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Edited on Tue Nov-29-05 01:18 PM by calimary
behavior like I do! :D :P :headbang:
Seriously though, this is one problem I don't have any good ideas about - yet, or who knows - maybe ever.
Living here in Southern California, I'm steeped in it. EVERYWHERE I see people who've come up from south of the border by whatever means, legal or otherwise, to work. They staff every construction project around here. They run the lawnmowers and leaf blowers in everybody's front/back yards. They're out there wheeling strollers with everybody's kids in them. They're out there walking and otherwise attending some elderly person who can barely get around. At night, in any 7/11 or Jack-in-the-Box or Taco Bell drive through, or allnight Savon Drug store or WHEREVER - there they are. They work in all the restaurants and hotels as servers, valets, busboys, box boys, dish washers, housekeepers, and more. They're all over the place. Anyone we encounter (when my husband and I are out grocery shopping or visiting one of those drive-throughs) is invariably friendly, polite, and quite talkative once they get an earful of my husband's gorgeously fluent Spanish - and his impeccable accent.
I don't know who is illegal and who isn't. The rare times when I get out to the lapidary supply to look at rocks and findings and a few beads and things, I see crowds of them on the corner, looking for day jobs. They're out on every freeway offramp and larger street corner selling produce or flowers. They're all working like gangbusters. I keep thinking of that Donna Summer song "She Works Hard for the Money." They're all doing a decent day's work - many times MUCH longer than the standard 8-hours/1-hour lunch routine.
These people keep our economy here alive. Legal or illegal. They do a LOT of jobs that "conventional" Americans don't or won't do, or maybe can't afford to do because these jobs pay so poorly and invariably don't include benefits, health insurance, or any of those perks that some stupid liberals won for all of us with their damned horrible icky commie Saddam/Osama-loving unionizing.
I know other people, conversely, who are part of two-paycheck households, in which both mom and dad have to work to keep the bills paid and the mortgage covered and the car payments and car insurance current. Their second paycheck usually covers what daycare or nanny services they can afford, and the shit pay they can get away with giving a nanny from El Salvador or Nicaragua means they have reliable child care they otherwise could not afford. Some of these parents do drive fancy cars and have nice lifestyles, and could well afford to pay more - but others DO NOT, and this is the only way they can make ends meet. Not everybody who takes advantage of this system is doing so - just so they can relax in that second home at the beach or in the mountains, or so they can get a new Mercedes when the Jag has to be turned in. I know people who own restaurants - and it's a family business, that usually involves both parents side-by-side with the people they've hired, maybe legal, maybe illegal. Mom's in the front being hostess while Dad's in back running the kitchen (or, more frequently in my experience, Dad's in the front being maitre d' and Mom's in the kitchen as lead chef - and usually runs a little at-home catering business on the side). Quite a few families at my kid's school earn their living that way. We eat well at all the Mother's Club meetings because so many of the mothers are caterers or co-own a family restaurant. These aren't big chains and big corporations, either. And I don't know that they could afford to run their businesses otherwise.
I do NOT know what to do about this. Those who brave the fears, the increasingly angry vigilantes, the rough terrain and harsh circumstances, and the ramshackle places they wind up renting if they're lucky enough to sneak all the way up here - need and deserve help and compassion. Who can find fault with the urge to build a better life for yourself and your family? I can't. And that means I have trouble condemning those here who hire those people because they, too, want to make a better life for their own families.
Of course, I must note here that none of the "employer-side" people I know run big sweat shops or are big corporate overlords, or are slumlords profiting off other people's misery. The people I know who do hire undocumented workers (or suspected undocumented workers) treat their people very well, pay them as generously as they can, help them out when they have a sick kid, load them down with outgrown kids clothes and shoes - often stuff that's hardly worn because the kids it all was purchased for grew too fast, pack them off home every day with extra groceries, and show them respect and courtesy at all times.
I do NOT know what the solution is here. Ordinarily I am quite the know-it-all blowhard around here. But this one stumps me. I'm uneasy about the vigilante business because it's born of anger and hostility and racism and violence, and it's very easy when you've got all that emotion bottled up - to let it flash out every so often. I abhor the sweatshops and the big businesses that cut corners and exploit undocumented workers. And because they - AND ALSO the mom-and-pop operations all over everywhere - offer employment (however crappy and poorly-paying it might be), there will ALWAYS be people trying to break the law and sneak up here. Perhaps the bigger enterprises that rake in huge amounts of money and think more of their stockholders and boards of directors than the small-business people who care more about month-to-month survival - and could well afford to do better by their employees - should feel more of the pain and shoulder more of the burden. But the bigshots aren't the only offenders here. And it's not fair to those who waited in line to immigrate legally and followed the rules.
I do NOT know what to do. I haven't seen a proposed solution yet that seems to work well enough for everyone, to the least detriment of everyone. Damned if I know what to do. I do know, however, that this is one of those issues I'm glad I don't have the responsibility to solve on a large scale. Because I wouldn't know where to begin.
on edit -
AW SHIT - ran on at the mouth again, and probably didn't add squat to the debate, much less offer any usable solutions... sorry. Perhaps that's one of the biggest reasons I love DU - people here actually tolerate this crap from me...
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