The jobs they`re stealing

If I ever hear any Canadian so much as utter some variation of “the Mexicans are stealing all our jobs,” I’ll steal their money and send them on a one-way trip to Mexico. I spent a week last month harvesting squash on a farm in Rougemont. I was an odd anomaly. There were few Canadians. Most of the labourers were Mexicans. This is not because farmers are too racist to hire North Americans.

Okay, I don’t mean to generalize about a country and its people, but from what I saw, Mexicans work hard. Actually, immigrants in general work hard. I believe this is a statistical fact.

Oddly enough, squash do not observe labour laws. They are ripe all at once, 24 hours a day. Mexicans also do not observe labour laws. While the Canadians all break after eight hours, the Mexicans keep going – 10, 12 hours. This is what squash and farmers need, because there is only a small window during which you can harvest anything before it starts going funny. That is why farmers like to hire Mexicans. But they don’t exclude you or I. Working at a farm everyday merely involves going up to Agri-Job, showing your SIN card, getting a free ID card and a free trip to just about any farm in the vicinity of Montreal. But there are few Quebecois who do this. But great deal of immigrants – especially Mexicans – do.

The next time I hear some absurdly ignorant Canadian say, “They’re stealing all our jobs,” I’ll tell them to take the free 5:30 bus, go out to a farm, work 12 hours a day for $8 an hour and see what kind of jobs they’re “stealing” from us.