Every time I say this out loud, people get upset. I get mocked in the comments. I get told I have chosen a political team. But I do not build my views around party loyalty. I build them around what I see with my own eyes, and what I see is a giant hole in the immigration debate that almost no one wants to talk about.
We argue about walls. We argue about amnesty. We argue about deportations. We argue about gun rights and free speech and which party is more hypocritical this week. What we do not talk honestly about is labor, and labor is the engine underneath all of this.
In farming, construction, hospitality, food processing, landscaping, and meatpacking, there is one consistent reality. There are not enough American workers willing and able to do these jobs at the scale required. This is not an insult. It is an observation. The work is hot, cold, dirty, repetitive, and physically demanding. It is often seasonal or unstable. At the same time, we are watching the metabolic health, mental health, and resilience of young Americans decline in real time. We have record levels of anxiety, depression, obesity, drug dependency, and disengagement from the workforce. We have also built systems where it can be easier to survive on assistance than to take on hard physical labor that society has labeled low status.
So when people say employers just want cheaper labor, they are missing a huge part of the picture. In many industries, it is not about cheaper labor. It is about any labor.
Another claim I often hear is that if undocumented workers were normalized, employers would stop hiring them because they would have to pay payroll taxes. That simply does not match what is happening in many places. A large number of undocumented people are already working inside structured businesses. Payroll taxes are being withheld. Workers’ compensation is being paid. Systems are being used, often with false or borrowed Social Security numbers or ITINs, but this is not all happening in some cash only underground economy. The reality is more complicated and more uncomfortable. Our economy quietly depends on labor that our legal system does not provide a realistic pathway for.
If you are highly educated and working in technology, medicine, or specialized science, there are multiple long term visa pathways. If you want to come here and pick vegetables, frame houses, wash dishes, process meat, or clean hotel rooms, your options are extremely limited. The main programs available through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are H-2A for agriculture and H-2B for seasonal non-agricultural work. On paper, they look like solutions. In practice, they are temporary, expensive, paperwork heavy, and tied to strict housing and wage requirements. In many states, including Texas, employers must pay well above minimum wage and provide housing. By the time the legal and logistical burdens are added up, this is not some simple cheap labor scheme. It is often a last-resort attempt to keep a business operating. Even then, these visas are not designed for the year-round, long-term labor needs that define entire sectors of our economy. The jobs do not disappear. The need does not disappear. The labor just moves into illegality.
Here is the part that makes people deeply uncomfortable: Every person crossing the border without documents is paying someone to do it. Nobody just strolls through. There are fees, guides, and networks. That money flows into cartel-controlled systems. We talk about fighting the cartels while preserving the exact economic conditions that make them rich. If we had a functional, affordable, long-term work permit for essential labor, especially for our closest neighbors like Mexico, a massive portion of that money could move out of criminal hands and into a legal, regulated process. Border enforcement without a labor channel does not end the flow. It makes the flow more dangerous and more profitable for criminals.
People say they should wait their turn in line. I agree with the principle, but there has to be a line to stand in. Right now, for this kind of work, that line barely exists. So people go around. Not because they are uniquely immoral, but because the system is not built for the reality of labor demand. We are trying to shut off a pipeline without acknowledging that the water is feeding our own fields, kitchens, hotels, and construction sites. Every American who eats food, stays in a hotel, lives in a house, or shops in a store is connected to this labor system whether they like it or not.
I also want to be clear about something else. When I use the term low skill, I am using the language that policy makers use. I do not believe this work is low skill. Farming, growing food, working in hospitality, line cooks, sous chefs, roofers, framers, air conditioning technicians, plumbers, and mechanics all hold skills that are deeply valuable. These are foundational skills. They are the reason we eat, the reason we have shelter, the reason buildings stand, and the reason infrastructure works. We live in a world that celebrates science, mathematics, engineering, and medicine as high-skill fields while forgetting that food and infrastructure are the base layer that all of those other industries stand on. Without the people who grow food, build homes, fix pipes, wire buildings, and keep kitchens running, the rest of the economy does not function. We have culturally devalued the very work that keeps society alive.
Instead of addressing this honestly, we have turned immigration into a culture war circus. One week it is about gun rights. The next it is about free speech. Red team, blue team, endless outrage. Meanwhile, technology designed to track undocumented people expands. Databases grow. Surveillance tools normalize. History suggests those tools will not stay limited to noncitizens forever. While we argue, more of our freedoms quietly erode.
We are being emotionally pulled into debates that do not solve the root issue. Our economy runs on labor that our legal system refuses to formally accommodate. What if the real problem is not just the border. What if the real problem is that we have built a society where fewer of our own young people are physically, mentally, and culturally prepared to do the hard work that keeps a nation functioning. And what if the honest solution is twofold. We raise stronger, more capable citizens over time, and we create a lawful, long term work permit system now for the labor we undeniably need.
That does not mean open borders. It means structured, legal, regulated entry tied to real economic demand. If we refuse to build that channel, we are choosing black market labor, cartel profit, and endless political theater while pretending we are defending principle. You cannot secure the border without securing the labor. Until we admit that, we are not having a serious conversation.
