Immigration Blues

A thoroughly confusing post from immigrant foe Mark Krikorian over at National Review's"The Corner":

A recent Boston Globe story (reprinted by the International Herald Tribune here) makes clear that immigrant colonization of the low-skilled job market is not the result of decadent American teenagers opting to shop at the mall rather than work. Quite the opposite -- immigrant competition is elbowing teenagers out of jobs they would otherwise be filling. One economist said employers"like the fact that immigrants can work more hours and more shifts than teenagers." A job counselor said"Typically when kids apply for a summer job they might want a week off to go to camp or do something else. I tell them, 'You can't do that. You are up against someone who is going to be there every day and you need to deal with that.'" As a result, the percentage of teenagers holding jobs is the lowest it's been since statistics started being compiled in the 1940s.

Is it healthy for the future of our society to freeze our children out of low-wage, rite-of-passage jobs? When I was younger, I washed dishes in restaurants, packed tomatoes, did lawn work -- this kind of thing is essential if we are to preserve a middle-class society that values work, rather than the Old World model that mass immigration is pushing us toward, where only inferiors ever get their hands dirty.

So Krikorian starts out aiming to refute the notion that immigrants take jobs Americans don't want. To prove his point, he notes that there are plenty of teens who would take jobs currently staffed by immigrants -- so long as those teens are allowed to work fewer shifts and fewer hours than the immigrants do, and permitted a mid-summer sabbatical for band camp.

Well, shucks. Krikorian's sold me. I say any employer who hires a hard working immigrant looking to feed his family over an American teen looking for his due rite-of-passage short-term busing Waffle House tables for date money isn't doing his duty to preserve Anglo-American culture.

Start the boycotts.