SAN DIEGO -- Just in time for Labor Day a reader critical of my views on immigration sends along some career advice.
You really need to find another line of work he wrote. You are not worth a (expletive) at what you are doing now. I hear they need strawberry pickers.
He signed the note A white legal American citizen.
Its interesting that the reader felt it necessary to identify himself as white. I plan to keep this letter -- and others like it -- handy for the next time someone claims that the immigration debate isnt about race. It sure sounds like it is to Mr. white legal American citizen.
Yet what was really troubling was when the reader suggested I go out and pick strawberries. This guy owes an apology -- to strawberry pickers.
He thinks hes insulting me but hes really insulting agricultural workers. I dont know whether a farmworker could do my job. But coming from a family of farmworkers Im absolutely sure I could never do his.
When George W. Bush used to say that Mexican immigrants did jobs Americans wont do a lot of his countrymen got their pride hurt and insisted that this wasnt true.
Nonsense. Of course it is. Bush was right. The U.S. economy is full of dangerous dirty or distasteful jobs that Americans have outgrown. These are the jobs that grandma and grandpa did -- tarring roofs milking cows cleaning horse stalls picking apples shelling crabs etc.
But were they to attempt any of it most members of Generation Y wouldnt last an hour. As a member of Generation X Im part of a heartier crew. So I can say that in my case I wouldnt last 90 minutes.
Thus when someone tells me to pick strawberries I feel like that person might as well have told me to become an astronaut and fly to the moon. Anyone who thinks its easy picking enough strawberries to support a family has obviously never picked strawberries -- or for that matter anything else.
I remember seeing an interview with a strawberry farmer who said that in 25 years of growing the crop he had never had a single U.S. citizen approach him for a job working in his fields.
Its just as well. What we often forget is there is an art form to this kind of work. There are people like my grandparents who resembled machines as they methodically plowed through those fields. They worked hard but they also worked smart and learned tricks along the way to become more efficient.
Farmworkers have a simple way of inspiring their children to stay in school. Its called take your kids to work day. It did the trick for my parents who toiled in the fields alongside their siblings in 100-degree temperatures and dreamt of one day simply working in an air-conditioned office.
An uncle told me a story about how when he was a teenager he worked his heart out in the fields. At days end my grandfather told him that he had better hit the books because if he had to survive out there he wouldnt last long. About 40 years later my uncles son -- who had a chiseled physique spent many hours in the gym and once tried out for a professional football team -- ventured into the fields to see what it was like. As my cousin tells it he couldnt keep up with the Mexican workers and after a while was just trying not to pass out.
Recently I heard a similar story from a reader who said he was a Marine. He and a buddy were home on leave and decided to go into the fields to make extra money. They were in excellent shape he said. And yet after a couple of hours they were sucking wind and couldnt wait to get back to their base.
We should remember stories like these when we hear politicians talk about whether U.S. immigration policy should be to let in the skilled or unskilled. Americans tend to think that skilled means educated and trained. But what it really means is having the ability to do something that someone else cant or wont do.
Such a skill is worthy of respect. On Labor Day lets acknowledge this truth.
ruben@rubennavarrette.com
SAN DIEGO -- Just in time for Labor Day a reader critical of my views on immigration sends along some career advice.
You really need to find another line of work he wrote. You are not worth a (expletive) at what you are doing now. I hear they need strawberry pickers.
He signed the note A white legal American citizen.
Its interesting that the reader felt it necessary to identify himself as white. I plan to keep this letter -- and others like it -- handy for the next time someone claims that the immigration debate isnt about race. It sure sounds like it is to Mr. white legal American citizen.
Yet what was really troubling was when the reader suggested I go out and pick strawberries. This guy owes an apology -- to strawberry pickers.
He thinks hes insulting me but hes really insulting agricultural workers. I dont know whether a farmworker could do my job. But coming from a family of farmworkers Im absolutely sure I could never do his.
When George W. Bush used to say that Mexican immigrants did jobs Americans wont do a lot of his countrymen got their pride hurt and insisted that this wasnt true.
Nonsense. Of course it is. Bush was right. The U.S. economy is full of dangerous dirty or distasteful jobs that Americans have outgrown. These are the jobs that grandma and grandpa did -- tarring roofs milking cows cleaning horse stalls picking apples shelling crabs etc.
But were they to attempt any of it most members of Generation Y wouldnt last an hour. As a member of Generation X Im part of a heartier crew. So I can say that in my case I wouldnt last 90 minutes.
Thus when someone tells me to pick strawberries I feel like that person might as well have told me to become an astronaut and fly to the moon. Anyone who thinks its easy picking enough strawberries to support a family has obviously never picked strawberries -- or for that matter anything else.
I remember seeing an interview with a strawberry farmer who said that in 25 years of growing the crop he had never had a single U.S. citizen approach him for a job working in his fields.
Its just as well. What we often forget is there is an art form to this kind of work. There are people like my grandparents who resembled machines as they methodically plowed through those fields. They worked hard but they also worked smart and learned tricks along the way to become more efficient.
Farmworkers have a simple way of inspiring their children to stay in school. Its called take your kids to work day. It did the trick for my parents who toiled in the fields alongside their siblings in 100-degree temperatures and dreamt of one day simply working in an air-conditioned office.
An uncle told me a story about how when he was a teenager he worked his heart out in the fields. At days end my grandfather told him that he had better hit the books because if he had to survive out there he wouldnt last long. About 40 years later my uncles son -- who had a chiseled physique spent many hours in the gym and once tried out for a professional football team -- ventured into the fields to see what it was like. As my cousin tells it he couldnt keep up with the Mexican workers and after a while was just trying not to pass out.
Recently I heard a similar story from a reader who said he was a Marine. He and a buddy were home on leave and decided to go into the fields to make extra money. They were in excellent shape he said. And yet after a couple of hours they were sucking wind and couldnt wait to get back to their base.
We should remember stories like these when we hear politicians talk about whether U.S. immigration policy should be to let in the skilled or unskilled. Americans tend to think that skilled means educated and trained. But what it really means is having the ability to do something that someone else cant or wont do.
Such a skill is worthy of respect. On Labor Day lets acknowledge this truth.
ruben@rubennavarrette.com
