The US needs migrant farm workers not because Americans are lazy, but because Americans are privileged.
I wish people (on the left) would stop saying that "immigrants do jobs Americans don't want" because that just really plays into the right-wing frame of "lazy people don't wanna work".
The assertion that people (whoever they are, and it's usually used to demonize some group); that "they don wanna work" claim is a nonsense canard that just gets re-upped throughout history apparently. And nobody pushing this should be taken seriously at all.
The text headline is in mocking alternating caps and says in quotations nobody wants to work anymore, and then the rest is newspaper print screenshots from various years. 2022 According to a new survey released by TinyPulse, 1 in 5 executive leaders agree with this statement: no one wants to work These same leaders cite a “lack of response to job 2014 What has happened to the work ethic in America? Nobody wants to work anymore. It has not always been that way. When I first started to work as a teenager, I saw people work hard. 2006 like nobody wants to work anymore and when they do 1999 Nobody wants to work anymore Cecil said They all want to work in 1981 off this land last week But they just fooled around they didn’t want to work nobody wants to work anymore 1979 nobody wants to work anymore — disgusted businessman 1969 called Nobody wants to work anymore Talking about un 1952 everybody was getting too darned lazy and nobody wants to work anymore that’s the truth if I ever heard it 1940 trouble is everybody is on relief or a pension — nobody wants to work anymore 1937 counties are complaining that nobody wants to work anymore there is work it is reported for 15. 1922 it is because nobody wants to work anymore unless they can 1916 he answered the reason for food scarcity is that nobody wants to work as hard as they used to I asked a
The truth is those farm jobs taken by migrants don't pay well and the simple truth is that citizens are able to get other better jobs that pay better, are less physically wrecking, and are in better conditions. And if the immigrants could qualify or manage to get a better paying job, they do it too. The farm jobs are just hard and don't pay well. And any job that's also physically tough and challenging, it's a reality that most people can't do it, or at least most people could only manage to do it for a limited number years during their life. So that really makes these jobs quite niche! These farm jobs need workers who are forced to work for less for some reason, and are at a time in their life they are physically capable of doing that and don't have physical limitations that would prevent it.
There are a ton of people who are not, for example, technically qualified as disabled in a way for criteria of Medicaid, but nevertheless many have medical conditions or physical limitations that make employment in a lot of jobs IMPOSSIBLE. These people are not "lazy" and it's disability discrimination to even innuendo such a thing, never mind claim people in such situations "don wanna work" because it's speculated that such people are somehow pathetic.
And yes, I've seen this asserted, in public, by a writer who is ostensibly not right wing. They claimed that "the average American worker feels most of these jobs are beneath them and/or is too lazy". Not the more likely scenario that Americans can JUST GET OTHER JOBS; which is quite obviously the more common reason. And should people who can get better paying jobs with better conditions be shamed for taking them? Seriously? I don't think anybody should be shamed for not being physically able to do that work either, because I'm not a eugenicist.
Even if the government forced anyone and everyone to take less paying and physically demanding farm jobs instead of working as grocery store clerks and doctors, there would still be labor shortages, just of the other jobs. We already have a doctor shortage, the idea that licensed doctors would be sent out to pick tomatoes is not about doctors being elitist and uppity, though many are; it's about us really needing doctors – even more so if we have health insured Americans barely physically capable being injured from working on the farms!
This whole discussion about undocumented workers is truly preposterous, but also very sinister and reveals all the disturbing eugenics and Calvinistic judgement, sometimes subtle, that's involved in people's attitudes about this stuff because of decades of skewed and distorted Christian right-wing propaganda.
And I have read that decades ago, apparently it was common for migrant farm workers to actually be migrants, and cross back and forth over the Mexico border. But then things got more and more hostile toward Mexicans who then found it easier to just stay in the US for the work they desperately needed, but didn't find it financially easy to get the right documents. Because again, farm work doesn't pay a whole lot. Toughening the requirements and making it harder to be legally documented, and doing harder harsher control at the border sounds like the wrong direction if you want to fill those low paying farm jobs that people can do only at a certain point in their life if they don't have physical limitations.
And of course instead nobody is suggesting that food prices should rise, so that they can offer better pay, so that attracts documented immigrants and Americans to these jobs. And that wouldn't even make sense probably because I don't think there are even enough people who are in a position or time in their life to take these jobs even if they pay a lot more. But instead of considering anything like that, Trump is apparently suggesting some bastardized wink and nod exploitation arrangement in lieu of work visas for the indentured servitude of undocumented immigrants who would be under the control of "the owners", as if their current bad labor bargaining position wasn't already bad enough.
Sure seems like MAGA has been had because Republicans have no idea how to govern an actual functional society.