While I was in Long Beach over the weekend, I was reminded about how many jobs in this country are being done be immigrants, both legal and illegal. These are predominantly jobs that Americans don't wish to do, despite what the critics say. We have filled our least desirable jobs, jobs that even teenagers won't do, with immigrants glad to have a place to start. We stayed at the Westing Long Beach hotel. It could not function without Hispanic immigrants. The same is true for most restaurants, car washes, landscape services, construction businesses, taxicab businesses, you name it. If it involves hard physical labor for a low wage, Americans take a pass. Without immigrants from Mexico and Central America, Americans would eat far less well than we do because there would be no one to pick our produce or slaughter our meat. As the American birthrate falls, the entitlement programs we have voted ourselves become unsustainable without an influx of immigrants to pays the taxes required to keep them flowing. In our fair state we have passed a law that says employers must verify the immigration status of all workers or face being put out of business. It hasn't dawned on the average Arizonan that they have made a bad decision. Immigration is the responsibility of the federal government and the blame for the mess they have allowed to fester, lies at their feet. Whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans, or the corrupt governments of our neighbors to the south, the fault for our immigration problem does not belong to the illegal immigrant, but with the people we entrusted to lead us. Unfortunately, statesmen are in short supply but self-aggrandizing loudmouths are not. I was talking to my friend Arturo today about this situation. He is a naturalized American from Central America, who came to this country in the 1960s. In his home country, Arturo was an accountant and a university graduate. He came to this country because his brother had come earlier and had encouraged Arturo to follow him to the land of opportunity. Arturo said that he looked for work as an accountant, but no one wanted to hire him. Partly due to his limited English fluency, but primarily because there were plenty of Americans who wanted accounting jobs. He eventually found work as a dishwasher in a hotel. It paid one dollar an hour. In contrast, when I began working for Tedious systems in 1969, I was paid $2.38 per hour, two and a half times more. Neither of those sums mean much today, but imagine that your boss doubled your salary tomorrow and you get a feel for the difference. Although Arturo worked his way up to busboy, then waiter and finally desk clerk, he recognized that he needed to improve his skills in order to continue to improve his lot. He found a part-time job in hospital, working midnight to three a.m., went to school during the day and worked another part-time job from two p.m. until six p.m. Some Americans have that drive, but not too many. Arturo went on to be a successful professional, both as an accountant and a businessman. He never became rich by American standards, but he is living the American dream. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky.