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Actually, there are a lot of jobs that Americans won't do, and they're not necessarily badly paid. It's simply that people with the educational and skills level for them (low) are either collecting their "baby mama's" welfare or are living off of their drug sales.

Roofing laborers, painters helpers, construction grunts, etc. are all receiving $10-14 per hour in my area, but there is a definite shortage of native-born folks who want to do it - or can show up for work more than a day or two in succession because of their drug or alcohol habit. We do have some serious problems with the lower-skills end of the American work-force.

Americans also never see a low-skills job as a step to a higher-skills, higher paid job. A lot of the Mexicans and Central Americans and Brazilians do, however, and they have started off as laborers and ended up owning their own companies. But many lower-skilled Americans have lost their impetus and seem to think that starting at ground level is way beneath them. Even though they can barely read and write, have criminal records, etc., they seem to think that having to go to work every day is an indignity.

An interesting question:

Roofing laborers, painters helpers, construction grunts, etc. are all receiving $10-14 per hour in my area, but there is a definite shortage of native-born folks who want to do it - or can show up for work more than a day or two in succession because of their drug or alcohol habit. We do have some serious problems with the lower-skills end of the American work-force.

Here in the Washington DC area when I was growing up 50's to 60's the lower skilled parts of building construction and roofing were predominately done by two groups; local blacks and white guys from down in the Valley of Virginia and near in West Va. counties. When my father had a roof put on his house in the mid-60's it was the same mix of workers doing the job.

In 2002 I had a roof replaced. The stripping crew were all older black men who had been with the company for a good while. They were very efficient and finished in a day and hauled away all the debris. The roofing crew were all Hispanic, Central Americans I suspect. They were a nightmare to deal with. The work they did was good quality it is that they never did much. The replacement of a simple rambler roof and putting on new gutters stretched into a 14 day ordeal. I was on the phone with the owner almost every day asking when his crew would be there or why they took off early (as in 2PM). When they were around they worked very slowly and it was rare for all of the crew to be working at the same time. These events took place right after Thanksgiving and apparently many Latinos consider the whole period from Turkey Day to the end of the 12 Days of Christmas to be a sort of extended semi-holiday. The firm's owner had a large job going on a building in DC and that is where he was spending his time literally sitting on the site to see that the workers spent 8 hours there.

I had to followup and have the owner bring people back to finish several parts of the job left undone. After these people finally departed I must have picked up half a peck of dropped roofing nails as well as numerous stray shingles and hardware used to attach gutters. I even found a complete belt of roofing nails ready to be put into a nail gun, apparently dropped off the roof. As I said the quality of work was good but the manner of doing the job was a shambles. This was also not any cut rate firm but a long established roofing company that does full spectrum work to include historical reproductions. It is not a Latino owned firm. I thought by picking such a company I would get outstanding service.

Roofing laborers, painters helpers, construction grunts, etc. are all receiving $10-14 per hour in my area, but there is a definite shortage of native-born folks who want to do it - or can show up for work more than a day or two in succession because of their drug or alcohol habit. We do have some serious problems with the lower-skills end of the American work-force.

True... a friend of mine (location and name withheld) only hires "illegals" (she follows the letter of the law, but assumes privately that the papers are fake) because she can't get native born workers who will stay with the job, or who are willing to do small things like show up sober every day (she's a painting contractor). And -- because her laborers are from the same ethnic enclave, she doesn't have advertising expenses... a worker moving on knows another reliable person willing to do the same job. And she pays above the local rate for painters.

We're used to cheap and abundant goods and services. Without immigrant labor, we either have to pay more, or have access to less -- or both. There ain't no free lunch, in the labor market or anywhere else.