It’s hard out here for an illegal alien
I wonder whether the Santa Cruz Sentinel has devoted as much time and space to telling the story of American workers hit hard by the economic slump:
Luis Valle eats a hard shell taco fast Monday afternoon at Taco Bell, his knee jerking up and down. It’s the first thing he’s eaten, he said, in 24 hours. Times are tough for the 27-year-old illegal immigrant and day laborer — an out-of-work farmworker who lives in Watsonville and gets jobs these days by standing outside the new Home Depot on 41st Avenue.
Carlos Rodriguez, an unemployed brother in arms, sits next to him, but he doesn’t eat his taco as fast. He’s more methodical. He’s also had better luck of late. He scored $40 for two hours of work cleaning up somebody’s back yard on Calabasas Road on Sunday. He’s still got the dirt beneath his nails to prove it.
But such great pay is rare, he admits.
“It’s probably because I was working on a Sunday,” joked Rodriguez, 28. “It’s something I shouldn’t have been doing.”
For the most part, Rodriguez says, he’s doing what hundreds of other day laborers are doing these days: Standing around and waiting for jobs in Santa Cruz instead of actually getting them. When times are good, their numbers are thick. By noon, most of them are long gone, snapped up by those who need them.
When times are bad, their numbers are equally thick, but they tend to stick around, the result of a labor shortage.
The slumping economy, the record number of home foreclosures, the lag in house sales and an idle construction industry aren’t just affecting middle-class Americans.
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The bad times are trickling down to the lowest rung of the work force: the illegal labor pool, which has long been tapped by both contractors and homeowners for convenience and low cost.And somewhere in Mexico a wife and a family are having a rougher go at it than usual. That’s because a large number of day laborers are single men who send their money back to Mexico via wire transfers — when they’ve got it to send back.
No worried, though, right? The $1.4 billion economic stimulus/border security package for Mexico from the US taxpayers will soon be on its way…
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Categories: Illegal alien sob stories, Immigration
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Leatherneck
My problem with any level of allowing these illegal aliens to stay and work is that for every one of them that gets to stay that is one more that has been going through the proper channels and paperwork and all that the process entails that does not get to enter this country …
I’m with you DesertLover. It makes me sick to think that there could be someone who would really add to this country that isn’t going to be allowed to come here
because so many illegals are overrunning this country. Time was you had to be an
upstanding, healthy, productive person in order to come into this country. I have a
friend whose great, great aunt wasn’t allowed to come here from Ireland because she
had something wrong with her eyes that would eventually cause blindness. She was
a musician and the blindness would not have stopped her from playing, but it was
felt that this was a detriment to the country and therefore she was denied entry. I
cannot help but notice that no one is saying anything like that about the illegals.
TXRose
yep … the ignored facts are numerous … when is the last time anyone actually saw high school kids working at the local fast food in the summer? … no jobs there any more … same goes for almost all the other jobs that kids used to take in the summer … including the college kids … all taken by illegals …
President fox at one time did ask the Canadian PM Harper if he could take in some of his people. He said the US is taking quite a few and Canada could help out. What is Mexican Gov’t doing to create jobs? They don’t seem to have a problem creating more people. Concerning if they are legal or illegal doesn’t really matter. Here most of the gangs are children of national mexicans or they are illegals themselves and they fully perform their crimes whether they are legal or not. I have been robbed four times personally and never have seen any justice come of it. If some ever get caught their sentences are very light.
DesertLover,
I understand your point. I want to get the illegal aliens out of America too. How do we do that when POTUS is against us? Give him an idea?
For example, our tax money goes to the UN. Take that money and use it to get illegal aliens from Arkansas to become part of a UN police force. This is just an example.
If we say get out, they do not go anywhere. If we change our laws we see a lot of them leaving, but is that all of them? No, they go to another state that has a Gov. named Rick the prick Perry.
We need solutions that are fair, and right. I would like to see America take control of some of Mexico’s oil wells to pay for illegal alien jail costs, and deportations. Will that happen?
Put me in charge, and watch the UN, and Mexico eat my shorts while I fix the problem. Of course Chertoff is doing a great job.
Leatherneck …
Need all the other states to get pressured by the population to get the intestinal fortitude to pass laws like AZ and OK and a few others that makes it no longer acceptable practice to hire the illegals … no jobs everywhere means they leave the country … not just go to another state …
The enforcement also needs to come down HARD on businesses that knowingly employ illegal labor. The argument that US citizens won’t do the work is a total crock. These businesses pay a pittance of what the market will bear, knowing that people here illegally are not going to file any complaints.
They hire people at a wage that forces them to live 5 to 10 families to a house. They do not provide welfare plans such as medical because illegals are willing to work without it. The costs of those services, however, are passed on to the local community in the form of higher taxes or higher fees for medical services.
And because the wagesd are so low, they qualify for state and federal welfare plans and assistance.
These employers are passing their employee costs onto the general public, and that is a crime.
The ironic thing is what is going to happen when their “shadow” employees are suddenly American citizens. Employers will then be forced to pay a living wage for the work being done, will be forced to carry insurance that they don’t carry now, and will be forced to deal with the issues that until then have been hidden by virtue of the reluctance of illegals to report problems.
And I get tired of hearing how Reagan granted amnesty, so why not do it now. The estimate of the illegal population in Reagan’s time was less than 1% of the US population (actual numbers turned out to be double the estimate). A comprimise was struck, with the understanding that amnesty would only be granted in conjunction with strict enforcement in the future.
The issue we are facing today amounts to closer to 10% of the US population. A huge impact on all aspects of our country, and an event never contemplated by any immigration policy going back to the 1700’s. Such an addition to the populace that does not want to assimilate, that is proven to have no respect for the rule of law, and that thinks the US should be subordinate to their home country (Like the “Mexico first” crowd) is a formula to turn the US into a multicultural mess and the Constitution into a historic relic.
And to be certain, any promise of amnesty in exchange for strict enforcement will be likely have the same reliability as those past promises – there will be no enforcement.
Mexico and other countries need to sort out their own problems without exporting them here. While it certainly improves the quality of life in Mexico, the economic and human toll it is taking here has reached tragic proportions.
The big problem with any amnesty is that the word goes out to other
countries that the US is giving away citizenship and here they come. This is one of the
major reasons that we have so many here and more coming every day. As long as people
of any country think that they can get automatic citizenship they will try for it and I can’t
blame them because if I was in their shoes…I just might feel the same.
Legislators from Mexican State Angry at Influx of…Mexicans
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/01/20/legislators-from-mexican-state-angry-at-influx-ofmexicans.php
I lost sleep over this last night. I kept crying over the tragedy occurring right here in America where people who want to work can’t. And the misery caused by people like you who have hearts filled with vicious bigotry. It’s time to let all Americans have a piece of the pie.
Dr. Lead, I dearly hope you just forgot to add the “/sarc off” to the end of your prose.
Right now, there are people with Bachelor degrees, Masters and even PhD’s who are waiting in line to get into this country from places like India, Africa and Western Europe. We need these people to fill high-tech and highly productive positions that would benefit not just the U.S., but anyone else that we happen to help out.
And you honestly think it’s a tragedy that we insist tomato pickers follow the law, too?
Dr. Lead – stop sniffing the paint. It’s not bigotry, it’s called rule of law. And they’re not Americans, they’re illegals. Big, huge, monumental difference.
Dr Lead has to be pulling someone’s leg. Americans? Americans only in the fact that
Mexico is on this continent. Someone needs a reality check.
Chapoutier and Gayle
I lived in NC for a very long time. I
NEVER once saw a hispanic speaking person…never. Granted I moved back to
Florida in the late 80’s BUT if these
people are legal why don’t they speak
English even when stealing a car AND if they are legal or have been born here, they should be speaking English. And if they were born here…how did they get to be SO MANY in so few years?
I worked at a CLINIC…one of those that passes out freebies to women and children…..NEVER saw or heard a hispanic speaking person…NEVER.
Actually, never saw or heard one here in Florida until the last 10 years…so
CHAP….how did they make all these people legal in so few years or did they take growth hormones in order to grow up so fast? And let’s see, last figure I read said that 70 per cent of the “growth” in this country was due to immigration…does not specify legality…but being as the immigration depts are backed up into the year 3000….I am not sure how SO many in this country became legal SO FAST.
So Chap, methinks, your name is French,
but you sound like a card carrying member LaRaza.
Lot’s of strong feelings here.
There is nothing new about all of this. We simply have to all start acting on a local level. For example, when getting bids for work on your house, demand that contractors follow federal law and check citizenship status. Follow Numbers USA (website) and learn what other states are doing. Send faxes and letters to our “representatives.”
If Mexican representatives are crying about their natives returning home and the drop in remitances, then it seems that the pressure put on states and local governments to deal with the illegals is working. We need to keep it up.
We need to demand accountability of our elected officials.
Keep up the pressure. We can afford to take care of our own. Mexico needs to take care of their own.
Just reality.
You can’t see my fingers, but this is the world’s tiniest violin playing “My Heart Bleeds For You (Them)”
Not.
Yes #31 WE ARE that stupid!!!