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I do agree with the fact that we often take the best & brightest. I heard back when I was in college that India's #1 export was PhD's and MD's. I don't know if that is literally true or not but I know quite a few Indians living here, some of whom are now US citizens, and they are all well educated! Most every one I know loves their native country but has no intention of returning to India because they can make so much more here!
I have to disagree with his point about immigrants taking unskilled jobs from poorly trained/educated Americans. I believe that many Americans have developed an entitlement mentality and think that they are too good for menial and unskilled labor jobs despite their lack of education and training. These are people of normal intelligance. I will take the example of the cleaning crew in my building. We are big enough to have what is called a "day porter", that is a person who is on duty during working hours to keep the rest rooms tidy and stocked, keep fingerprints off the big glass doors, keep the lobby floor mopped up if the weather is exceptionally wet and take care of spills, etc that might happen. Over the last few years we have had several day porters come and go. There have been white & black Americans af all ages, Asians, and Latinos. Every time and I mean EVERY time we have an American the quality of the work has slipped. The restrooms are routinely out of TP, the trash bins overflow with paper towels, the doors are filled with grimy finger and hand prints and if you have a spill it takes all day to get someone to come to clean it up. What a sad statement.
I am sure that the day porters make minimum wage or slightly above it. (My son & brother-in-law have a small commercial cleaning business.) I know it is a menial job. But why are Americans unwilling to do a good job? What happened to the attitude of if you are going to do it do it right? Right now we have an older Korean man as the day porter. I have never seen him sitting down, the restrooms never look as if they are in need of attention and he always has a pleasant word. The last American was constantly on her cell phone, would spend 30 minutes at a time shooting the breeze with other employees and I would see her in the park across the street several times a day. I don't know what has happened to our work ethic but it is in poor repair.
There are tens of thousands of latino farm workers here in the US. Some are here on a legal guest worker program and others are illegal. These workers make $8-10 and hour and do backbreaking stoop labor. They don't get paid for rainy days when they can't get into the fields. When I was a kid I picked strawberries for a grower and I can tell you that it is HARD work when you do it for hours on end. And I was a teenager and a gymnast! How many people do you know that would do this kind of work for this pay?
The farmworkers are routinely exposed to agriculture chemicals long before the manufactures "safe back in the field" time. These men and women live, for the most part, in deplorable conditions. They work sunup to sundown and then come back to their quarters and have to cook their dinner. A camp with 40 - 50 workers may have only 1 stove. There may be 4 toilets and 2 showers. Many of them have to wash their clothes in a tub with a washboard! The bedding is old and dirty and if they are lucky the grower provides fans for the sleeping area. Some growers, especially those who hire illegal workers, nearly keep their employees in bondage. They are forced to buy everything from the "company store" at outrageous prices. They are charged high rent ($100 a week) for their room. In the end these people may make only $3 an hour. If the weather turns bad they may end up OWING the grower!
I have learned many of these things over the last few years because our church has been engaged in a "Sister Community" relationship with a migrant laborer camp. The program was developed by a farmworker ministry because of a survey that showed that despite the working and living conditions the farmworker's number 1 complaint was loneliness. You have all of these people who are seperated from their families and they may never see anyone outside of the people they live with.
The camp we are paired with happens to hire legal workers and is one of the better ones. The sleeping quarters have screens and glass on the windows. There is heat for cold nights. There is an old 20" TV in the kitchen. I wouldn't send my child there for summer camp!
This grower also treats his workers with some dignity. Sometimes they work 7 days a week but he works alongside them. The grower uses the old school bus they are transported to the fields in to take them to Wal-Mart once a week. If the grass needs cut they have to do it. Of course the grass grows the most when they are working the most and so sometimes it is calf high. They have 45 men there and have 2 stoves. The grower has provided coin operated washers.
Why do they come? Well one of the men who has been coming to this camp ever since we have been a Sister Community is doing it so his children can go to college! Others come because they can provide their family in Latin America with a better standard of living. Some of the young men (who tend to come only once) do it for the money but also as an adventure.
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