(Patriot TV)—For years, we’ve heard the same tired argument: America relies on illegal immigrants to fill the jobs no one else wants. It’s a story that’s been sold to us as essential for keeping the economy humming, with promises that these workers would stick to the shadows, handling only the grunt work. But reality has a way of exposing lies, and what we’ve ended up with is a system where illegal immigrants aren’t just picking up the slack—they’re competing directly with citizens for solid, blue-collar opportunities.
This isn’t about compassion or necessity; it’s about exploitation that hurts everyone involved, from the families left without breadwinners to the communities facing needless risks.
Take the tragic case on the Florida Turnpike last month. Harjinder Singh, an illegal immigrant behind the wheel of a commercial truck, attempted an illegal U-turn in a restricted area, blocking the northbound lanes and causing a crash that killed three innocent people: Herby Dufresne, 30, from Florida City; Rodrigue Dor, 54, from Miami; and Faniloa Joseph, 37, from Pompano Beach. Investigations later showed Singh had failed both English proficiency and road-sign tests, yet he somehow obtained a commercial driver’s license. This isn’t an isolated fluke—it’s a symptom of a deeper problem where corners are cut to favor cheaper labor over qualified, legal workers.
Commercial trucking has long been a pathway to the middle class for Americans, offering steady pay and a chance to build a life. Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams recognizes its potential, recently expanding training programs to help formerly incarcerated individuals enter the field and reduce recidivism. But with illegal immigrants flooding into these roles, opportunities dry up for those who play by the rules. Statistics bear this out: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 18% of the nation’s 3.5 million truck drivers are foreign-born, a figure some experts believe underestimates the reality.
Other analyses push it higher, suggesting up to 20% or around 700,000 drivers are immigrants, many of whom may not meet the same standards as their American counterparts. And while a 2017 report highlighted that immigrants make up a disproportionate share of the trucking workforce compared to the general population, with Mexico alone accounting for 32% of immigrant drivers, the trend hasn’t slowed.
Elaborating on this, Justin Lowry, a PhD researcher who analyzed U.S. Census data, noted back then that “immigrants in the workforce of the trucking industry are helping to buoy the industry itself because of the lack of workers.” But he also acknowledged the flip side: “It’s not an uncommon argument for people to make that increasing the size of the workforce drops the wages on the entire workforce.”
Lowry went further, explaining that “if they would increase wages, they would have higher demand,” pointing to how low pay discourages native-born Americans from entering or staying in the field. His insights reveal a vicious cycle—employers opt for immigrant labor to keep costs down, which in turn suppresses wages and deters U.S. citizens, creating an artificial “shortage” that’s used to justify more immigration.
This isn’t limited to trucking. The gig economy, once pitched as a flexible side hustle for everyday Americans, has followed the same path. Consider Bryan Kobel, CEO of TC BioPharm, who was assaulted by his Uber driver in Broward County, Florida. The driver, Vadim Nikolaevich Uliumdzhiev—a Russian national who entered the U.S. illegally via the southern border in 2022—refused Kobel entry because of his service dog, then got out and punched him unconscious.
Uber’s response? A statement that “it does not condone violence,” but no broader condemnation of relying on an unverified, illegal workforce. Today, immigrants comprise about 56% of drivers in the gig economy, according to a 2020 report by the National Employment Law Project. In some cities, that number climbs to 90%. What started as a way for citizens to earn extra cash has morphed into a domain where Americans are edged out, and safety takes a back seat.
These incidents highlight a broader cultural shift. We’ve allowed the narrative to take root that certain jobs are beneath us, opening the floodgates for corporations to prioritize profits over people. Stories from older generations about supporting a family on a single factory job feel like relics now—not just because of offshoring, but because remaining positions are increasingly filled by illegal workers willing (or forced) to accept subpar conditions. In states like California, where policies enable this, the problem is acute, but it’s spreading nationwide.
Recent policy moves underscore the chaos. The U.S. announced plans for nearly 65,000 visas for foreign truck drivers in 2025, targeting workers from select countries, only to pause certain work visas later amid crackdowns. Meanwhile, experts warn that aggressive immigration enforcement could crunch trucking capacity, yet the influx of undocumented drivers has already contributed to overcapacity and bankruptcies among compliant companies. It’s a mess that benefits no one except those at the top.
At its core, this great lie about needing illegal immigrants for “unwanted” jobs erodes the American Dream. It depresses wages, compromises safety, and displaces citizens who are ready and willing to work if given fair incentives. We don’t need an underclass to prop us up—we need policies that put Americans first, secure our borders, and ensure every job is one worth fighting for. The evidence is clear: continuing down this path only invites more tragedy and inequality.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
