Excerpt Of The Day #2: Our Country Doesn’t Need More Unskilled Laborers

by John Hawkins | May 22, 2007 12:15 pm

“But some of these employers, some of these big business types said yesterday “they’re unhappy with the result because it would not cure the severe labor shortages they foresee in the coming decade.” Labor shortages? If there are labor shortages, it means that salaries ought to be skyrocketing. Labor shortages? This is one of the most bogus excuses I’ve heard yet. Not labor shortages, cheap labor shortages. Cheap labor shortages is what they are talking about.

…I know they’re saying that in agriculture, labor shortages, according to news stories say that fruits and vegetables are rotting. They can’t be harvested. Look, well, you tell me, I was in LA over the weekend, and I went to dinner on Saturday night, and we had some vegetables, and they didn’t say there was a shortage. They didn’t say, “Well, the spinach, no, we don’t have it, it’s rotting out there because of labor shortage.” At breakfast some guys were having fruit. Seemed to be beaucoup fruit, this is southern California. I haven’t seen any shortages. Have you seen pictures of these veggies and fruits rotting on the vine? Have you seen pictures? I haven’t, either. All I know is that whenever I want them, I’m able to get them, and I don’t eat fruit. Can’t stand fruit. But I’ve seen people that order it and eat it and haven’t had any problem with it. Haven’t seen any signs, “Warning, no fruit for breakfast today at Denny’s; there’s a labor shortage in the illegal alien ranks, and there’s rotting out there.”

..Folks, I’m just going to tell you something. If cheap unskilled labor is what this country needs to continue to be the major player in the world that it is, if cheap unskilled labor is precisely the key to continued prosperity and economic growth and the maintenance of our superpower status, then Mexico ought to be right behind us, because they lead the world in it. Every nation that has cheap, unskilled labor ought to be threatening our status as world superpower. I’ve never heard anything more absurd. I have never heard anything more insulting, that without cheap labor, we can’t survive as we have always known the United States to be.” — Rush Limbaugh[1]