The Effect of Illegal Immigration and Amnesty On Rural Employment
As the US government has enabled illegal aliens to remain in this country and work, White Americans have swelled the ranks of the unemployed and become consumers of entitlements.
OUR FRUITFUL AGRICULTURAL VALLEY IN Eastern Washington got a bus line—more like 16-passenger vans—a few years ago. The line was funded by a voter-approved sales tax increase and matching grants from the state.
At first, the buses were never full, and sometimes mostly empty. Individuals complained and questioned the need of a bus line. But that changed after the economic meltdown of 2008. And lately most mornings somebody is standing, or sitting on the hard back floor, where the wheelchair lift is, as the bus barrels down the highway at 60 mph. There is talk among the passengers of the need for a bigger bus, another sort of entitlement, but no such talk from the bus line’s employees.
What’s interesting to note is that almost 100 percent of the riders are White Americans. An occasional Mexican rides. They are everywhere in this county. But usually a disabled old Mexican and a young girl who works 23 miles down the valley at McD’s are the only ones riding. Most Mexicans drive, because they have cars, some, very nice ones, and they have jobs. The rest of the riders are Whites, and a few Blacks, who were born in America. And almost all are on public assistance.
When I first came to this valley in 1980, a lot of the Whites worked in the fruit orchards, which gave them a low income for six to nine months out of the year. The work used to be done by fruit tramps—some called them winos—and it’s true that many of them did drink, but they also worked for a living and paid for their lifestyle out of their own pockets, not from a monthly government check. In the 70s, the hippies came in and bought cheap land in the hills. They were mostly lazy orchard workers, and the farmers didn’t like them. But in the late 70s, farmers began importing illegal aliens to harvest their crops and prune their trees.
The farmers claimed that the Mexicans were willing to do work that Whites didn’t want, but that was a bit of a distortion. The truth was: prices for their crops had fallen, and they were going into increasing debt, so farmers had no choice but to suppress the wages. Illegal aliens were less trouble than Whites, because they didn’t complain if they knew they were getting a bad deal. And they were willing to settle for whatever the farmer could pay.
The federal government allowed this situation to continue, and granted amnesty (and green cards) to the illegals at least twice that I am aware of. Around 1980, when I came to this valley, some farmers who wouldn’t say so, but they discriminated against Whites in hiring. At that time, the packing sheds were still bastions of White employment, but it was starting to get harder to find work in the orchards if your skin was white.
All that changed with the issuing of green cards to illegals. Today, in Brewster, Washington, which has become largely Hispanic, Mexican food and clothing stores have popped up on the main street in town. And when the shift changes at the two large packing sheds out on the highway, a swarm of Mexicans crosses to and from the parking lot across the road. The sheds also have busses coming in from points as far as 60 miles south, loaded with green card holders. If you want a job there, a Hispanic person makes the decision about hiring. And, of course, we all know that only White people discriminate in hiring decisions. (One of these sheds was busted for hiring illegals just this year.)
The job situation in other industries has also changed. Go into the local social services offices today, and you are likely to find Hispanics among the few Blacks and the Whites that are applying for benefits, and Hispanic workers at some of the windows. There are enough Hispanic consumers of social services that, when you see an add for a job with the county or the state, it always says “bilingual preferred”. Some local businesses also ask for and get bilingual applicants. Most Whites, for practical purposes, are automatically excluded from these jobs because they are not native Spanish speakers. It seems that our governments have recognized some sort of right to have a translator present at taxpayer expense in government offices, when, in fact, most Hispanics could furnish a family member to do this.
We live in a conservative area of a liberal state. Most of the people in the state live on the west side of the mountains around Puget Sound. They vote mostly Democrat, and are environmentalist in their sympathies. Democrats dominate politics in this state, and they make decisions for Eastern Washington that aren’t good for Eastern Washingtonians, especially poor ones who want to be self-reliant. Save the trees. No more gold mining. Stop this or that. Recycle. Between them and the activism of the hippies that moved in here in the 70s, forestry and mining have largely shut down in our neck of the woods. And efforts to bring in new natural resource based employment have been largely thwarted by people who don’t even live here.
The official unemployment rate in our county sits in the low teens. But the real story is that Mexican unemployment is hardly a blip in that figure, and White unemployment is far higher than the Hispanic rate.
There are still strong, self-reliant people here, who would never take a handout from the government. But I have watched some dip into their social security at the earliest possible moment, just to survive and then try to stretch it without applying for food stamps. Meanwhile their mortgage is being foreclosed.
And the people on the bus? Most of them don’t have much pride left. Many of them seem stupid. Ever hear of brain drain? That’s where smart people leave for better opportunities in the city and leave behind the less gifted and less skilled to scrap for the low-wage jobs. Most of them would be happier working in a packing shed for minimum wage.
Now, if you’re a conservative, I applaud you for your self-reliant American values and your practical good sense. I also agree that our country simply can’t go on supporting people like those that ride the bus. But we need to address immigration, and put a stop to handing over all their jobs in places like this to people who weren’t born in this country. We can handle a few who immigrate legally. We can’t handle a flood of them who immigrate illegally. Allowing such a situation inevitably creates some fallout, which leads to dependency upon the government for both immigrants and Americans.
