President Donald Trump teased new rules in July that would allow illegals to stay and work as long as farmers vouch for them. While this ruffled MAGA feathers, the policy proposal confused the left, forcing progressives to determine if this was a wise choice or racist. Recent comments on CNN suggest that it is the latter.
Illegals Are 'Very, Very Special People'
In a lengthy and wide-ranging August 5 interview with CNBC's Squawk Box, President Trump resurrected the idea of allowing illegals working on US farms back into the country. Trump purported that "you can't replace them very easily," adding that inner city individuals are not applying for these employment opportunities.
"They’re just not doing that work. And they’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally, naturally," the president said. “I asked a farmer the other day, ‘What happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’ And I said, ‘That’s interesting.' In many ways, they’re very, very special people.”
Despite what the public might think about the issue of illegal immigrants, Trump is accurate when he says it is not easy to replace this corner of the labor supply, particularly in agriculture. Last year, before the president employed his aggressive deportation program, there were approximately 2.4 million unfilled agricultural jobs, with more than half (56%) of farmers reporting labor shortages.
Leisure and hospitality, another industry with a high number of undocumented workers, has nearly one million job openings, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for June. Overall, the US labor market has more than seven million unfilled positions, indicating a substantial shortage of workers.
Will US citizens occupy these positions? Basic economics suggests that these jobs are going unfilled because they do not offer higher wages. Another reason is that this work is frowned upon by younger generations who prefer white-collar employment in an air-conditioned office. Whatever the case, something needs to be done to address the multi-sector national labor shortage.
Who Will Pick the Vegetables?
For the past year, members of the Democratic Party have sounded similar to plantation owners in the south, by bluntly stating that illegals are necessary to pick vegetables and wash the dishes.
"We need immigrants in this country," Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said during a January 2024 House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement hearing. "Forget the fact that our vegetables would rot in the ground if they weren't being picked by many immigrants — many illegal immigrants."
Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden's son, went on a profanity-laced rant about the need for illegals to mow lawns and clean hotel rooms. "People are really upset about illegal immigration? F--- you. How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned? How do you think you have food on your f-ing table? Who do you think washes your dishes?" Biden the younger said.
These arguments might have convinced President Trump, forcing him to agree with leftists. Since the other side of the aisle must adopt the opposite position to the current administration, this argument is now considered racist.
During a segment on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip, Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky accused Trump of being racist for allowing illegals to perform these jobs and criticizing inner-city individuals for not completing these positions.
"This is not about anything other than cruelty and about what's best for Donald Trump. He's treating people like commodities, and they are human beings, and they are people, and yet they're being commoditized to do the 'backbreaking work,'" Roginsky said, sitting alongside the national treasure, Scott Jennings.
"I would also love to know who he's referring to when he talks about inner city people. I think we all know what that little dog whistle is all about, but apparently, those people, as he would term them, don't want to do that kind of backbreaking work."
She continued:
"So much of this is racist, and a sign of a dog whistle is just overtly racist, right? And the reality is that we are specifically taking an entire group of people and making them into commodities. That is not what the United States is about. This is not what this country is about. It never has been, not since slavery was eradicated, and now we have a president who's very much treating these people like they're not people."
So, it is racist when President Trump wants illegals to stay and do farm work, but it is not racist when Nadler, Biden, and others make comparable arguments?
Hope and Change
Scores of employer surveys suggest that most businesses are struggling to fill job vacancies. Various theories have been presented by experts, including an insufficient number of qualified individuals, a lack of interest among the job-seeking public, and uncompetitive wages. Whatever the reason, if this trend persists, more companies will invest in automation and artificial intelligence; the entitlement structure will collapse, and Trump’s dream of rebalancing global trade will not be realized.
The good news, however, is that virtually all of this year’s employment gains have gone to US-born workers, and competition with illegals has diminished as more self-deport. Perhaps, in the end, the American people will accept the jobs that they apparently will not do.
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