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Originally Posted by MavKikiNYC
Does anyone else perceive this as a logical/rhetorical non-sequitur?
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Well, it is apparent that some people (including President Bush) assume that Americans won't do jobs that pay low wages, are difficult labor, and/or don't offer benefits. Those people further assume that illegal immigrants would do those jobs, despite low wages, etc. Why do they assume that? Well, they're assuming that employers won't/shouldn't have to increase wages, and therefore Americans won't take the jobs, but illegals (or "unauthorizeds", in the politically correct jargon) will. I don't know if that is saying that Americans shouldn't do certain jobs, but it is certainly assuming that employers ought to be able to pay dirt cheap wages which would be unacceptable to similarly skilled American laborers.
EDIT: The paragraph below taken from
this excellent article does a better job addressing your question than I did:
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A related problem with guest-worker programs is that they subvert the republican virtues that underlie a free society by promoting a master-servant environment. This is what the talk of "jobs Americans won't do" is really about. It's not that our nimble and inventive free market cannot respond to evanescent labor shortages, but rather that certain jobs are considered by lawmakers to be beneath the dignity of an American, and therefore foreigners must be procured to do the work. Improbable as it is that something could be beneath the dignity of a politician, such a perspective moves us dangerously in the direction of Saudi Arabia, a society few Americans would want to emulate.
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