posted on March 27, 2003 09:51:00 AM new
LOL! No Linda, don't think that I will. I descend from immigrants. My grandfathers family fled Ireland during the potatoe famine. Who am I to decide that others should not benefit from the same opportunities that gave my family a chance. There were many at the time that resented the Irish and yet here we are generations later and without them where ould the NYC and Boston Fire and Police Departments be?
Look at how many of the the forces fighting in Iraq right now are the sons and daughters of immigrants, or immigrants themselves. Of the two POWS I have seen profiles on, both are the childen of immigrants.
Not all immigrants are good, please on't think that I am saying there, are, yes, there are some taking advantage of the system but there are many many more that are good and valuable members of our society and you just don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
posted on March 27, 2003 10:22:07 AM new
I live in Central Texas, and the illegal immigration is very high on our borders. What Linda describes (seeing illegals walking across the river) is commonplace and yes, the INS is grossly underfunded.
I agree that U.S. troops should guard our borders.
The majority of illegal immigrants I have met are very hard working, moral people. But they do not pay taxes and send thousands of dollars weekly out of the States to their familes in Mexico. I have no problem with as many coming across the border as want, nor them supporting their familes back home. I just want them to enter legally and pay taxes to support the services they use. Children of illegals attend public schools. The illegals have full access to all county/city assisted medical care and other government services. I wouldn't mind so much if they'd just help pay for it. Our medical district is in a crisis due to overload. Although illegals making use of it is not the only cause, but it is a great contributor.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of illegals from south of the border in Texas alone. New arrivals are easy to recognize. they wear a haunted, hunted look for a while until they realize the INS probably isn't coming for them.
When I grew up in Houston, a nice large middle class Hispanic family moved in next door. They were good neighbors, and the father had been a produce seller in the farmer's market there for over 25 years. I found out (from his son, who volunteered the information one day) that his dad was an illegal. The son asked us to not reveal it to the authorities. I didn't but wish he'd kept the secret.
The father paid sales tax, possibly property tax, but unlikley any income tax. He had a cash only business.
My husband I went on on a overnight trip to a customer's ranch in deep south Texas, about 40 miles from the Mexican border a few years back. There were heavy iron bars on the bunkhouse doors and windows where we stayed, and on the main house. At the main house, under a shaded overhang, there was a picnic table with a gallon of water and a can of Spam sitting on it.
We were told to keep our vehicle and the buildings locked at all times. We seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, scrub brush, cactus, roadrunners, birds, short mesquite trees, and lots of deer.
The ranch owner explained to me that they get so many illegals crossing the border and coming through there, tired, hungry and most times extremely dehydrated, that they found if they leave the water and food there, the houses will not suffer as many of the repeated burglary attempts that occur.
The people crossing the border this way many times are attempting to escape the most abject poverty. Often, they miscalculate the cruelty of the arid South Texas desert-like conditions and are found later dead from dehydration. It is a very common occurence.
I don't fault them for looking for a better life. Many are willing to pay the price of death seeking it, whether walking many miles across hot dry land, or hidden in the back of a semi-trailer, locked in a potential deathtrap (from the heat) until released. Sometimes truckloads of the dead and dying are found abandoned. Each person on board paid $5,000 to $10,000 to be smuggled across.
The majority that cross on foot are young males, 17 to 25 years old. The females and other men go in smuggled in the back of the freight trucks. My husband drives an 18-wheeler for a freight company. Weh he goes to Laredo, there is a checkpoint well within the Texas border he must stop at every time. I found that the INS says they are checking for not only those who got missed at the border checkpoint, but those who may have hitched a ride or "commandeered" one after getting across illegally.
The illegals go into the major cities if they don't already have work lined up from previous trips and the men actually collect on known street corners to wait for prospective "employers of the day" to drive by and hire them.
A small buisness owner, or contractor (plumbing, lawn maintenance, those needed ditches dug, small moving companies, etc.) needing a day laborer will stop, hold up how many fingers for the number of workers they need, point at the ones they want, and they hop in the back of the pickup. Away they go to the job site. They get fed hamburgers, chicken or other fast food hot meal by the contractor at lunch, and are return to the same corner early that evening, and paid $5.00 - $6.00 per hour for the day's work. I have seen this in action.
There are at least 3 corners in Houston I have seen, and there are likely more. As many as 80 to 100 men are there every morning. Most are hired before mid-morning. Many go back each day until they find an employer they want to stay with a while, then arrange a regular pickup point nearby.
INS knows about the activity, but doesn't have the resources to handle. I was approached once to help run a sting operation, since one of these corners was two blocks from my business and I had a large drive-in warehouse. A good friend of mine had a brother in law enforcement that was assisting in the operation and approached me on it. I agreed with mixed feelings.
The officers, in plain clothes, drove down to the corner, said they needed 10-12 workers, loaded them up in the back of the a big panel van (like a UPS truck) and drove it into my warehouse, pulled down the overhead warehouse door, unloaded the guys and put them in the paddy wagon to go to jail. They did this 2-3 times during that day. I sat in my office, watching the warehouse through a glass window and didn't particularly enjoy it.
The men disppeared from the corner for a few days, then were back.
A funny story:
One time I was instructing a Hispanic customer at his Houston home how to clean out his brine tank later on his newly installed water softener. I told him every 6 months to a year, to get a WETVAC and clean it out. He gave me a weird look, stopped me and ask me to say what I'd said again and seemed upset. He'd thought I'd said "wetback" which is a slang derogatory term for a person who has illegally entered from Mexico by swimming the Rio Grande. Needless to say, he was very relieved when I told him WETVAC is a brand of wet/dry vacuum cleaner commonly sold there in home improvement centers!
Patty
[ edited by meadowlark on Mar 27, 2003 10:29 AM ]
