seen it before — not on the evening news, but in the slow collapse of my own childhood community.

I grew up forty miles north of Louisville, Ky., in a one-stoplight town held together by tobacco, construction, and the kinds of gritty jobs that built the region’s character. My dad ran a small construction contracting business and held a small tobacco base, which gives you the legal right to grow a certain weight of tobacco. My brothers and I worked tobacco as teenagers, starting at 12 or 13, and my brothers did construction with Dad as soon as we were old enough to hold a hammer.

Those jobs weren’t easy. Tobacco paid around $10 an hour in the early-to-mid 1980s, the equivalent of $30 today, and you earned every penny. The work was filthy, exhausting, and dangerous: Sticky sap soaked into your skin, July sun cooked you alive, and harvest season meant hatchets, long metal spikes, and dark, dusty barn lofts where one bad step could break a leg. But we did it gladly because the pay was good and the work meant something. Every kid I knew in high school worked tobacco, along with a good share of the adults. It was the backbone of the community.

Then illegal labor arrived, and things began to shift. The first wave hit the tobacco farms. Farmers who had paid teenagers and local laborers fair wages realized they could hire them...

[SeekAndFind]

Farmers who had paid teenagers and local laborers fair wages realized they could hire adults from Mexico and Central America for far less and house them in the kinds of conditions Americans would never tolerate: eight men to a sagging, leaking trailer with no electricity, no running water, no insulation.

They were paid in cash, they didn’t complain, they worked year-round, and they had no leverage because they knew their employers could always get them deported.

Within a few seasons, American teenagers were no longer hired. Within a few more, the full-time local farmhands, many of whom had been in the area for generations, were gone, too. My parents saw exactly what was happening when one neighbor proudly moved an entire illegal crew into a run-down trailer on their property on a hillside, right in the center of a dairy cow pasture. They thought they had found a clever solution to their labor costs.

[Captainpaintball]

It became a self fulfilling prophecy. Cheap labor, maliciously, purposely incompetent schools, media, social media, bad and lazy parents, government subsidies, cheap goods and poisonous food all contributed and created two or three generations of fat stupid lazy weak entitled shitizens

[stanne]

They wish it was a lie.

It’s slavery

[srmanuel]

This is so true, I grew in a farming community in NE Florida, near Gainesville, the major crops at that time were watermelons and tobacco.

I spent my summers growing up working for the fathers of my best friends, the summers would start by pitching watermelons, we were paid $25 a Semi-Truck load, we could easily load 2 Semi-Trucks a day, $50/day in the early to mid-70s was good money, when watermelon season ended, cropping tobacco season began and as the author stated, it was really hot nasty work and when tobacco season ended, bailing hay season began which ended right around the time school started in the fall.

[ComputerGuy]

An excellent read. Highly recommended.

[dfwgator]

This is so true, I grew in a farming community in NE Florida, near Gainesville, the major crops at that time were watermelons and tobacco.

---

And “Gainesville Green”.

[Captainpaintball]

Re#2: and I forgot the obvious: illegals and turd worlders and good ole murrican crapitslist greed

[SeekAndFind]

Native-Born Workers Rise By 2 Million Under Trump To A New Record High, As Foreign-Born Plunge By 1.6 Million

[SeekAndFind]

One can debate how effective Trump has been in following up on his various campaign promises, but one place where he has been steadfast is reversing the Biden admin's disastrous labor policies which favored foreign-born workers (mostly illegal aliens) over native-born workers.

Today's jobs report, which had something for everyone, including forecast-busting payrolls offset by the highest unemployment rate in 4 years at 4.4% (driven by another jump in black unemployment), was indisputably strong when it comes to one thing: the rotation from foreign born workers to domestic ones.

To wit: in September, the number of native-born workers surged by 676K (after the August drop of 561K), while foreign-born workers dropped by 70K.

[srmanuel]

I only heard about that; I never participated in the cultivation of such a product. :-)

[dfwgator]

Same here. ;)

[stanne]

Good

[FreedomNotSafety]

It became impossible to hire “children”, I bailed hay at 12 years and roofed at 15, due to union and progressive socialism driven safety and wage laws. I owned my own manufacturing company by the time I was 30. I employed my children, illegally in my factory, they are now graduate school engineers. My grandfather completed grade 9 and my father HS. Hard working briars the entire lot.

Illegals make for easier employees because they are not reportable for safety and employment laws. Again Union and socialist driven policies.

But if you are from some areas of the country especially parts of the south and Appalachia you know about the “that’s ‘forbidden word’ work” attitude. Which many times accompany an attitude of not working for low wages. Now our country is obsessed with “good jobs” which means minimal effort and skill but high wages. We believe it is our right as US citizens.

I have worked some the hottest nastiest jobs imaginable for illegal immigrant type wages. Those opportunities now only belong to illegals. But back in those ancient days a family of 4 didn’t qualify for $72k in benefits if they didn’t work.

[Albion Wilde]

bump

[central_va]

You f’g idiot. You are part of the problem you egomaniac a$$hole. Read the article.

[DugwayDuke]

We need to go after those employing the illegals. Arrest a few of them, the jobs go away, and the illegals will go home.
Best of all, you won’t have film of ICE arresting people.

[central_va]

You are an Anti American knee jerk clown.

[central_va]

You can’t blame this on unions you a$$clown.

[central_va]

I hope all those contractors that factored in cheap illegal labor loose their shirts. Go out of business you crooks. I guess their wives won’t be getting that tennis bracelet for Christmas with traitor loot.

[Ciaphas Cain]

I just share this article on Facebook. Got lots of friends who grew up in tobacco-growing families. That is going to make them especially appreciate this piece.