If Immigrant Workers Become as Lazy as American Workers

For 15 years, I have been trying to help people find employment. In those 15 years, I have never seen so many people uninterested in working. Two quick examples: First, we are hosting a small job fair tomorrow; we had to send some 4400 flyers and make close to 200 individual calls to unemployed constituents in order to secure 30 commitments to attend the job fair. A shale employer visited our center today and told me that 35-40% of the people he schedules for a job interview are no-call/no-shows on interview day. On the flip side, we have hosted recruitments and seminars at Catholic Charities for our foreign-born workers. If we invite 20 job seekers, 40-50 eager job seekers show up for the event.

Now, I’ll say this. Even the motivation amongst our foreign-born workers has changed in the past 18 to 24 months. I see more and more foreign born citizens living on government subsidies than ever before. Much like those individuals who cycle through the criminal justice system, this group is becoming a drain on the tax base instead of contributors to the tax base. At the end of the day, as educators we should be helping all residents secure employment. We can complain all we want about federal budgets, but the bottom line is this: If more is going out than is coming in, the bucket will eventually be empty.