In response to Ingrid Yau’s Blog “Response – Hard Work is What Immigrants Do” the link to which can be found at https://blogs.ubc.ca/iyau/
In Ingrid’s blog, she draws a contrast between the physical or menial labor prominent years ago, and the critical thinking or “mental labor” that has become more prominent today. I agree with the basic premise of Ingrid paper, in that skill sets that are demanded today differ greatly than those demanded years ago as a function of our evolving job market. However where I draw differences with Ingrid, begins with her statement that “Even the most unskilled American worker wouldn’t want a job that is physically demanding, thus leaving all the hard labor to immigrants.” I believe this statement is overgeneralization of the workforce in developed and “wealthy” countries. As the integration of technology has permeated our society, we have had to adapt in order to meet the demands of society, which in many cases involves more analytical and technical skill than ever before. However manual labor still remains integral to the supply chain in almost every industry around the world, and America is no different. With the increasingly large volume of immigration and the recent scarcity in the job market, I believe that it seems illogical to believe that there is no domestic demand for manual labor jobs. With an increasing labor force, demanders of labor can pay lower wages as more individuals become willing to work for less money and ultimately these “menial” jobs become occupied due to low cost, not low demand.
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Image from: http://www.cagle.com/news/immigration06/