Working Class Americans: ‘Isolating’ To Be the Only English Speaker on the Job

American workers in blue collar jobs are grappling with the “isolating” prospect that their workplaces are increasingly dominated by non-English speaking foreigners.

In two reports over the last few weeks, white working class Americans chronicled and interviewed by the Washington Post and Humans of New York, revealed the gripping impact of mass immigration on the country’s workers.

The Washington Post report follows the story of 20-year-old Heaven Engle and 25-year-old Venson Heim, a couple who work at the Bell & Evans Plant 2 in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania.

The couple is outnumbered in the chicken processing plant as Spanish speakers primarily from the Dominican Republic make up the vast majority of their colleagues.

“It sucks when you can’t talk to no one,” Heaven told the Washington Post.

“I would rather sit and talk. It would make the day go faster,” she said.

After a work meeting, conducted primarily in Spanish, Heaven took a smoke break while all the other foreign workers went on a lunch break. She met her boyfriend, Venson, outside so the two would have each other to speak to.

“They don’t give a rat’s ass about people with white skin,” Venson told her about the work meeting, as described by the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the Humans of New York Instagram account recently interviewed an American drywall finisher who says he has not worked with a fellow American in three years. The worker called his blue collar job “isolating,” noting that he is the first one to be cut from jobs as he is outnumbered by non-English speakers and immigrants from Central and South America.

 

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“I haven’t worked with an American for three years. I’m a union drywall finisher, and my job has completely been taken over by Central and South Americans. All of them have union cards now. Can you imagine being the only one on your crew who doesn’t speak Spanish? There’s nobody to talk to. You have no clue what people are saying. It’s isolating. And all of them stick together too. My last three foremen were from El Salvador, Paraguay, and Peru. And whenever work dries up, I’m the first one trimmed from the crew. Always. No matter how hard I work. I used to get angry about it. It felt like I’d been sold out by the mayor and the union bosses. I even started having racist thoughts. But that’s not me, man. I know they aren’t bad people. They’re just sticking together like any of us would. How can you blame them? My parents were immigrants. I grew up in New York. I’ve got friends from all over the world. So I’m not going to start thinking like that. I’m not going there. That’s not who I am.”

A post shared by Humans of New York (@humansofny) on Aug 4, 2018 at 1:59pm PDT

“I haven’t worked with an American for three years. I’m a union drywall finisher, and my job has completely been taken over by Central and South Americans,” the worker said. “All of them have union cards now. Can you imagine being the only one on your crew who doesn’t speak Spanish? There’s nobody to talk to. You have no clue what people are saying. It’s isolating.” The worker continued:

And all of them stick together too. My last three foremen were from El Salvador, Paraguay, and Peru. And whenever work dries up, I’m the first one trimmed from the crew. Always. No matter how hard I work. I used to get angry about it. It felt like I’d been sold out by the mayor and the union bosses. I even started having racist thoughts. But that’s not me, man. I know they aren’t bad people. They’re just sticking together like any of us would. How can you blame them? My parents were immigrants. I grew up in New York. I’ve got friends from all over the world. So I’m not going to start thinking like that. I’m not going there. That’s not who I am.

As Breitbart News reported, while American workers grapple with feeling like foreigners in their own neighborhoods, the New York Times recently complained that “nearly all white” states like Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire posed “an array of problems” for immigrants.

“New Hampshire, like its neighbors Vermont and Maine, is nearly all white. This has posed an array of problems for new arrivals, who often find themselves isolated and alone, without the comfort and support of a built-in community,” the New York Times report stated.

Today, as the illegal and legal immigrant population booms to 44 million, there are a record number of U.S. residents speaking foreign languages at home.

Census Bureau data from 2015 reveals that there are now nearly 65 million U.S. residents who speak a foreign language in their household, Breitbart News reported. Almost half of the households in California speak foreign languages while at home.

Diversity in the U.S. has been primarily driven by mass immigration wherein the country admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals every year. This diversity has reached a peak high as the foreign population in the U.S. has jumped to 44 million immigrants, nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000.