Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works (via Mowser)

Forked mouth.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

The economy is pretty good up here in the Dakotas. It's actually, in some regions and types of work, difficult to find workers. The discussion that drives me crazy, then, generally goes something like this:

"Those Mexicans come in and take all the jobs. And, I tell you what, they better learn to speak our language!"

Something like that. Then there's more yammering along those lines before the conversation goes like this:

"I can't get anyone to work on (the farm/the business/the shop). I can't afford to pay them what they ask now. For the work I need done, I can't afford to hire anyone! There's no one to work."

My suggestion, which I do not tend to voice aloud and hide behind a grimace, is to consider hiring some of "those Mexicans" that are supposedly taking all the jobs. I also suggest that many English-speaking Americans can't even speak the language. Seriously.

What jobs are they taking? The jobs we don't want to do but must be done?

The truth is, few Americans are willing to take certain kinds of jobs. We expect more for ourselves: more benefits, better pay, breaks, and certainly as little manual labor as possible. Maybe some are lazy -- I don't know, though I don't think that's fully accurate. Still, you won't find many of us out in the strawberry or broccoli fields of California, hoeing and working. Unless they invent a machine that we can drive to do the work, we don't do it. We still expect to have that produce in the supermarket, though, even in winter. We like the lettuce and tomatoes on our fast food burgers that we eat while complaining about the immigrants whose hands helped bring that food to us.

There's still a pretty good work ethic up here; I see it in the groups when we go to Nicaragua where we work like dogs all day in the hot sun. That, however, is a week or two experience and not our daily grind. I don't know that we'd be throwing ourselves into such a job every day for our livelihood. I know I'd probably look for something a little less extreme.

It's an odd mash-up and I'm not about to make gigantic, locked-in assumptions about different ethnic groups. There are plenty of hard-working Americans in dangerous and back-breaking jobs (mining comes to mind). I simply find it more and more tiring to hear the litany of complaints, ranging from language threats to job-stealing and not be aware of how much we have grown to depend upon the people we are verbally cutting up.

You know, when I walk into WalMart and see Spanish on a sign, I don't get freaked or upset. My blood pressure doesn't go up, and I don't reach for an American flag or stick a bumper sticker on my car that says something about learning the language. I think about Nicaragua and how much I want to learn Spanish and the people I love down there, and I move on. Frankly, the Hispanic culture is a rich, family-based culture that we could learn a bit from in our day and age.

It sure is nice to be able to bitterly complain about the people keeping us from getting scurvy or rickets during the winter in the guise of alleged culture and job destruction while, out of the same mouth, complaining that we can't find workers to fill low-paying jobs.

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