Still thinking about illegal immigration, one of the arguments that I hear and have to take issue with is the one which asserts that these illegals don’t take jobs from Americans because they do jobs that Americans won’t do.  I keep trying to figure out which jobs these may be.  But it doesn’t really matter.  The simple fact is that illegal immigrants aren’t here to satisfy our needs; they are not here to do us any favors.  They are here because they cannot find work in their home country (you know, the country whose flag they fly while demanding that we give them certain rights).  And the jobs they do are not jobs that Americans won’t do, but jobs that Americans don’t have to do, for various reasons.

I’ll deal with the easiest reason first.  Many of these jobs are jobs that Americans don’t have to do because they have options other than work.  First, they can get themselves on welfare, for various reasons, excuses, whatever.  Second, they can live well by engaging in illegal activites like drug trafficking.

On the other hand, we have those Americans who don’t do these jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do because they have other work options.  Let’s take me.  (Like most humans, I am one of my favorite subjects.  Unlike most humans, I freely admit it.) Some of the jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do are in the building trades and food service, in both of which I have worked.

When I was a kid, I did some construction work; I didn’t like it.  Not because it was beneath me, but because it just didn’t interest me.  I had other options, so I took them.  And I have more options now than I did back then.  So, instead of constructing a building, I could design one.  If that building that I designed were a church, I could—this is no joke—pastor it (that is, if a had a calling in that direction, which I don’t).  If that building were part of a school, I could teach in it (but for the fact that I don’t have a teaching certificate; never went for it, don’t care to, but the point is I could).  If that building were a college lecture hall, I could lecture in it.  If that building were a restaurant—again, no joke—I could manage it.

I do not do those jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do not because I am too good for them; I am not.  Besides, I have done many of them.  No, the reason I do not do those jobs, is that my present socio-economic status gives me other options; and I have taken those options, just like these illegals would if they were in my shoes.  I don’t do those jobs because I don’t want the pay cut involved; and neither would illegal immigrants if they were in my shoes.

And this is not true because of some mystical substance called White Privilege.  I wouldn’t know White Privilege if it jumped out of the ground and bit me in my buttocks.  For one thing, although I am so fair complected as to pass for white, thanks to a lot of interracial marriage on my mother’s side, I have always identified more with my hispanic background, than with my Norwegian and Scotish; after all, Spanish was my first language.  On every occasion possible I have found a way to make clear to people around me that I am hispanic.  So anyone willing to grant me White Privilege would hardly have been disposed to grant me that after I identified myself as being of hispanic background.  Moreover, my hispanic father rose to a rather high—and I do mean high—rank in federal service (which federal service I won’t identify of course; everything about me is classified—bit it wasn’t the Postal Service!).  For another thing, talk of White Privilege is ad hominem; and as such, it can falsify no proposition whatsoever.

I can imagine that if my dead ancestors from both streams of my heritage could see me and my siblings and cousins they would look at us and at each other and say,  “Who could ever think that our descendents could have such opportunities?”  My siblings and cousins are some of the first in our families’ histories to have graduate level educations, to own our own homes before retirement, and to be able to say, “No, I won’t take that job because I can’t afford the pay cut.”  And that is something that very few—if any—of our ancestors could ever have said.

Jobs that Americans won’t do?  Creo que no.  (I don’t think so.)  Jobs we don’t have to  do—because we have other, higher-paying, options.

But isn’t all that just another way of saying that, in fact, these are jobs that we won’t do?  Sure.  But two things need to be said about that.  First, the assertion that These are jobs that Americans won’t do seems to imply that these are jobs that Americans think that they are too good to, but Mexicans are not.  My point is that, while there may be those Americans who feel that way—probably liberals, society’s Guardians (in the Platonic sense), the greatest reason “we” aren’t doing those jobs is because “we” don’t need to in order to make a living.  Second, there are Americans who would do those jobs if there were not effectively being paid not to work.  If they were truly in the same (jobless, welfare-less) conditions as illegals, we would probably be surprised at the sort of jobs Americans will do.  Both of which are just two ways of restating my argument: these are jobs that, for whatever reasons, Americans don’t have to do because they have other options.