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Jewish World Review May 23, 2005 / 14 Iyar , 5765 Who will take the worst U.S. jobs? By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
About 10 years ago, I had a nightly radio show in Los Angeles with an African-American co-host. The hot issue of the day was — surprise — illegal immigration.
One night, we were arguing about whether immigrants take jobs away from African-Americans. I insisted that they didn't and that there were a lot of jobs blacks wouldn't take. My co-host challenged me to name one. "OK," I said, bearing in mind the historical context: "How about picking cotton?"
At first, I think he was offended. But then grudgingly, he granted my point. It's well known that blacks once did that work, he said. Why should they do it now? I think his exact words were: "Been there, done that."
(As someone who grew up in the farm country of Central California, let me concede that cotton isn't the best crop on which to make a point like this since almost all of it now is harvested by machine. But, even today, there are still plenty of crops that have to be picked by hand, including most fruits and vegetables.)
My old radio partner and I are still friends. And our exchange on the radio came to mind when Mexican President Vicente Fox, who tried to make much the same point that I made back then, found himself with a face full of huevos rancheros.
Addressing a U.S. business group at a conference in Puerto Vallarta, Fox noted how, in the United States, Mexican immigrants often do the bottom-of-the-barrel jobs, the sort of jobs that — as President Bush is fond of saying —"Americans won't do."
Fox could have said that, and no one would have raised an eyebrow. Instead he said this: that Mexican immigrants are "doing work that not even blacks want to do."
Fox refuses to apologize, insisting he was misunderstood. But in phone conversations with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and later in a meeting with Jackson in Mexico City, the Mexican president expressed regret for his remarks.
What a mess. What Fox said was clumsy and not politically correct. But nor was it factually incorrect.
Don't get me wrong. Fox mishandled this whole affair, and — by playing into the hands of Jackson and Sharpton, opportunistic grievance merchants who represent no one but themselves — he continues to do so.
He shouldn't have singled out one group of Americans — in this case, black Americans — to make a point about how essential Mexican immigrants are to the U.S. economy. Also, I could have done without the not even part, which made it sound like Fox was saying that blacks are at the bottom of the pecking order and willing to do just about anything. And what jobs they won't do, immigrants do.
Be that as it may, Fox was right about how Mexican immigrants — even the illegal variety — have become the MVPs of the U.S. economy. Americans like to say it's because of declining wages. But it's mostly about a diminishing work ethic and what passes for progress from one generation to the next. From slaughterhouses in Nebraska to poultry plants in Arkansas to onion fields in Georgia to construction sites in Colorado, Mexican immigrants are doing grueling, dirty jobs that earlier generations of Americans once did but which now their children and grandchildren take pride in no longer having to do.
That's the way it works in this country. Every generation is supposed to have a cushier job than the one before it. We accept it. We expect it. Whether those Americans are black, white, brown or purple doesn't matter. What matters is that, as Americans, many of these people have come to see things like office work and soft hands and short hours as entitlements — things that come to us because we were lucky enough be born in this country.
That's a shame. And that's exactly the conversation we should be having at the moment, instead of one more bitter argument about race.
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Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
