Two weeks ago I vacationed near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One thing strikingly different than living in Texas was that there were few Hispanics. In Texas, Hispanics are found in all walks of life, from doctors to janitors.

With so many impoverished Hispanics illegally moving to Texas over the southern border each year, they have taken over most of the lower-skill jobs because they will work for less than American citizens. Go to any restaurant, hotel, or construction site and all of the basic manual labor tasks are being done by low-income Hispanics.

Anyway, while on vacation, in the hotels we stayed in all of the maid staff and other help were white. The same was true of all of the restaurants we ate in, from the cooks, to the bus boys, to the grounds keepers. I felt like we were in a time machine and in a strange land.

An interesting note about the maid staff at the hotels was the good cheer that they were in. They were constantly chatting among themselves and seemed very content as they went about their work. This reminded me that, yes, there is dignity to manual labor, and yes, white people can still do manual labor.

This runs counter to the fashionable argument today justifying the open border policy with Mexico. The argument goes that America could just not function without all of the low-skill workers coming in to do all of the manual labor. Well, that is ridiculous. It may drive prices up some, if American citizens (whether white, black, or any other race) must do the work - but the work will still get done, one way or another.

This does not mean that low-income Hispanic immigrants, whether legal or illegal, do not do hard and valued work. But the U.S. economy is not dependent on having millions of uneducated, impoverished persons moving here each year. That is just a silly argument.

There is no valid justification for the open border policy with Mexico, where 3 million people are implicitly allowed to sneak into the U.S. each year. True, securing the border would cause some inconveniences, as Steve Sailer points out:

Sure, this would worsen the upper middle class’s Servant Problem. But American civilization will not crumble just because we would no longer have the Western world’s lowest-paid pool guys.

I don’t have any trouble letting a lot of Hispanics legally immigrate to the U.S. each year - but what about the other 6 billion people on the planet? A significant number of them would also like to move here. Why do Hispanics (overwhelmingly Mexicans) get such special treatment? Why not spread the privilege around? Why not allow more people from China, Taiwan, Korea, Africa, Mongolia, Poland - wherever, have a shot at moving here? They will be lining up to come here, to the most affluent country on earth, with vast opportunities for those that work hard.

The current immigration policies are profoundly unfair and irrational. When will some political leaders, either Republicans or Democrats, have the guts to take the steps needed to properly secure the southern border?

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2005 at 12:30 am and is filed under Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. For Trackbacks to this post, use URL: http://nospeedbumps.com/wp-trackback.php?p=334