Baltimore Rioters Picking Lettuce -- THERE'S a Thought

Yesterday's lead editorial in the Washington Post was immensely dismissive of the immigration plan -- which should be called the "illegal immigrants plan" since it only affects immigrants who are in the country illegally (which makes them criminals, by the way) -- proposed by your friend, and the friend of bloggers everywhere, Donald Trump.

Now, the editorial staff over there are not big fans of The Donald, for sure.  But I have to struggle with their rationale about why the plan is so bad.  You can read it yourself, which is why I linked it reluctantly, but if you can't bear to be associated with the Post, and who can blame you, here is the essence.  They feared most prominently that if all the illegals were deported, the economies of a few states, such as California, would tank even further because they were so reliant on illegal labor (of course, they used the term "undocumented", which makes them sound more like lost sheep than criminal aliens).

Then they got really creative, and went to their Department of Statistical Abstraction, the same people who brought you the piece I savaged the other day here.  They came up with this interesting factoid:

"Even if every unemployed American in those states took an undocumented worker’s job — wildly unlikely, given that most Americans are unwilling to do the dirty jobs filled by many immigrants — it would still leave hundreds of thousands jobs unfilled."

 So what does that say about the editorial board's view of the situation?  That apparently it is perfectly fine to allow growers in California to pay -- illegally, and likely in cash under the table untaxed -- illegal aliens.  And that that process is better than forcing the growers to hire legal residents of the USA, with real Social Security numbers and who have to file real Form 1040 paperwork at the end of the year.  It's better than using Americans to do the work.

It's better, in the eyes of the Post, to let the borders swing wide open and keep millions of illegals here than to bus out to those fields the entire unemployed population of, say, Baltimore or Chicago or other places plagued by violence, which the left continually ascribes to lack of economic opportunity -- i.e., jobs!

The jobs are there, people.  We shouldn't care if every unemployed American went to one of the places with those "dirty jobs" and there were still jobs left over, should we?  It would result in full employment and, assuming that we had the borders controlled, it means that we could do H-1 visas specifically for the people with skills needed to fill out those leftover jobs!

I just can't get over the gall that the Post has, to write that there are jobs that Americans are unwilling to do even if they're unemployed.  How on earth do you write that and then ever -- even once -- again complain about inner city unemployment.  Those jobs picking lettuce, or whatever, are precisely what I tried to avoid by going into hock to get an education.  How do you think I feel watching unemployed young men and women burn down parts of their community, and have the apologetic left say it's because there are no jobs -- when there absolutely are jobs, so many of them that growers have to use illegal aliens to do them?

I don't know if it is logistically feasible for Trump's plan actually to be done; deporting a few million people is quite an effort.  But if you're going to challenge the logistics, at least admit that the man has a vision as a starting point to work the kinks out of.  That's quite a bit more than some of his rivals for the nomination have, and certainly beyond anything any Democrat has, or ever will, come up with.

This should be required reading in Baltimore.  Let them pick lettuce.  Maybe they'll get the incentive to look for something better for themselves and, you know, earn it.
 
 Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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