Sheriff Joe: Job Creator

By James R. Edwards, Jr. on March 21, 2011

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, whom the Obama administration has targeted with intimidation tactics to quash other local law enforcers' resolve, now has effectively become a job creator for Americans. A local TV news report from Phoenix followed up on what happened after the arrests of illegal alien workers that the sheriff made at a string of Pei Wei Asian Diners.

The local restaurants had employed many illegal aliens, including as dishwashers. Sheriff Joe investigated, got enough evidence, and swept in to arrest the foreign lawbreakers. After the arrests, the diners had to close until they could hire new legal workers. That's where the heart-tugging news report picks up.

Restaurant dishwasher a so-called "job Americans won't do"? Not at all.

Young and middle-aged, married and single, someone with a master's degree. Americans all. That's who you see interviewed. Each one told the news reporter they were willing to wash dishes in a Pei Wei restaurant for $8 an hour. If you watch the video, you'll see how satisfied several of those interviewed are to land this job, which elitists at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO headquarters dismiss as unappealing to any native-born Americans.

As Sheriff Joe has shown yet again, "attrition through enforcement" has the salutary effect of freeing up jobs illegal aliens wrongfully hold and opening up those positions for Americans needing employment.

The same direct economic benefit for legal American workers could arise from similar clean-up actions elsewhere, such as Chipotle restaurants (450 illegal Chipotle workers in Minnesota alone were fired) or janitorial services in Minnesota's Twin Cities (240 illegal alien janitors at Harvard Maintenance, using fake ID documents, are losing their stolen American jobs). In fact, a friend recently noted how suspect Latino workers at her local D.C. Chipotle are now replaced by native-born black Americans.

Maybe more employers will start to cast down their buckets where they are to find Americans to fill their openings.