The LA Times ran a story this week about a California landscaper (Cyndi Smallwood) claiming that she couldn’t find people to do jobs that paid $34 an hour. From the article:

Cyndi Smallwood is looking for a few strong men for her landscaping company. Guys with no fear of a hot sun, who can shovel dirt all day long. She’ll pay as much as $34 an hour.

She can’t find them.

Maybe potential employees don’t know about her tiny Riverside firm. Maybe the problem is Southern California’s solid economy and low unemployment rate. Or maybe manual labor is something that many Americans couldn’t dream of doing.

“I’m baffled why more people do not apply,” Smallwood says.

President Bush is not. In his speech to the nation Monday night, he referred to “jobs Americans are not doing,” echoing a point he has been making for years. To fill these spurned jobs and keep the economy humming, Bush says, the U.S. needs a guest worker program.

Otherwise, the logic goes, fruit will rot in the fields, offices will overflow with trash and lawns and parks will revert to desert.

Countering that view, opponents of a guest worker program say that Americans would find the jobs more enticing if there wasn’t foreign competition to swell the labor pool and push wages down.

Smallwood is ambivalent on immigration reform, saying demands for immediate citizenship by those who entered the country illegally are offensive. But without a guest worker program, she says, her company probably will not survive.

The LA Times leaves out (on purpose) a few facts about Smallwood, facts that you can find out about here and here.

The biggie is a member of the CLCA (California Landscapers Contractors Association) Immigration Taskforce, which opposes the much stronger immigration bill proposed by House Rep. Sensenbrenner.

It’s not a big issue that Smallwood is part of this ‘task force.’ What is at issue is the LA Times’ failure to mention it. Wonder why they didn’t? Did they not know? If so, it was poor research on their part. Or did they know and just chose not to print it? My bet is on the latter.

Hat tip: ST reader Cump

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