Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant

MARCH 24, 2015

On Money

By ADAM DAVIDSON

When I was growing up in the 1980s, I watched my grandfather — my dad’s stepdad

— struggle with his own prejudice. He was a blue-collar World War II veteran who

loved his family above all things and was constantly afraid for them. He carried a

gun and, like many men of his generation, saw threats in people he didn’t

understand: African-Americans, independent women, gays. By the time he died, 10

years ago, he had softened. He stopped using racist and homophobic slurs; he even

hugged my gay cousin. But there was one view he wasn’t going to change. He had no

time for Hispanics, he told us, and he wasn’t backing down. After all, this wasn’t a

matter of bigotry. It was plain economics. These immigrants were stealing jobs from

“Americans.”

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