Rantz: Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal views illegal immigrants as little more than cheap labor to exploit

Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal just said the quiet part out loud. The open-borders Democrat pretends to support illegal immigrants because she’s a compassionate soul fighting to give the oppressed a better life. In truth, she just wants them working low-wage, exploitative jobs picking vegetables.

“Immigrants are us … If you look at the food that’s on your table, think about who picked it,” she declared at a rally condemning President Donald Trump’s raids on criminal illegal immigrants.

In one breath, she reduced immigrants — many of whom came to America seeking opportunity, building businesses and contributing in countless ways — to nothing more than farm laborers. To progressives, immigrants are here to serve them. And, apparently, all farm laborers are illegal immigrants who aren’t allowed to lawfully work here.

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Why do progressives like Pramila Jayapal want to exploit cheap labor?

Squad grandmother Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Seattle) says we shouldn’t deport criminal illegal immigrants because they pick our vegetables, but she doesn’t really how deeply offensive and condescending this is. To Jayapal, all immigrants work on farms. pic.twitter.com/IVwXpZeNph

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) February 26, 2025

It’s a deeply offensive view, but one that perfectly encapsulates the Radical Left’s real interest in immigration policy. They don’t see immigrants as individuals, as people with aspirations beyond menial labor. No, to them, immigrants are just a means to an end: Cheap labor to do the jobs they claim Americans won’t.

That’s why the Radical Left is so outraged over deportations and border enforcement. They don’t actually care about immigrants as people — they care about keeping the pipeline of underpaid, easily exploitable labor open. They want illegal immigrants to pick vegetables, clean their toilets and landscape their lawns without costing them too much. That’s why they frame immigration as an economic necessity rather than a legal or humanitarian issue.

To the Radical Left, illegal immigrants aren’t victims of a broken system; they’re the solution to a worker shortage that progressives refuse to fix in any other way.

It’s also why they parrot the insulting argument that “Americans won’t do these jobs.” That’s a lie. Americans will absolutely do these jobs if they’re compensated fairly. But progressives — who claim to champion fair wages — don’t actually want to pay a fair wage. They want a labor force too afraid to demand better pay, too scared of deportation to complain and too dependent on their beneficence to ever vote for a conservative alternative.

It’s a disgusting cycle of exploitation, one that Jayapal just openly admitted to. And it’s particularly rich coming from a party that constantly accuses Republicans of racism and xenophobia. Apparently, it’s not racist to assume all immigrants exist to pick lettuce or blueberries — it’s just “progressive.”

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Immigration law isn’t insulting to immigrants

If conservatives ever dared to suggest that immigrants are only good for manual labor, there would be national outrage. But when a Democrat says it? Silence or, oddly, amplification. Because the Radical Left’s commitment to racial and economic justice is just a convenient talking point. Their real priority is ensuring a permanent underclass they can control.

Jayapal’s comments should be a wake-up call. The Left doesn’t see immigrants as equals. They see them as tools — useful for votes, cheap labor and political virtue-signaling. And when immigrants start rejecting that role — when they build their own success, when they vote against progressive policies, when they demand real opportunity instead of government handouts — watch how quickly the Left turns on them.

The real insult to immigrants isn’t enforcing immigration law. It’s pretending they’re only valuable when they’re picking vegetables for elites who never had to do a day of manual labor in their lives. That’s the Democratic Party’s real position. And Jayapal just said it out loud.

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