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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Illegals

Okay, my neighbor has foundation issues. In my neighborhood, it's more of a 'when' than an 'if' you need piers.

So they've been out the past couple days digging hell up around his foundation. These holes are amazing. When they tell you Mexican immigrants are taking jobs Americans won't do, consider this.

Each of these holes (there are a good half dozen around one end of his house) is ten feet or so deep. They are down past the footings. There are tunnels connecting them.




They were dug by Mexicans with shovels, no hydraulics, no power tools, just muscles and a desire for a paycheck.

I don't know about you, but it's not a job I'd fight them for. Looking at these holes makes my back hurt. Looking at the amount of dirt a handful of Mexicans, most of them probably undocumented, moved with sweat alone I get tired.

This is where I come in on the hardcore open borders thing. I know I've ranted about this before here, but my ancestors did not ask for anyone's permission to come here. And if they had, being mostly Irish, the answer would have been no.

The slur 'Wop' came from a wave of Italian immigrants who were 'without papers.' A huge wave of people who are different, willing to work like crazy for small wages, etc., will always mean problems.



So yeah, there are problems that come from Mexicans coming to America in large numbers, but a wall is the opposite of a solution. We should tear down the wall we already have, not extend it across the scrub. The resources we squander failing to prevent them from coming would ameliorate all the problems their arrival could possible cause. We can solve the problems without being assholes.

And yes, when we break up a family by sending parents home and keeping their child because the kid was born in America, we are assholes. When we worry about whether it is rewarding lawbreaking to acknowledge the presence of people who will dig the equivalent of graves by hand in a country where people don't dig a flower bed without a gasoline motor, we are being assholes.

If I had to choose between digging a hole like that in one day, and staying in America, or sitting around all day and being sent to live in Mexico, I wonder how many days it would take for me to wonder if I should have stayed in America. Because there's no chance I wouldn't be in Mexico. Fat, white and unsure how to ask where the bathroom is.

1 comment:

Justine said...

couldn't agree more