Andrew Puzder, CEO of the company that owns fast-food chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardees, is President Trump’s nominee for labor secretary. At an event on immigration and labor at the American Enterprise Institute (where I am a visiting fellow), in 2013, he laid out a view of immigrant labor that showed one reason corporate America is always pushing for more entrants — and why American workers might not be pleased by this.
Below is the video. The relevant part is here.
Puzder said that his managers around the country see “the labor force in California, as an example of what they’d like their labor force to be.”
Why? It’s about immigration.
“They’re very hard-working, dedicated, creative people that really appreciate the fact that they have a job,” Puzder explained. “Whereas in other parts of the country, you often get people that are saying, ‘I can’t believe I have to work this job,’ with the immigrant population, you have the ‘thank God I have this job’ kind of attitude.”
He grants that this is a “gross generalization,” but concludes that it is “probably accurate.”
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s commentary editor, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
