Fareed Zakaria Quotes

It is actually costlier to hire an immigrant. And yet the farm worker is almost invariably an immigrant. You can't pay an American to pick blueberries.

Businesses should no longer be allowed to depress wages by hiring illegal labor and then falsely claim that Americans don't want to do the jobs.

In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents.

In the 'Nike Economy,' there are no standards, no borders and no rules. Clearly, the global economy isn't working for workers in China and Indonesia and Burma any more than it is for workers here in the United States.

There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn't help the farmer pick his peaches this summer.

If you got up this morning and had fruits for breakfast, it was probably picked by the bent back of an immigrant worker. If you slept in a hotel or motel of the nation, you probably had your room done by an immigrant worker.

I don’t buy the argument that there are certain jobs that American just will not do.

Industrial homework is a dead end, perpetuating the misery and poverty of those it traps. It creates a subclass of workers who receive none of the benefits for which America's working people have fought, sometimes at the cost of their lives.

[Developing country] sweatshops, where the conditions are admittedly appalling by Western standards, represent an improvement -- often a significant improvement -- over the alternatives available to their workers. To boycott them or impose other significant additional costs on them makes life worse for many poor people by depriving them of relatively good jobs. This is especially true for women in the developing world, for whom rural life is often far worse than industrial labor in cities.

In manufacturing, too much work is beyond repetitive - it is inhumane. The people doing this work aren't doing it because they want to - they are doing it because they have families to feed and clothe.

I agree that we need to have real temporary foreign workers, who are working in the fields, picking fruits.

I like talking about people who don't have any power and it seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are the migrant workers who come and do our work and don't have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here, and at the same time ask them to leave.

Sometimes we followed the crops, doing migrant labor. We did several years of tenant farming in Western Oregon starting in the early '50s. Later, my stepdad managed gas stations in a small town near Portland.

The first job I ever had was at a pool-liner-manufacturing plant. Minimum wage was $4.25, and that's what I was making. It was this huge, hot, un-air-conditioned factory staffed with all women and me. This is in Georgia, during the summertime, so it was pretty ridiculous.

I do believe that people hire immigrants, legal and illegal immigrants, to do certain jobs that maybe possibly could go to American citizens, and that's unfortunate. If they're here legally, I think it's OK. If they're here illegally, then they ought not be taking jobs from American citizens.

At about an age when most children start full time schooling, hundreds of thousands of their contemporaries start a lifetime of drudgery in factories and fields, working 12-16 hours daily.

Anyone that I know who wants to work in these fields by the sweat of their brow, the bend of their back, picking lettuce and fruit, can do it. We don't want those jobs. Let's be real about that.

I feel closest to God with a pitchfork full of crap in my hands. I'm serious!

Since taking office, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have transformed the Temporary Foreign Worker Program - which was originally designed to bring in temporary workers on a limited basis when no Canadian could be found - into one that has brought in a large pool of vulnerable workers.

I was a hard-workin' little boy. Oh, I worked. Pullin' cotton, shockin' grain, cuttin' wheat, loadin' wheat, choppin' cotton, cleanin' chicken houses, milkin' cows, plowin'.

The H-2A guest visa program has been prone to excessive delays and is too rigid to fit the changing needs of farmers and their employees.

I've worked cornfields.

The jobs Americans don't want are the ones the migrants fill.

There are 12 million illegal immigrants in this country - drawing welfare benefits, sending their children to public schools, and pushing down wages for American workers - but the problem extends well beyond amnesty and open borders.