Monday, May 01, 2006

No Problemo: I figured today would be the one day that the cashier at Wendy's would be sure to speak English. No such luck.

I ate lunch there today as my own test to see how widespread this immigrant boycott is. Normally nearly everyone working at this particular Wendy's is Hispanic. Today, about half were. The other half were African American. Still not a single paleface behind the counter.

So, it's true that we depend on immigrants to do our work day after day. And if they weren't here to do it, other Americans would gladly take the jobs.

And more workers means lower wages. But there are two ways of looking at that. The influx of immigrants are driving down some wages. However, they are also driving down some costs, making certain items -- like food -- more affordable.

I read something else today that puts much of this in perspective. The reproduction rate of the native population has slowed dramatically. The only reason this country's population is continuing to grow so fast is from the influx of immigrants.

And a nation's population needs to increase for its economy to grow. With the economy performing so well now, the immigrants might just have something to do with helping with that.

P.S. Apparently Blogger employs many illegals to run its Web service. It took me all day to post this, but I kept getting error messages. This calls for a federal crackdown.