NPR has released an interesting series of articles interviewing business owners from across the country— oftentimes from very Republican places, such as Alabama or Tennessee— about why they employ undocumented workers.
The results are unsurprising: undocumented workers are willing to do jobs that American citizens aren’t, are sometimes willing to work for less or without benefits, and are often harder-working and more reliable.
The latest interview is with a Missouri restaurant owner who says quite frankly what would happen if she could not hire undocumented Mexicans to work in her kitchen for $11-16 per hour with no benefits: “We’d close. I’d sell everything for whatever I could get for it, and we’d close.”
When asked why she didn’t hire American, she was equally frank: “That is the biggest joke. I hear it all the time. We put ads in the newspaper, on Facebook, on Craigslist, in the window. The [American citizens] who come in will show up for one shift. They will not be clean. They will probably not be sober. They will ask for money at the end of the shift and not be back.”
Employers in virtually every field with a high population of undocumented workers— farm work, restaurants, landscaping, construction— give these same answers.
Why do so many people refuse to believe them?
The simple fact is, that much of the American economy, and all the goods and services that we are accustomed to at the prices we are accustomed to paying, is reliant on population of relatively low paid workers with no benefits.
Why on earth do we vilify these people?
