Jose Can You See...

whos making sweeping generalizations?
I am telling you exactly what I saw going on. And exactly how I saw people making their money , and raising their profits by employing people who will accept less per hour then americans will.

And these people make up a HUGE part of the work force, wether anyone likes it or not.

Would i say that they were bribed?
No way.
When someone offers a person almost twice what they are making, you think they wont jump on it?
AND- they offer free transportation, food, and a few month " contract" with , what is to them, higher pay.. oh yeah. They are going to jump on that.
Espically when most homes close to the border dont even have running water.

Would I say that this applies to each and every illegal person here in america?
No way. I would be a fool to say so .
People come across for many different reasons.


But I tell you what.
It blows my mind that non native americans sit around and toot their horns about people who cross a border for work, when these non native americans direct descendants had to spend a hundred years killing off the people whos land this WAS.. in order to make room for their nation.

Each and ever person here is a descendant from a MIGRANT.
America was founded on IMMIGRATION.
America is a COUNTRY not a race. And it isn't 'suffering' from people who cross the border.

In fact if most people payed attention to May 1st, they would have SEEN how much this country not only relies on immigrants to fill an ever expanding work force, but how LITTLE support there is for the people who claim to ' hate illegals'.


but.. i gotta go.
I cant take this thread.
This holier then thou because I am an american crap really pisses me off.

Don't get pissed off... get amused.

This crap has been going on forever... I read a speech from the 1920s that raised the same themes.

Out of the blue I got this e-mail from a friend in CA. His wife is Chinese and he leans just to the left of moderate politically.


"I really think these guys are shooting themselves in the foot with these
marchs. There will be a lot of backlash. My wife is an immigrant and
pretty opinionated on this. She learned english, she got a visa, she got
a college degree, she got a job. I would think legal mexicans would be
upset as well. They followed the rules and there is a glut of illegials
now competing for the same jobs. Just too many illegials. Just look at
any Home Depot parking lot in the morning. That is a somewhat resent
event.

Why is it just a mexican event? Asians and other immigrants are not
involved. Why promote that if someone breaks the laws of the land for
long enough we should say they are cool? Just continue the crackdown on
employers. We can't stop them from coming into the US and we surely can't
round up and deport the 12 million in the US but we can make it harder for
them to get employement without proper paperwork. We can also make the
INS easier to use to get the proper paperwork."

I also got the thread title from my hippy coworker who was trying to be funny this morning. I thought he was doing a pretty good job.

Longer than that, even. Shortly before the Revolution, Dr. Samuel Johnson characterized Americans as "a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging."

I sense much the same sort of woodenheaded attitude amongst the anti-immigrationists of today.

yeah

i shouldnt say 'pissed'
it is sickening , the "american " arrogance


as if

The Know Nothings

I understand what you are saying with 1 through 8, but what are 9 and 10 supposed to tell us? Are they just to illustrate the point that there are a lot of people speaking Spanish in LA? They seem to fit with both sides of the debate.

I'm trying to figure out what those other 1.2 million people speak. Chinese?

Could be. Some speak Hollyweird.

Based on what's being posted here, I'd have to guess Spanglish.

They are? According to shewolf, they're getting free transportation!



Thank you. I totally agree that the companies who hire illegals are a big part of the problem. And yes, they are taking advantage of and exploiting them by paying them cheap wages.

But we have no idea how many illegals are really here to work -- or for other reasons -- because we have no way of knowing. We have hundreds of thousands of people crossing our border with no documentation whatsoever!

Sorry, but I have a problem with that.



Every bank I go into has signs in both English and Spanish now; all ATMs have an English and Spanish option; almost every company I call has an answering machine with both English and Spanish options.

That's arrogant?

I can think of few countries that would that accomodating to new immigrants.

no thats not arrogant.

and im sorry, but my "you" statements were not directed at you as a person.

Yes. Many of them do get free transportation, but more of them risk death, dehydration, and being shot .. to try to get into america with out having to go through the borders.


And, if illegals are working here, why SHOULD they take thier money back to mexico completely when they could store it in a bank here in america , and help fund another job?
Thier income , in that sense , creates more work, for the ONE job they might take.

English is also a hard language to learn when you come from something simple and basic like spanish.
While they learn english , why should they not be allowed to navigate through a bank to store thier money?
It doesnt hurt anyone to see things in spanish.


In fact, most countries have all labels in many languages to accomidate everyone.
America is one of the few, if not the only that is 'arrogant' enough to not post several languages on thier packages, signs, books, letters, news papers, etc..

I just don't understand the concept of demanding more rights when you're not even paying taxes to support the country you're working illegally in. I'm far from arrogant with the whole thing, and personally know quite a few illegals. It sucks why they "had" to come here in the first place. But I don't really understand the purpose behind the protests. Ok, so a lot of people took the day off from work. Pat yourselves on the back.

Shewolf, some countries may have multiple languages listed on products, but did you think maybe in those countries it's more common for people to speak multiple languages? A lot of Europeans are brought up learning 3, 4 languages. In America, English is the main language. Unfortunately, unless I take the initiative to learn another language, it wasn't forced on me in school. Spanish is obviously growing rapidly, and I think there's a decent amount of available means for Spanish speaking people to get by.

good point.

I cant argue with ya.

stray cat, all ATM machines around the world are multilingual. We don't have as many automated phonelines (in fact i don't know if we have any), but we (and many other european countries) have much stronger minority policies that come with legal regulations especially in education and culture. so while what you describe is certainly not arrogant, it is also nothing exceptional, or 'extra'. it is normal.

Facts that are meaningless without some form of plan. You hate illegals? OK, we get that. How do you propose to solve the problem, other than buying guns?

Employers like illegals. Not the least because they're easy to intimidate. I'd just as soon the employers, who are providing the jobs that cause the illegals to come over, be the ones that get burned.

I'm home from work now! So you'll be glad to know, I've got plenty of time to discuss this topic.

Bwahahahaha!!

dagmarka wrote:


Ok, I can accept, "normal." It was "arrogant" I had a problem with.

Actually, I can't speak to Shewolf's assertion that other countries are much better about posting things (signs, newspapers, etc) in 3 or 4 languages. I haven't been to Europe since I was 11 years old. So dag would be a better source regarding that.

I can tell you that my cousin and her husband took a trip across Europe a few years ago. They actually tried speaking English to a Parisien waiter. You should have seen the looks they got. (And that was pretty much the case all over Paris.)

I still maintain that other countries would not necessarily be as welcoming towards thousands of new immigrants, especially illegal ones.

The illegality has been my main point. Someone upthread mentioned, "the anti-immigrationists." But I wouldn't say I'm anti-immigration. I'm anti illegal immigration. There is a big difference.

As far as being multi-lingual, I'd agree that most Europeans are very good about speaking several languages.

In my younger days, I wanted to be a linguist. I loved learning and speaking other languages. I'd also love to see Americans become bilinguial; to be truly comfortable communicating in two or even three languages.

However, IMO, you have to have a good grasp of one core language, your "native tongue," and it's rules of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc., before you can effectively branch out into other languages. (The French understand this -- they might speak two or three languages, but they staunchly guard the purity of their French language.)

Unfortunately, too many Americans have a poor grasp of English, let alone any other languages. There are college graduates -- even teachers -- in this country who can hardly write a grammatically correct sentence. But that's another problem.

And let's not forget that America has always been somewhat isolated because of our geographical location. International travel was nowhere near as commonplace even thirty years ago as it is today.

So I don't think it is necessarily because of "arrogance" that we are so mono-lingual. It just wasn't really necessary to provide other language options until recently.

There's also a big difference between being anti-illegal-immigration and anti-illegal-immigrant.