Let’s talk about it…Immigrants

My brother and I had a conversation that raised a great point. I told him my son was joining the Coast Guard. I am so thankful because he has been working since he was 16. His first job was at an art gallery which I was so happy about because this exposed him to the Arts. After that he worked for me doing construction. Then he got a job as a pipe layer. My point in having him work construction was so that he could see how hard it was, and in hopes that he would want to get an education so he wouldn’t have to do hard labor in the future. Instead, he found another labor job.

I was worried that he had chosen this for his career. There is absolutely no shame in labored work, but I just wanted my kids not to have to work so hard if they didn’t have to. That is when my brother said,” you are like most Americans; you don’t want your kids to do hard labor work so you send them to school to educate themselves and become lawyers, doctors, to get business degrees, go into the medical field, or join the military.” He continues, “that’s good but who does the grunt work that you don’t want your children to do?” We have these immigrants who come over, some legally, some illegally, who would consider it a blessing to do the work that I would dread my own children to do. Mexico, the United States and Canada signed a free trade agreement in 1994 that reduced trade barriers between the three countries. Though money was allowed to cross borders more freely, people were not. Millions of Mexican farm Let’s talk about it…workers lost their jobs as cheap U.S. imports put Mexican farms out of business. Many of those migrants eventually wound up in the United States. Many Americans think that Latinos leave their countries of origin in order to pursue the American dream. In fact, economic policies that dry up Latin American jobs drive illegal immigration more than the “American Dream“ that they know very little about. So, my question is, how important are immigrants to our country? Weren’t we all immigrants to this country? Let’s talk about it…