Former President George W. Bush Praises "Cheap Labor" From Immigration At International Summit

“There are people willing to do jobs that Americans won’t do,” Bush told the audience at the summit.  “Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees (Fahrenheit), but there are [migrant] people who want put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that. We ought to say thank you and welcome them.”

 

Bush’s suggestion that Americans are unwilling to do blue-collar jobs is not backed up by data collected and analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies.
For example, research by Steven Camarota found that of the more than 460 occupations analyzed, only four were dominated by foreign-born workers. Those four occupations accounted for less than one percent of the total U.S. workforce.

In jobs like housekeeping, construction work, butchers, and even taxi drivers, native-born Americans continue to make up the majority of the workforce.
Every year the U.S. admits more than one million foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from family-based chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high of 44 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.