I posted a couple days ago about an article on a California farmer moving his vegetable operation to Mexico. Freakonomics picked up on the bit about Mexicans working harder in California and had about 40 comments on the idea.
I was waiting for my wife to buy basmati rice at a local Indian grocery. Indians and Koreans and Chinese immigrants often get into small business--food, dry cleaning, etc. If the family works 16 hours a day, they can make it. Then I remembered the "consensus" school of American history from the early 1960's. The idea, pushed by Louis Hartz and others, was that emigrants to America left behind much of the class structure of Europe--the lower classes didn't migrate, no money; and the upper classes didn't migrate, they had it too good. So America was populated by the middle class, and hence never had the class war to the extent Europe did. (Oversimplification.)
How does that relate to farm workers from south of the border? Well, when one emigrates north, one leaves behind a lot, family, friends, social structures. One of the less obvious things you leave behind is the whole entertainment industry. Entertainers don't move, they have it good enough where they are (much like the European upper classes). And you need a critical mass of people to support native entertainment industry. So I'd venture that the entertainment industry for any group of immigrants is smaller and less active than in their home country. So immigrants work harder in part because they have fewer entertainment outlets for their time and energy.
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