Democratic Representative of New Jersey’s wealthy 7th Congressional District Tom Malinowski reminds his constituents that we need our immigrants—legal or illegal—to mow “our beautiful lawns.”
The videotaped speech by the Democratic Representative was obtained by the Washington Examiner and has raised eyebrows among conservative political analysts and others.
“We have to think about the jobs because the reason this happens, is because there are a lot of jobs in our community that, like it or not, for better or worse, Americans are not willing to take,” Malinowski told the crowd. Malinowski was appearing at the Coffee With Your Congressman meeting held at the Cafe Brio in Hillsborough, New Jersey.
New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District has the fifth-highest national median income and was a GOP stronghold for many years, with 5,000 more registered Republican voters than Democrats, the Daily Wire reports.
President Trump lost the district by one percent during the 2016 presidential elections, according to Politico. It is also home to his own golf club, The Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, where the President often goes when vacationing.
“You’re a bunch of elitists! You’re not going to mow lawns.”
Democratic lawmaker: Illegal immigrants needed to mow more lawnshttps://t.co/dBtiNXdCFk
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 22, 2019
It was also one of four Congressional Districts that were traditionally red districts, but was changed to blue during the 2018 midterm elections.
Freshman Malinowski, who formerly worked as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor during the Obama administration, managed to flip the red district blue by unseating long-term Republican incumbent Representative Leonard Lance.
“I mean, who do you think is taking care of our seniors? Fifty percent of the eldercare workers in the state of New Jersey are immigrants, most of them legal — most of them documented — but certainly some of them are not,” he continued. “Who do you think is mowing our beautiful lawns in Somerset County? We don’t usually ask, but a lot of those workers are undocumented.”
Malinowski, who is running for his 2020 reelection, has since followed a relatively moderate course, and was one of 120 congressmen that pushed for an impeachment procedure on President Trump, while representing a still predominantly red district.
He was also the first New Jersey congressional member, and first Democrat representative of a swing state, to do so.
Malinowski went on to say that the immigrants are needed to fill the gaps as young wealthy New Jersians will no longer take on median jobs and would rather turn their attention to white-collar jobs in, for instance, the IT sector.
“There just aren’t a lot of kids who — sorry — are from Montgomery High [School], who are going to be doing that full time,” the Democratic lawmaker said. “You guys are going into robotics, for goodness sake.”
A youngster from the audience interpolated and said that he works at Code Ninjas, a company that teaches children to code by building videogames.
“You work at Code Ninjas, exactly,” Malinowski replied.
“You’re a bunch of elitists,” he joked. “You’re not going to mow lawns.”
