My dad was a migrant farm worker in New England in the 30's, before the, and my mom was raised to be a milk maid. Actually, she was a "state kid". They were both raised to be peasants, and raised me to be one, too. But I grew up in the 50's. My dad went to college on hte GI after WWII. But they carried their culture of poverty with them. As a youth, my parents were always after me to get a job in the fields in California. My parents quit buying me anything, except rent and dinner, at 12. If I wanted lunch money, or shoes, or school yearbook pictures, I had to earn it. I was quite desperate, in a small farm community, to find work. No one would hire me to work the fields. I'm white. I got to Seattle in the depths of the Boeing depression. There was no work. Some friends and I went to the orchards in eastern Washington, hearing about labor shortage. One of them had picked apples before, and knew how to get work. We spent days- mornings in the hiring halls, afternoons driving the orchards. No one would hire us. We were white. I don't believe for a minute that Americans won't work. I also don't like your implication that people should go back to Dickensian times, when there was a huge number of umemployed people, and workers had to work hours in dangerous conditions for poverty wages. That's really what the immigration issue is about it's not about Americans not being willing to work. When that meat packing company in Colorado got busted, and lost illegals, they had *thousands* of people lined up to get hired. They wouldn't hire Americans. People like you are the reason this country is going to Hell, Working people fought and died for the right to organize, for the 40 hour work week, for decent working conditinos, and that is the ONLY reason we have a decent standard of living in this country. You should be ashamed of yourself, trying to drive US into a Third World economy.