Washington Post
By Justin Moyer
October 30, 2015
When
the bad boy of the restaurant world holds forth on the bad boy of the
Republican Party, one might expect the rhetoric to be served hot and
spicy. And on Wednesday,
celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain brought extra pepper.
In
an interview with Pete Dominick on Sirius XM, Bourdain discussed the
problems presented by GOP presidential contender Donald Trump and some
other conservatives’ view
of immigrants. Dominick kicked off the discussion by pointing out that
restaurateurs, who often depend on undocumented people for labor, may
come to appreciate their struggles.
“You
could be the most right-wing conservative,” Dominick said. “You really
start to understand the value of these folks, and understand what our
economy and what our
country would be like without them, and what your business would be
like without them.” His question for Bourdain: “What is your point of
view of these undocumented immigrants?”
“Like
a lot of other white kids, I rolled out of a prestigious culinary
institute and went to work in real restaurants,” Bourdain said. “… I
walked into restaurants and
the person always who’d been there the longest, who took the time to
show me how it was done, was always Mexican or Central American.”
Bourdain
called immigrants “the backbone of the industry, meaning most of the
people, in my experience, cooking.” He pointed out that, in the 20 years
he was hiring, he
fielded few applications from U.S. citizens for low-level positions.
“Never
in any of those years,” Bourdain said, “not once, did anyone walk into
my restaurant — any American-born kid walk into my restaurant — and say,
‘I’d like a job
as a night porter or as a dishwasher.'” He said many were “not willing
to start at the bottom like that.”
Trump was in his crosshairs.
“If
Mr. Trump deports 11 million people or whatever he’s talking about
right now, every restaurant in America would shut down,” Bourdain said.
Bourdain was willing to have a discussion about policies going forward — to a point.
“Serious
minds can honestly disagree over what we want to do in the future as
far as how tightly we want to control our borders and how many people we
want to let in,”
he said, calling the idea of a border wall “ridiculous.” “… But for the
people who’ve been living here, and who are so much part of our lives,
and who have done nothing but do their best to achieve the American
dream … there should be an easy path to legality.”
Dominick asked if other restaurateurs agreed.
“Yeah, because they’d be up the creek,” Bourdain said.
Bourdain, a frequent face on “Top Chef,” then took aim at the culinary-school-to-reality-show pipeline.
“There’s
a struggle right now to get cooks in New York and Washington, D.C., and
other major cities,” he said. “Because all the kids coming out of
culinary school, they
don’t want to do the prep job. They show up out of school with their
little knife roll up and the white coffee filter on their head and say,
‘When do I get to be on Top Chef? When do I get my own show? What do
mean I have to clean squid for a year?'”
Dominick then put Bourdain on the defensive by asking him whether kitchen workers should have health-care insurance.
“Um,”
Bourdain said. “Look, it’s tough. It’s a very difficult business for
small operators. … If you’re working full time at a restaurant, you
should be able to afford
to live in America.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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