HispanicVista Columnists

Whiny Americans demean us all

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Nothing is more disgusting than hearing Americans whine about today’s America and its work force.

Drive through hundreds of counties in the country and count the number of “Americans” working in the flower, strawberry and tomato fields, nurseries, or at construction sites. Do this and wonder what the whiners are complaining about.

The President clearly stated in his recent news conference that those here illegally come to work “in jobs Americans won’t do.”

Contradicting the President are whiners who claim that: (1) There are plenty of Americans who will do the work illegals do. (2) That illegals work for a “dollar” (Pat Buchanan). And (3) that illegals deserve none of the state or federal financed benefits they pay for with their taxes because those taxes paid are “meager.”

Argument 1: If so many Americans are willing to work at jobs illegals do, where are they? People are hired daily at our strawberry, flower and tomato fields and these illegals are hired by the thousands throughout the South and Midwest to work in poultry and meat processing plants. Does any American ever apply for these jobs?  In Arkansas, thousands of American born and bred poverty level Blacks refuse to apply for these jobs at Tyson Foods because they want more money.  So be it. Not enough pay, the whiners whine.  But if one is unemployed and his unemployment checks (gifts for doing nothing) have run out, doesn’t $6-10 an hour look good? I guess I too vividly remember jobs that paid me a dollar an hour in the 50s and 60s.

Argument 2: Whiners like Pat Buchanan complain that illegals will work for cash and underbid American workers.  Naturally, Buchanan nor any of his supporters can produce any bona fide studies that confirm their view.  They can produce no witness to their claims. The State of California has run many studies and it does all the time and it concludes that the average California agricultural field worker earns more than the state minimum wage and has for years.  California’s minimum wage is 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage.

Argument 3: Denying state and federal “benefits” to people who pay taxes is not only immoral, it is outright theft by family values charlatans.  The “excuse” that illegals only pay “meager” taxes is nonsensical, untrue and insults many Americans who, because of their circumstance, pay the same taxes or less than illegals do.  For example, who pays more in taxes, the South Central Los Angeles woman who collects welfare and aid to children and doesn’t work, or the illegally resident woman in East Los Angeles who works for her money.  The welfare mother pays nothing in Social Security, income taxes and pays only sales taxes, unlike the East Los Angeles woman who pays through the nose for all taxes out of her hard earned income.

The East Los Angeles (or Chicago, or New York, or Miami) woman probably pays Social Security taxes into an account that doesn’t belong to her. She can’t ever collect Social Security benefits qualified for with those tax contributions. As she is not eligible for Section 8 rent subsidies like the South Central woman receives, the illegal alien woman pays property taxes to her city, the city’s schools and county through her rent. Those property taxes consume a far larger percentage of her income than anything the South Central welfare mother will ever encounter during her public welfare career.

Silly, uninformed words like “meager,” and “what part of illegal don’t you understand” are countered by hard work, taxes paid for unavailable benefits, Americans who refuse to work at any price, free enterprise and guts, pure sheer guts.

Contreras’ newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? – is available at www.amazon.com Contact at: draoul@att.net