Max Borders: Why won’t Americans do these jobs?

Let’s start right here in the nation’s capitol. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C., had a monthly average of 10,285 adult welfare recipients last year (this doesn’t include figures for families). Since welfare reform was enacted 10 years ago, the number of welfare recipients has dropped considerably — a fact that is partly due to demographic shifts caused by gentrification. Still, that’s a lot of people on welfare, particularly given there are only about 560,000 people in D.C. to begin with.

Historically, the city has been one of the most generous for keeping people on the dole. And it still is, apparently. The entire neighboring state of Virginia had a monthly average of 10,173 adult welfare recipients in 2005 by comparison.

Now, both Northern Virginia and Washington continue to be magnets for immigration — both legal and illegal. Rows over Herndon’s day-laborer center represent anecdotal evidence that immigrants are here and willing to work. But the data speak for themselves. According to comparative numbers taken from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. census reports, nearly 400,000 non-native-born Americans came to Northern Virginia during that decade. A majority of them were poor. Of course, they’re still coming. Clearly they are not coming to the area because they can’t find work. (Currently, the unemployment rate in the District of Columbia is 5.5 percent. In Virginia, it’s 3.3 percent.)

The contrast between poor immigrants and poor native-born folks tells us something about the mentality of learned helplessness that was created along with the welfare state. It all started with the New Deal and grew until 1996.

To be fair, there have been marked improvements since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was signed into law. Caseloads have plummeted.

But despite improvements, a welfare-state mentality persists today. How is it that people coming to the area in such large numbers are finding work, and yet so many native-born Americans are still languishing on the dole? It’s not because there is a shortage of work. Could it be that foreign-born laborers “do the jobs Americans won’t do” — where the operative word for Americans is “won’t?” Americans won’t do these jobs because, for so long, the welfare state gave them perverse incentives not to work; and it still does to some degree.

If the success of immigrant labor is any indication, we’ve still got a lot of cleaning up to do from that awful legacy. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was only a start. I’m not writing this to suggest we start blaming the victims of poverty. I’m writing this to declare that there is still much to be done to prevent the welfare state from creating victims — i.e. people so dependent on the state that they lose pride of purpose, personal responsibility and willingness to work for what they receive.

I also want to suggest that Americans, particularly the privileged classes so eager to vote for entitlement programs, rethink some of their ideas about poverty. While we might not like the idea of living many to a home, working long hours or doing what we might consider hard, unrewarding work, immigrants teach us that resilience, family ties and a sound work ethic are the first steps toward upward mobility. They also remind us that welfare can be the first step into subsistence poverty. Our immigrants are proof that the American dream is still alive and that people are better off when they believe anything is possible through effort. Most poor Americans had come to think of themselves as victims born with begging bowls. For many, such characterizations may sound like callous indifference to human suffering. But if you look deeper, you will find admiration for America’s can-do newcomers, the reality of economic incentives to find and keep work, and fundamental truths about human nature.

Max Borders is managing editor of TCSDaily.com.