I live with the madness.
We have Hispanic families on our street. My own wife complains about them. (She's one of those racially prejudiced but would never admit it people. She knows it's wrong but was raised by
very prejudiced parents)
On the other hand I have no racial prejudices (only opinions of individuals of various races including my own) but back on topic:
Some of these folks are bound to be illegal. They are not drug dealers or criminal in the sense of committing "crimes" as we might think of them. But several speak little or no English (usually one family member speaks enough to "get by"), they work mostly construction or labor type jobs where illegals are very commonly hired here etc.
My point is in this town I have watched the Mexican population
explode in the last few years. These are not "Hispanics" that have lived here all along. I grew up here, I have 2 good friends that married Hispanics, I have Hispanic friends etc. so it's not hard to spot the difference in the native Hispanics and the Mexicans, and that's not a term of prejudice, they are citizens of the nation of Mexico & born there
so they are Mexicans.
It is against the law (as is) to even ask if they are "legal" before selling them real estate, cars, the hospitals & emergency services must not only treat then free they must provide Spanish speaking people to translate and of course our school district must educate their children.
This county ranks among the poorest per capita in our state. So these demands on education & social services by a foreign population really hurt budgets that are shot anyway.
The local employers are doing 2 things.
1. The towns former second largest company is now way down the list since the "outsourced" 1/2 their operations to Mexico. They gave a lot of reasons but there are 2 obvious ones. First of course is cheap labor but mainly it's because they worked with a lot of hazardous stuff, both to the environment and the workers. The last few years before they "outsourced" I heard the rumors of the millionaire owners complaining constantly about the cost of "containment structures", breathing protection for workers, etc. etc. (and the ultimate irony is this company makes a product that is supposed to be better for the environment than their competitors!) In Mexico they don't have to protect the workers or the land.
2. There are plenty of employers to hire the ones here. Nobody looks close at social security or other IDs if they look at all and the construction trades (especially home/building construction) don't even care. Sure they work cheap. One guy on my street goes to work before daylight & gets home after dark. He's picked up early every morning by a pickup loaded with other Mexicans and recently another adult male moved into their home who speaks no English/has no car/etc. so I guarantee he's a relative they have "brought over" and found a job & they are letting him live there until he saves some money & gets a place or brings his family here or whatever.
I know because I have see it happen literally 100 times here if I have seen it once. Not 100 times on my street but on the streets of every last person I know.
The point is the madness of this HUGE influx. Our town is easily approaching 1/2 Hispanic.
We have always had a thriving Hispanic community but the last few years the numbers of illegals have sky-rocketed. When I was young the blacks were demanding civil rights (I recall when the first 2 black families dared to move "across the street"... literally across one street into the "white" part of town, then 2 more moved in on that block and the town was buzzing with how "now they'll think they can live anywhere"
)
But the point of that is now the black population here isn't even noticed. They suffer terribly from this. They were "gaining ground" as a population/workforce/social status etc. but now they are such a tiny minority compared to the Mexicans that their youth programs have fallen apart, their young people lose hope because they can't compete with a non-English speaker who will take that "beginning job" for sub-minimum wage or work as a "helper" on a construction site for $5 so a lot of their kids have turned to drugs & crime. We have also have a huge drug problem that I attribute to some sort of “Mexican connection”. With the percentages even though the people on my street work I’m sure there must be a % with drug connections back home and there is easy money to be made.
Our local black people should be throwing a fit, but they say nothing these days.Our schools have no real “advanced education’ opportunities, just a few token classes.
Because their funding under the stupid “no child left behind” has to go to bi-lingual education. And I mean bilingual. I was amazed when at a second grade end-of-year assembly Mexican children had to be called to come to the front in Spanish!!
2 years of school and they couldn’t speak enough English to even understand & know to come get their “awards”? “No child left behind” is another topic but it’s stupid. When I was in school USA schools were the best in the world, they worked just like the real world of life and work. Do the work or flunk and be “left behind” to do the grade over. Sure it was humiliating, but if kids were so negligent (or their parents) that even with summer school they couldn’t bring up their grades they had to repeat a grade. Did some kids drop out? Sure, but a far lower % than we have today.
Anyhow the non-funded fence means nothing. We must force congress to impose and enforce tough penalties on people who hire illegals and stop/catch/deport as many as we can. If they want a better life let them kick out the corrupt government in their own country and get schools, jobs & healthcare in Mexico. With their huge oil & gas reserves
Mexico has the largest economy of any country in this hemisphere except the USA & Canada but only the corrupt rich benefit and only the Mexican citizens can change Mexico, the corrupt people running it now won’t do it (especially when they make BILLIONS a year off the USA drug trade and more BILLIONS sent home from illegals working in the USA)
However all that will take too much time and argument.
What I urge everyone to do is first change the law so hospitals, schools, and housing sales/renters can legally ask for proof of citizenship. I’m not saying don’t give them the medical or rent the place for now, I won’t argue the stupid argument that non-citizens somehow have “civil rights” under our constitution.
BUT right now we can’t even prove how big the problem is. At least if these agencies could ask there could be statistics the American people could see so they could know what this is costing them and how fast it’s growing. Then maybe they would see what I see and make congress do something to stop illegal immigration (and by the way estimates are 350,000 that made the Mexican crossing last year were OTM (other than Mexican). In one case 12 Pakistanis were caught who had changed their names to Mexican names and were sneaking in, and since Pakistan is loaded with Osama’s people how long before somebody brings in a bomb that way...or maybe it’s too late already
.
This madness has to be stopped. Vote for candidates that want to secure our borders. It’s something the president is sworn to do but it looks like he’s afraid to. If they won’t do it vote them out in 2 years.
Demand that at least real statistics be counted so we can prove how bad the problem is.Or be like my wife, who thinks our neighborhood has gone downhill because of “all the Mexicans” but who blissfully won’t or can’t even take a minute to understand or care about border security, she just listens to Rush every day, votes straight republican, thinks the war in Iraq is going fine, and is more worried about how cheap she can buy some Chinese made piece of something at Wal-Mart killing our American workers...and who cares about our children if they get the sniffles, but not about if there will be a country here when they grow up.
By the way, before you buy any fish products (packages or market) read the label, think of the countries and what their water is like, then decide if you feel safe eating it (all Wal-Mart fish is from China, Thailand, etc. nothing American or Canadian)
