https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/12/the-crippling-problem-people-who-eat-at-restaurants-havent-noticed-but-chefs-are-freaking-out-about/
And then there’s another subtle but significant change happening across America that doesn’t bode well for the restaurant industry. After years of steady inflows of Mexican immigrants, who have proved both eager and talented cooks, the trend is reversing itself. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has leveled off over the past decade (it peaked eight years ago in 2007). By 2012, net migration to Mexico was already zero, or even negative, meaning that more Mexicans were moving out than moving in.
That’s terrible news for an industry that has relied on the demographic. In 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 1.4 million out of a total of about 12.7 million workers in the restaurant industry were immigrants. In 2008, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that about 20 percent of the country’s more than 2.5 million chefs and cooks were undocumented immigrants.
“I would be surprised if the slowdown in Mexican immigration isn’t responsible for more of the problem than many people realize,” said Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University who has written extensively about the economics of restaurants. “This sector is, as anyone in it will tell you, kept afloat by immigrants, especially Latinos.”
Obama got rid of them? Who woulda thunk it? Where are the willng and able natural borns to take over and cook up some shit?