A crusading right wing radio program dispatched a listener to a park in Hoover where greenless card mexican aliens loiter about seeking work.
“Hey!” The man said to a a group of about twenty, “I need some yard work, I’ll pay three dollars an hour, anybody available?”
Happiness broke out on the streetcorner, this was the funniest thing that the mexicans had ever heard.
“How about four?” Silence.
“Five?” Grumbling.
“Six, no make that seven!” The crowd moved foward.
“Eight! For God’s sake, eight!” The man said, then quickly added, “Wait! Will you people please tell me how much per hour that you charge for doing light yard work?”
From the back of the crowd a man came forth and said in flawless english,
“Mister, no one here will work for less than ten dollars an hour with a eight hour minimum. Twelve per hour for half a day. We are hard workers.”
The man left the park wondering if the mexican aliens at the park would get work that day. He thought about his job over at the Honda plant where he makes twelve dollars an hour base pay.
“A crusading right wing radio station”! Well, that certainly settles that! To think I had any doubts on the issue! If only I had checked in with Michael Savage or Laura Ingrown, I would have the whole thing cleared up in an instant. (Say, what part to the “Hollywood elites” play in all of this? Inquiring minds, and all that…)
There is no website with the information I provided above (at least none that I’ve been able to find yet). I get this information from my own personal research on the illegal immigrant population (I actually went out and got some of this information myself instead of relying on some other schmuck to do it for me).
The illegals here will take just about any job they can get, but since they know little, if any, English and they probably were forced to drop out of school shortly after learining their ABC’s, if they went to school at all, the only jobs available to them are those that require as little communication as possible with the Gringos. Also, in the last year and a half, the peso went from about MX$ 9.75 to the dollar to what it is now (approximately $11.25 to the dollar, plus or minus). While President Fox is supposed to be doing wonders in Mexico, all I know is that the border town Mexicans are doing everything they can to get onto the north side of the border, as every dollar they make here can purchase them sooooo much more than what they were able to get in Mexico.
For those of you who have not ever seen a Mexican border town, you have basically two classes: the super rich, who run businesses either in buildings or on the sidewalks, and the destitute, who until recently would send their children to the bridge to beg money off the tourists coming across the bridge into Mexico to shop. This ended when the Mexican government finally fenced off their end of the bridge. Now the parents send the kids to beg on the sidewalks.
ElvisL1ves, that certainly gives food for thought. I still don’t think our economy is as bad as the Chicken Littles would have us believe, apparently it’s not a robust as Bush would say either.
For anyone interested, there is an interesting editorial in the NYT Week in Review section today postulating what life (the economy) would be like if illegal aliens packed it up and returned to their native countries. I’m guessing it’ll be on their web site at some point this week.
Sam is right that we’re always going to need immigration to pay for our pension programs.
But I do believe it has to be controlled, especially in this era of terrorism. Our borders are long and very hard to patrol, but that just means it’s a challenge to be overcome, not an impossible problem.
This program is obviously a political ploy, and I’m rather confused about it as well, since the right wing sites I visit from time to time are full of vitriol about it. One example:
The isolationist/nativist right, combined with workers already disgruntled over the complete lack of any job growth over the past three years, is going to hand him his head over this. I don’t see where the upside is for Bush.