Immigration is a huge issue in this election.
Heaven help me, I did a google image search for "Donald Trump huge."
I feel I have to speak out about the profoundly positive impact immigrants have had on the restaurant industry -- and on me personally. I'm lucky enough to have worked among incredibly diverse groups of people in my career in food and beverage. In every restaurant in which I've ever worked, there have been immigrants. Let me be frank when I say this: They are the machinery that keeps everything running.
I know the knee-jerk reaction some people will have when they hear about immigrants toiling away in a kitchen: "Oh I'm sure there are some Mexicans washing dishes in the back." While that statement is racist and lumps every person of another ethnicity into one category, it's not entirely false. Yes, some immigrants wash the dishes. But many others are cooking your food. Countless others are working fourteen-hour days to manage operations because the owner can't do it themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that you've sat at a table set by an undocumented immigrant and eaten food prepared by undocumented hands. Without immigrant labor, your Saturday night dinner date comes grinding to a halt. Your retirement celebration in the private dining room of that swank bistro is no more. Without immigrants and the skills they share with the hospitality industry, restaurants would be permanently altered in a negative way.
I'm not alone in this sentiment. Celebrated chef and author Anthony Bourdain boldly claimed that if Trump deported all immigrants "every restaurant in America would shut down." Some analysts credit a slowdown in Mexican immigration with a shortage of quality cooks in urban areas. Immigrants are important to the hospitality sector. And whether you like it or not, when you're in a restaurant, you benefit from their presence in this country.
I will repeat it. If you've ever eaten in a restaurant, you have benefited from and supported the presence of immigrants in this country.
Restaurants operate under impossibly small profit margins. Immigrants and undocumented workers that are willing to work for less money are an appealing labor pool for business owners. As they become more skilled and earn more money, they compensate for the extra expenditure by BUSTING THEIR ASS. They work hard because they have to prove themselves in a country that doesn't always welcome them. They work hard because they are fighting for their families.
In my twenties I went on a first date with a young Tunisian cook who worked with me. I listened as he told me about his mother an ocean away and watched awkwardly as tears began to roll down his cheeks. I was touched by his story and sympathetic to his feelings, but no, we didn't go out again -- he cried a lot. On another occasion I had a conversation with Susanna, the woman who did practically every job at the restaurant where I met my husband. She could only see her children a few weeks out of the year, because she was the only one able to earn the money to give them a better life. Unfortunately, her work was in Pennsylvania and their better life was still in Mexico.
"Bad hombres?" Not hardly. Immigrants are fighting demanding hours, systemic racism, loneliness, and an uphill battle for citizenship, and still they show up every day to put on an apron and do it again. Do some of them bring in drugs or crime? Sure. But anyone who works in a restaurant knows we had plenty of drugs in this country already. My core belief is that most immigrants are just good people looking for a better life. Isn't that the simplest of explanations? My mother's grandparents came to the United States from Ireland in the early 1900's, and she keeps a sign in her house that says "No Irish Need Apply" as a nod to her heritage. The country we choose to be fearful of changes with the times, but the past has shown that we only grow stronger when we overcome our xenophobia.
PROUD IRISH AMERICANS (Mariah Carey, who knew?)
As this is a website devoted to restaurants, I'd be remiss not to end on a lighter note and mention the food. Oh, the food that immigrants bring to the table. The flavors and the textures and the ingredients! In the back of the house, over a stainless steel prep table, a pastry chef from Thailand gave me some of her spicy homemade cooking. I nearly burnt my tongue off, but I went back for more. A Latin prep cook fried me up a batch of tostones, and my eyes were opened to a new world (they are fried twice, y'all. TWICE). Perhaps if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could come together over food, as I have been blessed enough to do, the issue of immigration would cease to be a controversy. I like having immigrants here. I want to work next to them. And last but not least, I want all of their recipes.
Let them in. AND LET ME EAT THEIR FOOD!
