Being a loving and caring parent. The willingness to roll up your sleeves and work hard, sometimes at multiple jobs, just to secure a brighter future for your family. Raising your children to be respectful and well-behaved. Taking responsibility for the care of elderly parents or grandparents, and treating them with the dignity they deserve. Sharing your hard-earned money with relatives who do not have the opportunity to earn such for themselves. The list goes on, but the bottom line is: these are traits which we have been told since we were children that we should aspire to. But for the hundreds of thousands of Hispanic immigrants in our state, many of whom share these traits and more, instead of our admiration, we shower them with contempt and force them to live outside our supposedly enlightened society.
We should ask ourselves one very important question: do we really believe in these traits? What we, in our arrogant pride, would describe as uniquely American values? Regardless of how you would answer that, your behavior reveals the truth of it.
I don't make these observations based on something I read in a book, or online somewhere. In my capacity as a manufacturing manager, I have come in contact with hundreds (if not thousands) of Hispanic immigrants. Some were here legally, and some were not. But based on their behavior alone, it was virtually impossible to tell what their status was. The vast majority were reliable and dependable, and once they had picked up a particular skill, constant supervision was not necessary. They didn't have to be watched to perform their jobs, as many (I'm sorry to say) native North Carolinians do. While we're on that subject:
That data is interesting, because it describes the labor market before any immigrant workers are recruited. That, as Clemens says, “allows us to assess the willingness of native workers to take farm jobs before they can even be offered to foreign workers, meaning that this study does not miss any impact caused by people who self-select out of an area or occupation because of competition with foreign workers.”
That willingness, he finds, is basically nonexistent. Every year from 1998 to 2012, at least 130,000 North Carolinians were unemployed. Of those, the number who asked to be referred to NCGA was never above 268 (and that number was only reached in 2011, when 489,095 North Carolinians were unemployed). The share of unemployed asking for referrals never breached 0.09 percent.
When native unemployed people are referred to NCGA, they’re almost without exception hired; between 1998 and 2011, 97 percent of referred applicants were hired. But they don’t tend to last. In 2011, 245 people were hired out of 268 referred, but only 163 (66.5 percent) of the hired applicants actually showed up to the first day of work. Worse, only seven lasted to the end of the growing season.
Yes, farm work is hard. And many immigrants who hail from equatorial regions may be better accustomed to extended toil in hot weather, since they basically endure the equivalent of two summers on an annual basis. But that doesn't come close to explaining the apparent unwillingness of Tarheels of getting, you know, tar on their heels.
And for those who would cross their arms and still label this population as "criminal" for violating immigration laws, I would ask you this: what would you do? If you lived in an area with 60%-70% unemployment, struggling every day to provide food and shelter to your family, would you say, "Well, in six or seven years I might be able to get some papers that would allow me to cross over into that country where I know I can work and earn money every day. But until then, I'm just going to stay here and watch my children and parents suffer, because it's the right thing to do."
If you would actually say that, then you should slap yourself very hard, several times, until the tears flow steadily. Because you are an idiot that has no business taking care of a houseplant, much less a family.