Help wanted; who’s willing to work?

Now that dozens of Fresh Mark employees in Canton, Massillon and Salem, Ohio, have been removed amid charges they’re living and working here illegally, it means there now are more jobs available to red-blooded Americans. Great news, right?

Though Fresh Mark’s plant in Canton, Ohio, constantly posts “Help Wanted” or “Applications Accepted” signs out front, the prayers of idle, able-bodied natives, finally have been answered!

Sure, working in a food-processing plant is hard and dangerous work, but it’s nothing Americans can’t handle if just given a shot, yes?

Many of our great Midwestern cities were built through such jobs — though most of the people who did them back then were immigrants, too.

It’s a reminder that virtually every bite of food we consume has, at some point, passed through the hands of an immigrant.

If the raids continue, it also ensures more openings at commercial farms throughout the area. It’s only right, and a matter of fairness for those Americans who have been clamoring for those jobs for years.

Perfect world

The central argument has been that in order to maintain sovereignty, immigration law must be upheld.

In a perfect world, the only issue would be legality. But that deftly ignores the human equation, and the political, economic and social conditions that drove Latin Americans from their countries in the first place.

It would require us to pretend that past is not prologue; that some of the violence and corruption plaguing Central and South America had nothing at all to do with our fostering certain policies and “regime changes” to benefit our own interests, as was the case in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and in the propping up of such war criminals as Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

To argue that immigration is simply a matter of enforcement means we would have to whistle past the direct connection between the Latin American drug cartels wreaking havoc and our consumption.

We also would have to deny that history is repeating itself in growing anti-immigrant sentiment. A study by the National Foundation for American Policy, a pro-immigration group, has determined that over the past year, Congress passed legislation that reduces legal immigration by as much as 40 percent.

By the book

That makes mockery of the oftheard argument the issue is not with “legal” immigrants. It’s now clear that some Americans don’t even want people who are going by the book.

We ought to at least be honest about who it is that we want here. There’s a reason no one from Finland or Norway is climbing over the wall. Their quality of life is better than ours. We know some wealthy Chinese and Russians are arranging for their children to be born in the United States to ensure dual citizenship, but when have you ever heard either group described as “anchor babies” or an “infestation”?

Everything is connected. If we want people to stop coming illegally, we must exercise leadership and encourage their countries to adopt true and lasting reforms.

There is an argument that undocumented immigrants depress wages for Americans who have to compete, but the same was said of former slaves and Irish and Italian newcomers a century ago. A recent Heritage Foundation report contends that undocumented immigrants use $14,000 more in public services than they pay in taxes.

But we also know some American employers cast a blind eye at undocumented workers’ paperwork because they know they’re too vulnerable to complain about hazardous conditions or low pay.

Yet even with that, the dangers and risks apparently are worth leaving the world they know for a chance at a better life.

Let’s hope Fresh Mark is ready for the deluge of Yankee Doodle applicants certain to come their way.