From outside the box

I've heard a lot of talk lately that Mexican immigrants are taking away our jobs. This may be true for some jobs, but certainly not all jobs. When I was younger, I tried some of the jobs that these people are doing. I was fit and strong and not afraid of hard work (well, maybe sometimes). I've picked oranges, hoed weeds in the fields, picked apples, shoveled chicken manure from the chicken houses, picked up garbage back when garbage was put into heavy 50 gallon metal drums, and shoveled olives in the "hot houses". I performed these jobs for anywhere from a few hours (hoeing weeds, acres of weeds!) to a week (the chicken manure). That was it, that was all I could do! Anybody who says that Americans would do these jobs if there was only better pay, has never done these jobs.

In the winter of 74, I worked in an olive processing plant in Orland. There were two kinds of jobs there: the ones that the white guys could do, and the harder ones that only the Mexicans could do. Now I don't have answers to the boarder problems that we are facing but I know that many of these immigrant workers can do things the average white guy not only won't do, but is not even capable of doing! Ever since that olive plant experience, I have had the highest respect for immigrant workers. I know there are those who would come here and mooch off of the system, just as there are more than a few white homegrown low lifers who do the same thing. But the folks that come here to work, legally or illegally, we are lucky to have them, we need them.