For nearly thirty years, Michigan's Lake Superior State University has released an annual List of Banished Words, a brief inventory of
year's most annoyingly popular expressions, with recommendation they be "banished from Queen's English for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness." This year, tiresome "metrosexual" and insufferable "bling bling" were deservedly condemned, as were several war-inspired entrants such as "embedded journalist" and "smoking gun." I was disappointed that none of my three choices for this annual dishonor made cut, however. My nominees for banishment were: "Guest worker program," "Matching willing workers with willing employers," and worst offender, "Work Americans won't do," as in "our economy needs illegal immigrants because they do work Americans won't do."
Combined, these three Orwellian phrases are calculated to convey impression that there are certain occupations so inherently dangerous or otherwise disagreeable that we lazy, self-indulgent, American crybabies must rely on hardy immigrant stock to roll up their sleeves and get job done for us. Tell that to a Pennsylvania coal miner!
Although it's true that less glamorous jobs are frequently filled by illegal aliens, jobs themselves are not intrinsically unacceptable. Rather, ready supply of illegal labor has resulted in many perfectly satisfactory jobs becoming unacceptable. In short, illegal aliens will work under unsanitary and unsafe conditions for minimum wage or even less, thereby lowering standards, and as long as employers can fill jobs by exploiting illegals, there will simply be no incentive to improve wages or working conditions.
A recent piece by Nancy L. Othón and Mike Clary in South Florida Sun-Sentinel illustrates this principle in action with story of Gregorio Ruiz Aviles and Lauro Marquez Hernandez, two young Mexican illegal alien construction workers crushed to death in collapse of a three-story building on which they were working. Five other men were injured in accident. The Florida company which employed them was fined $2.4 million for having no workers' compensation insurance, but according to Othón and Clary, "five months after deaths of Ruiz and Marquez, few public officials, employers, workers and immigrant advocates express much hope that change would come soon in an industry where undocumented workers willingly take any job they can get."
