ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- This Labor Day, here's a tip that might save you work down the line: Listen to your elders, especially when they're giving you advice about how to raise your kids.

I'm just the messenger. So let me say upfront the valuable advice a group of wise senior citizens recently shared with me and told me to pass along to you: Make sure your teenagers have jobs -- after school, on weekends, during summer. Teach them a work ethic, and instill in them that no job is beneath them. If they want a new toy or electronic device, have them work for it. Stop trying to get on their good side, and instead concentrate on being a good parent.

When you talk to groups, as I do frequently, you never know what topic will fire up the crowd. That can be true even when it's a group to which you speak regularly.

In North San Diego County, there's an informal organization of elderly folks who are lifelong learners. There are dozens of members, but only about 25 to 30 tend to show up to regular meetings. Attendees socialize and gossip and eat cookies while listening to speakers who are invited to come talk to them about... well, just about anything. Most attendees are between 65 and 85. They are members of the baby boom and the so-called Silent Generation.

I've been showing up to these gatherings for about a decade, ever since one of the coordinators spotted my byline in the local newspaper and reached out. Once I get to the podium, I try not to talk about politics or media. I'd much rather talk about something more interesting: life. That fits nicely seeing how LIFE is the name of the group.

As a Mexican American living in Southern California -- whose father is a retired law enforcement officer who spent 37 years on the job and whose grandfather was a legal immigrant from Mexico who spent longer than that working in the fields -- living life these days means coping with what I call "the troubles."

The term refers to the Trump administration's attempt to create a hostile living environment for the nation's 64 million Latinos through brutal immigration raids fueled by ethnic profiling. The objective seems to be to harass anyone with dark skin or even a slight accent until we pack up and leave.

Sadly, it's working. I have friends -- professionals with resources -- who are moving to Mexico and Spain. They're saying goodbye to the USA, just a few steps ahead of what they see as the dawn of fascism.

I shared this experience with the LIFE group. And the discussion caught fire when we got to the question of how the United States became home to an estimated 15 million undocumented immigrants.

The answer, according to many in the group: It's the kids and their parents, and the way that the latter raised the former. Some pointed out that many of jobs done by immigrants were, in the 1950s and 1960s, routinely done by young people in their teens and 20s. Now, they said, the average teenage boy is in his bedroom playing video games, and the average teenage girl is her bedroom listening to music. No one is socializing, and very few are clocking in to a job.

For the last two decades, college admissions officers have noticed that applicants have scant job experience. They might do volunteer work and go to summer camp. But the idea of working for a stranger and cashing a paycheck is foreign to a lot of Generation Z.

Worse, many of those who do work have an inflated notion of what their time is worth.

For that, I also blame earlier generations -- of U.S. laborers. In San Diego County, a fast-food worker earns $20 per hour, a babysitter earns $30 per hour and a handyman earns $90 per hour. An air conditioner repairman earns $100 per hour, an auto mechanic earns $150 per hour and a specialty electrician who installs home chargers for electric vehicles earns $275 per hour.

Young people see all that, and they assume they're entitled to the same sort of wages. Life will teach them otherwise.

Until then, someone has to do the dirty, depressing and dangerous jobs that American kids won't go anywhere near. Guess who is clocking in?

Happy Labor Day! For those who still labor.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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