There Is No Such Thing As “Jobs Americans Won’t Do”

12 Apr, 2005 by John Hawkins

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One phrase you often hear tossed around during immigration debates is, “Illegal immigrants do jobs Americans won’t do.”

However, that’s totally untrue. There is no such thing as a “job Americans won’t do;” there are only “jobs Americans won’t do at a certain price.”

For example, how many people out there would be interested in shoveling elephant crap at the circus? It’s likely that very few of you would. However, what if I said you were going to be paid 10 million dollars a year to shovel elephant dung? In that case, it would be likely that a very high percentage of you would suddenly become quite willing to grab a shovel and get ankle deep in “elephant leavings” if it meant you could become rich.

The same thing is true with jobs illegal aliens do except, of course, it’s on a much smaller scale.

Illegal aliens depress wages and not just because they’re willing to work for less because they usually come from third world countries with dismal economies.

Many illegals (There’s debate about the percentages) get paid cash under the table and don’t report their income or pay Medicare & Social Security taxes. For the illegals who have fake ID and are on a payroll somewhere, you can be certain that they’re going to do everything possible to minimize the amount of taxes they pay each week because they can always just disappear when the IRS comes calling for the rest of the money.

Then there are medical bills, which most illegals don’t have to worry about. If they get injured, they just show up at an emergency room where they can’t be denied treatment by law and then they skip out on the bill.

What do they have to lose?

Chances are they aren’t going to get caught because we make minimal efforts to ferret out illegals once they get past the border and even if they do get caught after not paying taxes or medical bills, they’re not going to be asked to reimburse the money. They’re just going to be shipped back home for a little vacation before they slip through our porous border security and go back to work.

How would you like to try to compete for a job in an industry full of people who may or may not have to pay Medicare and Social Security taxes, who pay far less taxes than you if they pay them at all, and who don’t have to buy health insurance? If you did, you might find yourself priced out of the field and next thing you know, your job might be declared one that “Americans won’t do.”