Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett was caught on camera again making remarks that should alarm any patriot who believes in law, order, and respect for American workers. At the South by Southwest festival she told an audience that Americans aren’t the ones who want to do farm or hospitality labor, and suggested that undocumented immigrants are the people who keep food on our tables and hotel rooms clean.
The clip shows Crockett asking the crowd if they are sending their kids to college to go work the farms, then bluntly asserting that someone else is doing that labor so the rest of the country can have inexpensive food and services. That talking point — that the country needs a stream of cheap, often-illegal labor because Americans supposedly won’t do the work — is not only a policy failure, it’s a moral failure when offered without nuance or respect for the rule of law.
In a separate appearance at a historically Black church she went further, declaring in front of congregants that “we done picking cotton,” a line that linked modern immigration policy to America’s painful racial past in a way critics called tone-deaf and incendiary. Democrats have lost control of the narrative when their champions use flippant historical comparisons as a political shield while defending open-borders outcomes.
The remarks went viral after the clip was shared on social media by journalists and commentators, quickly racking up millions of views and drawing bipartisan condemnation for the irresponsible rhetoric. This is the kind of spectacle that distracts from genuine debates about agriculture, legal pathways for labor, and how to protect wages for American citizens while enforcing immigration laws fairly.
Conservative commentators are right to call out the glaring hypocrisy: elite Democrats who preach virtue signaling and open borders are often the same class that benefits from low-cost outsourcing and will not accept the consequences of importing a permanent underclass of undocumented labor. History has shown that when you build policy around cheap labor without enforcement or a credible legal framework, you invite exploitation and economic pressure on the middle class.
There is a straightforward conservative answer: secure the border, enforce existing immigration laws, and expand legal guest-worker programs tied to clear protections and wages so Americans aren’t undercut by shadow labor markets. Washington’s failure to choose between honest legal reform and chaotic open-borders politics leaves hard-working communities squeezed and willing workers ignored.
If conservatives want to turn this controversy into policy wins, we should force the debate onto real solutions — not soundbites about who picks crops. Demand accountability from members of Congress who normalize lawlessness, insist on border security, and push for reforms that prioritize American workers and lawful, regulated migration. The voters deserve leaders who will protect the rule of law and the dignity of every worker, legal and otherwise, without sacrificing national sovereignty for political theater.
