So many Americans are out of work yet every time you look at the newspaper classifieds or various store fronts you see nothing but want ads. What gives?

“Those are jobs Americans just won’t do.” is often the answer I get. Bullshit is what I say.

This morning I had the perfect chance to test that theory. Coming out of a Safeway, I came across one of those noisy street/parking lot sweeper vehicles. There was a dirty, sweating (at 7:30 in the morning) Hispanic male working on the machine clearing a clog. I walked up and asked him (in English) if he spoke English. “A little.” He said.

“How long have you been doing this job?”   “About two years”, he replied, using fingers to make sure I understood.

“How much do you get paid (if you don’t mind telling me)” “$9.50 an hour.”, he replied.  (9 dollar, 50 were his exact words.)

“Have you gotten a raise in that time?” “No.”

I pulled out my wallet and handed the guy a ten dollar bill. “Let me show you how capitalism works. Here’s an hour of your pay for answering 4 questions. Learn the language and go to school and you’ll get ahead. Have a nice day.” (And he thanked me.) I mean, do you think he wants to do that same job until he is 65 and can’t climb in and out of the truck? Or do you think he’d like to do more, to earn more?

His is clearly a dirty, sweaty, stinky, sticky job. And for $9.50, I wouldn’t want to do it either. But his very presence in this country explains why he is willing. He isn’t going to find a job like mine (even entry level) with no education, language skills, or previous experience. His options are that, or construction, or landscaping, or food service—none of them more than entry level.

But because he is here, whatever company he works for is able to get him to do it for less money that a white, college-going 20 year-old would do. If he wasn’t here (and the rest of his village wasn’t as well), his company would have to pay more in order to entice that college kid to do that job. The company (Aramark, or whomever) would have to pay that “living wage” in order to get the work done. They would have to either charge the Safeway stores of the world more for that same work, or they would have to absorb the wage difference themselves. Not likely.

So they would charge Safeway more who would have to raise the price of milk, eggs, and cheese, etc. a penny to offset that cost increase. But wouldn’t you rather pay five, ten, even 25 cents more per receipt at Safeway in order to get a college kid a job and have fewer (potentially) illegal aliens in the country?

See, it is the promise and availability of lower skilled labor earning lower wages that keeps the current status quo. It isn’t that Americans won’t do that job. It’s that we won’t do it for the wages you’re paying the Mexican to do it. Raise that wage to a respectable amount and you’ll find college kids willing to work. Granted, there are some trust-fund funded kids who will never want anything but to be the CEO of a firm on day one.

But that is the devil about entry level work. The worker should not expect a huge wage rate when they start working somewhere. (Yet, they will.) The fast food industry is entry level work unless you go into management. I worked for Wendy’s as an assistant manager. I made good money, more than the grill man, but less than the co-manager and store manager. Years later, when I worked for Wendy’s part time (moonlighting while in the Army), they started me where? Bare bottom minimum wage—for one shift. Then the store manager saw that I wasn’t bullshitting about working there before and really did have mad grill skills. It was probably me running the grill station and the fry station, and coaching the sandwich maker on the proper sequence of sandwich condiments at the same time that did it. I got bumped from “entry level” to skilled level. I quit when I found that the closing shift leader was stealing cash and trying to frame others (including me). But it is an example of how experience equals higher pay—even doing the same work.

Coming back to the promise of and continual stream of cheap labor…. both sides of the political aisle want it but for vastly different reasons. The left wants open borders with little to no regulation or entry requirements. They want people to come here and not assimilate into our culture, but to immerse—in the welfare system we have. In this manner they believe they will capture that voting bloc. We give you free stuff, so vote for us. The right wants the cheap labor faucet wide open for the economic reasons. Big business wants cheaper labor. Big business more often sides with the right so they lobby the right to keep the flow coming. The right thinks they can get their votes because of the similarities between the history of our two cultures. Hispanics are largely Catholic and thus, if asked privately are distinctly pro-life. That is a huge right wing mindset. Hispanics, those who are here legally—having gone through the proper steps, are often in favor or stricter immigration controls—another right wing tenet.

But when push comes to shove, it boils down to freedom versus free stuff. Freedom pays off eventually. Free stuff pays off right now.  Until we get past that, we’re screwed.