Man, the kids these days! I do believe inscriptions kvetching about the lazy, shiftless youth that don't want to work for their living and don't respect their elders have been found in Babylon. Or was it Ur?
In any case, the social contract works both ways. People in the past could expect to be rewarded for hard work with a lifetime job, regular pay raises, and a nice gold watch and reasonable retirement funds at 65. This security encouraged people to work harder and more steadily (with several bad social effects, but that's another discussion). That has not been the case for an increasingly vast amount of occupations over the last 30 years. That being said, there is certainly no shortage of entrepreneurs in the modern US, nor do people in the US work shorter hours or take more vacation time than in most first world nations (indeed, the opposite is true - Americans work longer hours, with less vacation, less benefits, and often less pay, than people in most other modern economies). I don't believe your assertion is really backed by anything concrete.
Moreover, even were Americans chomping at the bit to get fruit picking jobs, they wouldn't get them. One of the primary reasons illegal immigrants are hired for those sort of occupations is because they can be paid less than actual Americans would be, and they have no legal recourse because they are, after all, illegal immigrants. Profit margins for the sort of industries that employ illegal immigrants often tend to be quite low, so this isn't even always a matter of greed on the part of the owners but rather survival (although, of course, without an underpaid labour supply no doubt the industry would reorganise itself to turn a profit without them... eventually).
In any case, the social contract works both ways. People in the past could expect to be rewarded for hard work with a lifetime job, regular pay raises, and a nice gold watch and reasonable retirement funds at 65. This security encouraged people to work harder and more steadily (with several bad social effects, but that's another discussion). That has not been the case for an increasingly vast amount of occupations over the last 30 years. That being said, there is certainly no shortage of entrepreneurs in the modern US, nor do people in the US work shorter hours or take more vacation time than in most first world nations (indeed, the opposite is true - Americans work longer hours, with less vacation, less benefits, and often less pay, than people in most other modern economies). I don't believe your assertion is really backed by anything concrete.
Moreover, even were Americans chomping at the bit to get fruit picking jobs, they wouldn't get them. One of the primary reasons illegal immigrants are hired for those sort of occupations is because they can be paid less than actual Americans would be, and they have no legal recourse because they are, after all, illegal immigrants. Profit margins for the sort of industries that employ illegal immigrants often tend to be quite low, so this isn't even always a matter of greed on the part of the owners but rather survival (although, of course, without an underpaid labour supply no doubt the industry would reorganise itself to turn a profit without them... eventually).