This state voted twice for Donald Trump in overwhelming numbers.
As Trump prepares to run again in 2024, legal troubles be damned, there is one part of his spiel we — or those who like him — should reconsider.
Trump got a lot of mileage and a lot of votes on restricting immigration, particularly in 2016. “Build the wall!,” his supporters chanted, followed by “Lock Her Up,” then “Two Bits, Four Bits, Six Bits ...” Just kidding on the last one.
I lost track of the wall. It got old, kind of like pro wrestling shenanigans. Trump only mildly succeeded in his vision. A bunch of really committed private citizens funded 5 miles of new wall, which, by 2020, was in danger of serious erosion. The Southern District of New York charged Trump acolyte Steve Bannon with a scheme to defraud these same folks by taking the wall money for his own use. Maybe he bought a bottle of shampoo.
The Biden administration has largely backed off the wall idea and has received tons of grief for admitting record numbers of migrants from all over the place. To which we here in West Virginia should say, “Who cares?”
Are we overrun by immigrants? Uh ... no. That should mean everyone is champing at the bit to work, then, without those “rough hombre” Mexicans taking our jobs. Uh ... no. Lowest workforce participation rate in the country. These are folks who have said “Screw it, I’m goin’ to the house.” Many are retired, granted.
Without these foreigners around, we should be free to relish in our true Anglo-Saxon heritage, flocking to Scottish fests, ramp feeds and square dances. After all, we white people “shall not be replaced,” as all those tiki-torch folks kept chanting at that awful Charlottesville melee.
We needn’t worry about anyone replacing us, taking our jobs or ruining Vandalia with a horde of mariachi bands. No one’s beating down the door. They shouldn’t have to. It should be hanging wide open.
State economic development officials announced a nice string of projects last year. Do we have enough people to fill the jobs they’ll bring, assuming they all come to fruition?
John Deskins, director of West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, has said that having an older population is one reason for our poor work record, but he also pulled no punches in highlighting our lowest higher-education attainment record of all 50 states and the highest drug overdose rate.
Of Nucor’s promising steel plant in Mason County, Deskins said, “We don’t have the people in West Virginia to man that plant. It’s going to encourage people to move in from other states. That is the perfect example of the kind of positive shock we have engineered to create positive momentum instead of negative momentum.”
Sounds good. We’ll take good old Americans, provided they’re not already satisfied in more prosperous states. Refugees and immigrants aren’t at all satisfied or they wouldn’t be taking ridiculous risks to get in. They’re, in many cases, as educated and probably more willing and/or able to work than our own residents, barring the solvable language barrier.
A long time ago, I saw a crew of Hispanics building a house in Northern Georgia on Thanksgiving Day. They were like bees. We were getting ready to feed our faces.
Vote your own interest, West Virginia. Immigrants are not arriving in unmanageable numbers. Maybe they are in Texas. We don’t live in Texas.
We need outside labor, whether it’s John Smith from Portsmouth, Ohio, or Julio Gonzalez from Mexico.
