Trump on 60 Minutes

[Neo-Scholastic]

Such as them doing jobs no American would do.

In my personal experience that is only partly true.

I have hired people from all nationalities to do construction. The native born and generally White sub-contractors usually have union shops and their prices reflect that. I only use them when I must for interior build-outs in high-rises downtown because those are union buildings. They do not require as much supervision but are always looking for change-orders. White non-union subs are very hard to find. I think they get all their work by word of mouth. Those that I have used have not been very dependable, think their work is perfect, and bitch when you tell them to redo something.

The local African-american contractors give good prices, haven't required much supervision and the work is adequate. The only problem I have with African-american subs is that often times they cannot get the larger jobs because they lack the necessary licenses and don't have enough insurance coverage. That's their choice.

The Polish subcontractors I know use legal immigrants. Their higher skilled workers are generally Polish. The laborers and low skilled workers are often Mexican. They do good work for less money but the language barriers (both Polish and Spanish) means that they require a lot of supervision.

To my knowledge I have only had illegal immigrants working on one job. The general contractor hired both Irish and Mexican illegals. The work was for shit - the framing wasn't plumb, the drywall was not installed correctly, etc. I fired the general.

So it isn't that native or naturalized citizens won't do the work, but rather that they won't do shit work on the cheap. Now I don't know this for sure but my guess is that the work would still get done; it would just cost more to do. Maybe the African-American subs would get their act together with their licenses and insurance. Maybe the Poles and Mexicans that are here legally could command better wages. I imagine that what is true in construction would apply elsewhere in housekeeping & maintenance, farming, and service jobs.

I don't understand how the same people who want a higher minimum wage and stronger unions would object to achieving the same effect with the free market. There are trade-offs. People will likely earn more but things will cost more. Or cost pressures may make it cheaper for a business to automate more and hire less. That could happen too. These are the types of discussions we can have if you don't mindlessly repeat cliches about "work Americans won't do" and call people racists.