To the editor:

Do you want to do this job?

If so, put down your video games, get off the couch and go apply at one of the many places with “help wanted” signs.

We have four sources of employment that are badly in need of workers and will need you to step up as the refugees and immigrants who are currently doing those jobs are hounded from our community by ICE and the cruel policies of the federal government.

– First, time to learn how to milk a cow. Then how to slop out the barn. Then tossing bales of hay around. Not exactly the job you had in mind? Well, there are willing workers here who think it’s a great job. Until now, it supplied them with a source of income and a safe haven.

— Secondly, maybe you’d like to learn how to clean hotel rooms or serve in restaurants? Twelve hours on your feet cleaning up after hotel guests who’ve trashed the room and had too much to drink. Maybe running back and forth between hungry tourists and cranky chefs is more to your taste? Another 12 hour back-breaking job. Another job being happily done by an immigrant.

— Thirdly, how about up and down a ladder all day harvesting apples, then sleeping in dormitories with very little bathroom facilities.

— Or lastly, working in a nursing home or a hospital. Our elderly and disabled people need almost constant care and even now are not getting it. What is going to happen when ICE storms into one of these places and removes care workers? Our parents and grandparents will not be properly taken care of.

This is a country built on the bravery and hard work of immigrants and refugees. People who got on small wooden ships in Europe and set out with nothing but blind faith. That is the equivalent of those who are making their way here through jungles with their children in tow hoping for a better, safer life. So wake up, let your representatives in DC know that these wholesale deportations are harming our way of life. Or go take one of those jobs to prove that we really do not need these immigrants who want to work them.

Parmelee Tolkan

Lake Placid