How badly do you want a job?

Exactly! There is a whole lot of whining about illegal immigrants but when push comes to shove, many of them are doing jobs that Americans simply don’t want to or won’t do. And one issue specific to agricultural work is that it is seasonal. Crops need to be worked and harvested during specific periods of the year. Americans, like most people, and I don’t blame them, want full time, year-round work. Agricultural work doesn’t “work” that way, it is, as mentioned, seasonal. Before people complain so much about illegal immigration they should ask themselves how much their Sunday dinner of a roast chicken, salad, vegetables, potatoes, etc. would cost them if American citizens worked in the fields and in the mushroom houses and in the chicken rendering plants, etc..

I totally was going to take them up on that. There are a lot of ranches and farms in my area and I’ve been unemployed for a year. However, I actually was offered a job within the same week I found that website and will be starting that.

I think it’s a brilliant idea to challenge the current anti-immigrant theme that’s starting. I’m incredibly curious as to how it will end. Will Americans actually suck it up and take the farm jobs or will they continue bitching? My money’s on the bitching but I really really want to be wrong.

I would love to pick fruit(as long as I can sample some here and there)... and I haven’t worked a paying job in a year….I might just go to British Columbia and pick fruit in the summer.

@talljasperman Better be early, lucky, or both. What happens is, by tradition, all the fruit pickers arrive and gather in the same place, in some empty field. The farmers come and cart away the workers they need to harvest their fruit. Then the riot cops come out and kick the shit out of anyone remaining so they won’t consider hanging around their nice white province.

@lillycoyote So… it’s okay to have illegal immigrants as long as we treat them like slaves?

@mrentropy My sentiments exactly.

Not as bad as I did last year at this time, but that’s because I finally got one and I was lucky enough to get one that I like, and the commute is much shorter.

I will say that that challenge is a perfect way to make people either rethink their position or STFU though unless they are content to continue being fucking stupid and ignorant… which seems to be the New American Way.

I dare anyone to do a field job for one day in the baking central valley, CA heat. Most people wouldn’t last one day.

I quit a well-paying job in May so I don’t want a job that bad.

I’d also love to see people who had a $40,000 a year office job do agricultural work and still be able to live.

I love Stephen Colbert.

when it comes to immigration and these terrible job conditions, I think we can all agree that the legalization process and the work pay and benefits of agricultural jobs should be improved. I took @lillycoyote‘s point as the fact that we can’t deny these illegal immigrants play a huge role in our country’s running. If we did take them out, we can’t guarantee we’d be able to fill their role. It’s not their status as “illegal immigrant,” it’s their willingness to do hard ass work.

my uncle was an illegal immigrant from mexico and watching him try to become a legal citizen was the saddest thing. It took years and lots of money (for taking the tests and getting the paperwork done)

@mrentropy Where did you get, from @lillycoyote‘s post that she was suggesting that we treat the immigrants like slaves?

Putting illegal immigrants aside for a sec….how many American citizens don’t have jobs???
I mean how many Americans have been forced to start mooching off their parents…their family…their government…?? i haven’t had a steady job in nearly 2 years now….I don’t know know whether illegal immigrants are “responsible”....and frankly I don’t care!!!.....im willing to bet there are thousands of others who think just like me….willing to bust their butt everyday from 9–5…but just cant find the job….i don’t think anyone likes mooching off other people!!!....and with respect to illegal immigrants they have to be the hardest working people in all of the US…

There are approximately 500,000 people on unemployment right now, and probably at least that many more who want work and aren’t on unemployment. There are at least 5 people looking for work for each job that is available, so even if every job was filled, there would still be 400,000 people on unemployment.

… and many of the jobs are things that illegals can’t do. How many of them have degrees?

I would take it. If I need a job bad enough I don’t see whether it came as a challenge or not. But the other employees might misunderstand it though.

@gollum You said “who think just like me….willing to bust their butt everyday from 9–5” .... and that’s it in a nutshell. I told you about my daughter, working in a sweat shop from 4 to midnight….but tomorrow they to begin working them 10 hour shifts, six days a week, for $8.25 an hour. (Sounds like slave labor to me.) You’re not willing to do THAT! But she, and the undocumented people she’s working with are. Also, gollum…did you take @yarnlady’s test up there in the detail? I haven’t looked at it (going to now,) but I’ll bet it has nothing to do with 9 to 5.

@jerv But the people who have degrees won’t go work in a factory.

I got an error message when I clicked the link in the detail.

Sorry, try this one Take our jobs

@YARNLADY Okay, I was expecting to see a test right there (”...did you take @yarnlady’s test up there in the detail?” in Dutchess III’s answer to one of the answerers (it is not visible to me right now, I am editing).

@Dutchess_III I have a friend with a Masters degree who had to settle for a part-time gig at Home Depot.

@flo Sorry, I don’t know what test was showing. I believe it was a challenge to work for the same conditions as the featured workers.

@jerv But is he willing to relocate at his own expense? There are jobs out there going begging because no one wants to go there.

@YARNLADY There are other circumstances that, if you knew, you would realize how stupid what you just said is, but you didn’t know so I can’t blame you. It’s not like anybody ever has any sort of special circumstances or anything.

Suffice it to say that she won’t leave her husband, and he isn’t going to leave his decent biotech job.

@jerv But, that is exactly my point. In my family, my son, all three of my adult grandsons and their mother are out of work, but they cannot take the jobs that are available. It’s a
Catch 22 situation.

@YARNLADY Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that Catch-22 going around the last few years.

@jerv I’m not saying that ALL educated Americans are unwilling to “work down.” Just a lot are. I had a bachelor’s degree, but three years after I got it I had to do a stint in a factory on the assembly line for a while. But I stayed there until I was able to go back to work in a job that utilized my degree.

@YARNLADY Why can’t the take the jobs that are available? I may have missed something. I’m just spot checking.

@Dutchess_III 1. Many jobs pay less than general assistance + food stamps 2. Most jobs would require moving somewhere else, which they can’t afford.

At some point in my life, certainly not now, would have taken anything I could have found. I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I grew up on a farm, that is what we did, work hard. I’ve milked cows, poison cotton with mules, busted land, disked it, cultivated it, picked cotton, chopped cotton, hauled hay, and much more. As long as a man is able to work, that is what he should do. Whatever the job.

@Dutchess_III In your answer to @gollum”(”...did you take @yarnlady’s test up there in the detail?”, what test?

@flo The link no longer works – It wasn’t a test, really, but a challenge to take the jobs they claim the illegal immigrants take. There is a site called take our jobs that challenges unemployed to work for the same wages and conditions as those they say are stealing their jobs.

@all – see this they took our jobs you tube Southpark clip

@BoBo1946 That is why I applied for stuff like cleaning range hoods. Of course, you can only apply for and do jobs that exist and that you have some way of getting to. That is partly why I moved.

I was lucky to be in a position where my wife and I could save up enough over the course of a couple of years to do so. Even then it was possible largely because we didn’t have to pay a security deposit since we moved in with an old friend of ours that had been here for years. Some people don’t have the “extra” income to save even if they live on beans and rice, and some don’t have someone on the other end to make the trip more affordable or even possible in some cases.

Still, I agree that you shouldn’t consider any job “beneath you”; work is work. Besides, those “schlub jobs” have taught me some useful skills, like driving forklifts, rigging overhead cranes, and some stuff about metalworking that many machinists don’t know. All skills that I have to use on my current job too; they didn’t have to teach me anything!

@jerv Rangehood cleaning is NOT a fun job. Grease!!!!

When i was coaching and teaching, and you know their pay, would take any job any the summertime to supplement my income. Did things like, security guard (night shift…umm), mowed grass, painted, worked at a restuarant, worked for a power company, and last but not least, a trucking company as a dispatcher. A dispatcher was the toughest job i’ve ever had. Truckers are not in a good mood at 4am in the morning. Lot of pressure to get those trucks out and on the road. Oh, and did construction work as a laborer.

When you have a family, you do what must be done to makes ends meet.

[mod says] Original link has been updated via internal edit. Should be working just fine, now.