Honey, why is the lawn two feet high?

When asked by a coworker today how my weekend was I mentioned that I cut the lawn on Saturday, which prompted the response:

"I didn't think any American cut their own lawn these days."

When I asked her what she meant by that (having a fairly good idea what it was), she told me that when she first arrived in the US from Australia, she decided to take a course in Spanish. During the introductions in the initial session of the class she was amazed by some of the reasons stated by other people taking the course:

"I have a maid who doesn't clean the way I'd like her to, so I thought I'd learn how to speak her language so I can tell her what to do..."

"The yard service I have cuts the grass too short and I can't seem to get them to understand how I'd like them to cut it."

My friend said that she and one other person were the only two in the class that didn't have a specific circumstance that motivated them to learn Spanish. They were there just because they wanted to be able to communicate with whoever they came in contact with during the course of an average day for whom English may not be their first language.

But back to my lawn. I told her that working on the yard and the house was empowering and therapeutic for me. People who hire services to do those things are a curiosity to me, unless it's a matter of time or loathing of that sort of work.

The discussion of course morphed into the subject of immigration and how there will most likely never be any serious immigration reform legislation put into place that restricts the influx of labor coming into the US.

The main reason for this is that the jobs that immigrant labor (legal and illegal) do in the US are tasks that the majority of the mainstream population have little desire to take on, like cutting lawns, doing housework, washing dishes, serving fast food, packing poultry and meat, floating sheet rock and roofing houses to name just a few.

If the US were to deport all the illegal immigrants living and working in the country and closed its borders to incoming immigrants the daily workings of the country would be severely hampered. Once things did get going again there would be a noticeable impact on the economy of the US because the people who would most likely be tapped to do all the suddenly worker-less jobs would not be willing to do them for the ridiculously cheap rates that immigrant labor is currently willing to take. Granted, that money would theoretically stay inside the country as opposed to being wired to Mexico or Central America every few weeks, but that would be little consolation to the upper class corporate executive who is having to dole out $100 for the lawn care instead of $25 and pay the maid $14 an hour instead of $6. These new entrants into the service industries that are currently nothing more than a second thought to most because they're so cheap might even get up the gumption to *gasp* organize and demand guaranteed rates and benefits!

No, immigrant labor isn't going anywhere. It's just one more dirty little secret that the elite uber-class likes to use as a lightning rod for galvanizing support but never wants to do anything about as long as it benefits them...