July 06, 2005

Jobs Americans Won't Do? An Open Letter To President George W. Bush

From Peter Gadiel

George W. Bush
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, D.C.

Dear George:

You have often said that, because Mexicans are "doing jobs Americans won't do", you won't enforce the laws on immigration that you swore an oath to uphold.

I thought you needed some enlightenment, so the following is an actual, nearly word-for-word record conversation I had recently while filling my gas tank in Danbury, Connecticut.

At the next pump, a fellow was filling his truck's tank. On the door was the name of a landscaping business. I asked him if competition from competitors who hire illegal aliens was damaging his business.

With not another word from me, his volunteered response was:

"No, I used to get 'em through a contractor at $30.00 per hour. He'd get fifteen and they'd get fifteen. Then he disappeared. Now I get 'em direct. Fifteen per hour is a lot to pay for someone who doesn't speak English, doesn't have a social security card, isn't paying taxes and is here illegally." 

Imagine George, all that information offered freely. To paraphrase our conversation:

Me: "How's business?"

Him: "I'm a crook evading the law, hiring other crooks and all together we evade immigration, income taxes, workmen's comp, unemployment taxes. And I'm mad because I'm not making more money."

George, isn't this a wonderful country? You refuse to enforce the law, and millions refuse to obey it.

It's just grand, isn't it?

Now, I know you'd call these landscaping jobs the sort that "Americans won't do." I guess that, because illegals who can evade taxes are doing them, for you that's proof of your statement.

But here's a surprise for you. Many years ago, I did that kind of work—on weekends and summers in high school and college.

No kidding, George! I did that kind of work! And guess what? My employer actually paid withholding and filed W2 forms, so I paid the right amount of income tax. And he also paid workman's comp and unemployment premiums.

Now, wasn't he a fool?

Maybe the reason you think that landscaping jobs are the sort Americans won't do is because you, unlike I, had a rich Texas oilman for a father.

And I guess that when you were in college getting your "gentleman's C" average, you thought that getting paid by the hour for getting your hands dirty was beneath your dignity.

But the guys I worked with, we didn't think it was beneath us.

And here's another surprise for you and your Immigration Policy Director, Vicente Fox: We had an interracial work force, proving that, contrary to IP Director Fox's belief, "even blacks" would do this sort of work.

But that was the late '60's—while you were out on Dad's cigarette boat and he was pulling in the big bucks from his Mexican oil business.

This is now.

And after seventeen years of Bush-Clinton Administrations, the job I was glad to have is no longer available to Americans currently in their teens and twenties.

Notice George I said "no longer available." I didn't say "not wanted."

Because I know from talking to young people that they do want these jobs and can't get them—because crooks like the guy at the gas station, the crooks you refuse to prosecute, those guys can hire peons who are willing to live like slaves and live 30 and 40 in a one family house.

It's a great racket—for them.

Hey, no problem for you guys. Your sort don't want those jobs anyway.

Oh, and by the way George, you pay your TSA screeners at airports only twelve bucks an hour (before taxes, even). Yet Americans will do that work for three bucks less than other jobs that you say Americans won't do for fifteen bucks tax free!

See George, everybody except you guys in Washington, whose jobs can't be outsourced to China, knows that entry level jobs for Americans have been disappearing for a long time. They know that wages are going down.

They also know, again unlike you guys in Washington, that millions of poor people who come from corrupt oligarchies like the one run by your rich pals in Mexico, the ones your dad was in the oil business with, live there in intolerably bad conditions because of the greed of your buddies.

So these illegals come here because they know they'll get free health care, a free K-12 education for the kids, FHA mortgages from your Administration so they can drive housing costs up, a driver's license, citizenship if their wives can birth a child here, and probably an amnesty from you.

And all they gotta do is displace an American from a job and work for peanuts.

So George, everybody knows you're not telling the whole truth about this "jobs Americans won't do" stuff. They know that you're really saying is that people in your economic class want to increase their fortunes hiring el cheapo serfs instead of Americans at living wages—so you're gonna let your buddies have the slaves, and to hell with the poor American slobs.

But remember what Lincoln said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Well, George, you've been fooling too many people for too long. Time is catching up with y'all.