The quoted sentence is evidence enough.
'She wrote that her staff and the public “can **plainly see **that the construction employees are all Mexican/Latino **non-English speaking **and I’m getting complaints.” ’
That’s mind smashing obvious.
She asked whether they were illegal. I don’t see how that supports your claim that she concluded they were illegal.
Perhaps you are unaware, but in several of the United States of America there are a great many hispanic people who are illegal aliens. So, if someone in Texas or California or Nevada questions whether a hispanic person hired as part of an all-hispanic construction crew is illegal, that doesn’t strike me as possibly evincing that the asker is a racist. But if someone in North Dakota or Florida or Vermont questions whether a black person is a rapist or thief (or just “a criminal”), that does strike me as such.
The vast majority of Hispanics in Nevada are legal, so her assumption should be that they are legal.
Note that she also concluded (wrongly as it turns out) that just by looking at them, she could tell they couldn’t speak English. That is drawing a conclusion about an ability based on nothing but a perceived ethnicity.
What was her cause for questioning their legality? She saw non-English speaking Hispanic people and questioned their status based on no other info. She concluded that there was a high risk that they were engaged in criminal behavior (being an illegal alien) based on only this limited info.
[quote=]
Perhaps you are unaware, but in several of the United States of America there are a great many hispanic people who are illegal aliens. So, if someone in Texas or California or Nevada questions whether a hispanic person hired as part of an all-hispanic construction crew is illegal, that doesn’t strike me as possibly evincing that the asker is a racist. But if someone in North Dakota or Florida or Vermont questions whether a black person is a rapist or thief (or just “a criminal”), that does strike me as such.
[/QUOTE]
Ignoring the patronizing tone, racial profiling, which is what you are describing, is an example of racial discrimination as one makes conclusions based membership in a group rather than individual specifics. Your distinction between the Hispanics in Texas and blacks in Vermont actually demonstrates the insidiousness of profiling. It’s becomes too easy justify to yourself a conclusion about an individual based on no facts about that individual other than their membership in the group. Statistics fall apart when you get to the individual level, and as a society that values individual rights and liberties, racial profiling is a dangerous eroding of those values.
No.
Why?
What I do know is that a lot of people , hispanic, black and white are looking for work and construction jobs especially for government contracts generally pay good and are are nothing to sneeze at.
The proof is in the pudding.
What pudding? Youi haven’t demonstrated that there is any pudding. That is, you have not demonstrated either that the crew does not include non-Hispanics or that any non-Hispanic applicants have been denied jobs because they are non-Hispanic.
This thread is about whether simply asking if an all-hispanic work crew are illegal aliens is racist or not. I provided my definition and said no. You are now talking about racial profiling, which is beyond the scope of this thread.
This quote, by you in response to Dio, was what started our conversation. Your response was beyond the original scope of the thread. You can decide not to discuss this avenue further, but don’t say it’s because all of a sudden it’s gone beyond the scope of the OP.
And, FWIW, the email described in the OP was a form of racial profiling, which I firmly believe to be always a racist act.
A question for Bricker and the others who feel this was racism:
Would it have been racism if she had said something to the effect, “Please check the immigration status of all the construction workers building the jail, to make sure they are all here legally.”?
So no mention of how anyone looked or “latino” or “Mexican”. (But the workforce is all latino.)
?
There are what, 10 million illegals in the US? There should be checking procedures as a matter of course.
The shaming tactics (“that’s racist”) need to be ignored.
The cite stated Mexican/non-English speaking workers in Nevada. Not Puerto Ricans.
It said Mexican/Latino. Plus its not exactly a “cite”, in the once sentence quote from the email, the woman was lying in at least one respect (that she’d had multiple complaints), and one part of her statement doesn’t make much sense (that she could tell they were non-English speakers by looking at them), so I don’t really think we know anything reliable about the workers at all.
Presumably there was at least enough hispanics (or at least people she perceived as hispanic) to set her off, but I don’t think I’d take her word for their exact ethnic make-up.
Can you prove that ?
Acording to Statemaster.com you’ll see that 20% of Hispanics are illegal. That is assuming of course that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are hispanic.
So if you’ve got a construction site with 10 Hispanic workers, the math tells you that there is a probability that two of them are illegal.
If the entire construction site is of one ethnicity, you know that a form of nepotism is going on and given that ex patriates of any particular ethnicity tend to coalesce around employment situations for support, the probability of illegal aliens becomes even higher.
Irrelevant. Your claim was speaking Spanish was indicative someone probably isn’t American. Clearly either you’re very ignorant about Puerto Rico. Being Puerto Rican doesn’t limit you to living in Puerto Rico any more than being Michiganian limits you to the great lakes region.
However let’s ignore Puerto Rico.
Are you saying American Hispanics should be harassed for having an accent? I know natural born citizens who have accents. Their parents have accents, listen to Spanish music, and have family and community ties that either speak Spanish or have accents. It’s a sub culture like hip hop, or country western.
Why do you think such people should be harassed?
Maybe she lied and the crew was all white?
relevant
Well given her demonstrated bigoted motivations, yes. If her motivations were such that she have said the same thing independent of what race they were then no. Granted without ESP it’d be a lot harder to tell.
Hey why not follow that to it’s logical conclusion instead of stopping there? Why not check every Spanish person on sight?
America ain’t safe unless kids with tan skin can’t walk home from school without 10 different officers yelling at them to present their papers.
Oh yea, people have rights not to be harassed because they’re brown.
Do you have a cite for this is or is it bigoted stereo typing? As someone who would be easily identified as anglo (I grew up in wonderbreadville Michigan) and has worked around a lot Spanish people I have not once been made to feel unwelcome. However I have heard white anglo people say some regrettable things.
Usually it’s the same bigots who say the regrettable things who complain Hispanics keep to themselves. Gee I wonder why? In other news Klan meetings don’t attract many black people.
Why?
Again, are you saying American Hispanics should be harassed for having an accent? I know natural born citizens who have accents. Their parents have accents, listen to Spanish music, and have family and community ties that either speak Spanish or have accents. It’s a sub culture like hip hop, or country western.
Why do you think such people should be harassed?
cut and paste rules. Please answer my first, and my second or explain the fault in their premises.
This whole situation is stupid. Yeah the lady is probably a racist, but it is not racist for a contracting agency to check the legality of the contractor they hired.
The fact that the lady would go to the sheriff or that “Commission Chairman Gary Hollis said (she) should have called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement” is completely ridiculous.
The fact that the sheriff said checking their immigration status is unconstitutional is stupid.
Depending on the statutes and regulations of the State, the county should not be able to let out a contract without some type of sealed big process. A company that uses illegal immigrants to lower their bid is basically defrauding all the other bidders and the county. The county should have some type of contracting officer to represent them when dealing with the contractor. Any and all questions about the legality of the contract should go through the contracting officer.
It is not illegal, unconstitutional, or racist, for the county to demand that the company they contracted be able to supply document showing they have insurance, pay workers comp or have legal workers.
because it addresses a specific demographic. What do Puerto Ricans have to do with the situation beyond having a similar language?
That was never posited by the person in question. You’re injecting a standpoint that was never made.
Do you really think the county commissioner is interviewing and hiring construction workers himself? That’s asinine. The county goes through the procurement process and hires a construction company, and it’s that company that’s responsible for hiring (and making sure it has documentation on) its employees. If the county wants to start placing restrictions on the employees of their contractors, the time to do that is in the RFP, not when the assessor notices that the laborers are Latino.
I also want to point out that the fact that the contractors were speaking Spanish at work does not mean that they can’t speak English. I frequently speak Spanish at work, and I assure you that I’m perfectly fluent in English. Recent immigrants, even legal immigrants who speak perfectly serviceable English, are often more comfortable speaking their native language - especially in a relatively dangerous environment like a construction site.