In the war of words that dominate the political landscape of American politics, few subjects have been as polarizing as illegal immigration. Likewise, this issue is wrought with lies and misnomers. One of the most famous of the arguments in favor of illegal immigration is that it should be allowed because no one other than illegals would do specific menial tasks, such as picking crops. Let me soundly destroy that argument.
Now, those who say that no one will pick the crops run under the belief that it is "below" the average citizen, that only immigrants, illegal or otherwise, would be shameless enough or poor enough to do this. Without saying another word I don't think I need to tell you how prejudiced that is against immigrants. But more, it's a complete misunderstanding of facts.
You see, the people who make these claims are from ivory tower individuals with a fat pocket book and/or a large ego who couldn't fathom working on a farm, much less other so-called menial tasks. Coming out of Upstate New York, I know that these people have no grasp of reality.
If farms up here need people to pick crops, or things like cleaning pools, they don't grab the nearest illegal. They do a much more plausible (and prevalent) thing: hire high school and college kids. A farm not ten miles from my house has been doing this for decades. And guess what. That's what they do around the country. They higher college kids or high schoolers or someone looking for a quick buck or someone looking for a second job.
In reality, the ivory tower intellectuals' original argument is flawed. In reality, picking crops is not "below" the American citizen; in fact, farming is fundamental to our nation. Those who have used the "crop picking" argument are simply trying to make their point and put down the United States at the same time.
And just for the heck of it, I'll use some reasoning mumbo-jumbo to also show that the "crop picking" argument is a fallacy. In reason, there are dozens of fallacies, one of which is called a "hasty generalization." That occurs when you take a very small sample size and decide that it speaks to the truth of something. So let's say you're in a room and everyone in that room is a brunette, if you do a hasty generalization, you might decide that everyone in the world is a brunette. Got it?
Now those who use this argument in favor of illegal immigration do the same thing. They look at particular farms, particular crops, particular businesses and see that they use illegal immigrants. Without doing research and without a foot in reality, they do a hasty generalization and decide that everyone does the same thing. They are using a logical fallacy.
So there you have it. If you ever hear someone using this argument again, you will know that they did not research their subject, are prejudiced against average immigrants and American farming, and are using a logical fallacy. Not bad for eight paragraphs, huh?
