How To Prevent This From Happening Again?

Craven- It is essential to speak English here not because of xenophobia, but because it is the lingua franca in the US. The women of whom I spoke who work in stores & medical offices........they speak English! Those people never could have gotten those jobs if they spoke only Spanish. How could they communicate with customers and patients if they did not speak the language of the land?

We have a lawn service that is contracted to service our entire communityassociation. The vast majority of the workers are Mexican. In the lower level positions, the workers speak only Spanish. When you get to the supervisory positions, they are held by Hispanics who can communicate with the customers. If the guys in the entry level positions want to get ahead, they must be able to talk with the people who use their services!

I agree, it would help them enormously in things small and large for them to learn, but some people think that is not just the individual's business and that's where my qualm begins.

Craven-

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Could you explain that sentence, please. I am just not "getting" it!

hehheh ... well, the debate didnt quite go that far. There was a debate about having university instruction be in English, at least in certain disciplines. Quite a few courses are already given in English now, in fact.

<giggles> like I said, I'll say *anything* to make a point.

anastasiashitdisturber

I had a thought that might be important ... (or maybe not, but I clean hotel rooms for a living - yes, being a new immigrant SUCKS - so I have a lot of time to think)

So the guy who wrote the article said this:

"It was the deadliest immigrant-smuggling attempt in the United States in more than 15 years."

I don't remember the details, but there wer a LOT of people who died in that one incident at the Port of Los Angeles, and patiodog said people were also found in Seattle - I mean, this makes it seem like deaths on this scale hardly ever happen.

<shrugs> I dunno - that just struck me.

stasia

I think he simply means it is the individual's choice (and his business) whether or not he chooses to learn English.

stas -

It is true, so far as I know, that individual events don't usually happen on this scale. The particular container that sticks out in my head I believe had about half a dozen people in it, and maybe two had died. Who knows how many people try it and how many people make it...

The most dangerous crossings of the US-Mexico border are done on foot. Organ Pipes National Park (I may be mis-remembering both the name and status of the park, but it's down there in the Sonora desert) is a popular crossing place both for illegal immigrants and for drugs, and it's a very sketchy stretch of land. Apparently it's also being filled with refuse. A couple of years ago, a Park Ranger there was shot and killed by drug smugglers, and most of the other Rangers immediately transferred out, leaving a situation in which policing is low, but the possibility for people in trouble is also very low. As with so many other activities that are going to take place regardless of what the laws are, it is the criminality of the activity much more than the actual nature of it that creates the danger.

And I'm not offering solutions. I'm very divided on the issue myself. I don't begrudge any individual the right of self-determination -- certainly if the shoe was on the other foot, and there was some land if inordinately greater opportunity to the north of me, I'd be very tempted to try the crossing, particularly if I had a family to take care of. But on the other hand, I dig unions, workers' rights, etc., and that can only be maintained when workers are united in their purpose. On the third hand (where's that Shiva cat when you need him?), the amount of wealth held in the United States is disproportionate to the rest of the world and the quality of life most of us here enjoy goes way, way, way beyond what we could ever need. On the fourth hand....

And so it goes. (As a California boy at heart, though, I can't imagine having grown up without the culture and language of Mexico around me. I always found the bond between by Grandpa and his neighbor, Mrs. Chivera -- both emigrated to California at about the same time, she from Chihuahua, he from Texas, he giving her corn and taking his bees over to pollinate her flowers, she giving him cut flowers and Christmas tamales -- very touching, and emblematic for me of what California is all about.)

<smiles> I came up with a solution that allows me to be divided on the issue and still make everyone happy.

I've decided that the system works - just as it is. (Kinda)

I live in Holland now (but I'm a California girl!), and here they often operate on the "tolerance" level. Marijuana was illegal but tolerated - lots of people think it's always been legal, but that's only become the case recently). I think this theory works in this situation.

Face it - not enough people can sneak into any country to *really* take jobs away from "us". And people leave their own countries, too - even those "lands of opportunity" - to go looking for their own perceived greener pastures.

Immigrants have to take low-level jobs because of the language barrier. Also because it's easier to get black work picking fruit or making hotel beds than to work in a bank, say. I say, honestly, there are not enough people in the country you're speaking of (and I really mean any country) who honestly WANT to do those jobs. I wouldn't clean hotel rooms in America. That's what I do for a living here. People think they're above those kinds of jobs.

I'm not an idiot - I know those jobs should go to students and "people less fortunate" - but the fact is that they don't. They go to illegal immigrants. Those illegal immigrants are a cog in our economies. If you make it impossible for illegal immigrants to get a job in a hotel, for example - and I am speaking from experience here - although the pool for the study is limited to one hotel - I couldn't even be a hotel maid until I got a Dutch social security (Social-Fiscal) number. And now - I mean, the result of the change in policy - is there is a <i>labor shortage</>. No one wants to work as a maid if they have the skills to do something better.

So then what eventually happens is you have a glut of illegal immigrants who DO have skills - and children. I have the answer for that, too, but it's a whole other discussion. <grins>

But I think that - yeah, then it turns into what it is - our tax dollars aren't wasted on chasing down people who are just rtying to live their lives, and if they get into trouble (or get "caught" somehow), they get deported. <shrugs>

Something like that?

That's a great analogy for california, your memory. <smiles>

stasia

Kinda sexual, now that I look at it again, but not meant that way...

My mother's (white) family were all pickers at some point, but this was a while back: in Madera in the 1960s, I think pretty much everybody except the people that owned the vineryards were poor.

Yeah - it's amazing what neccessity will drive people to.

My mother's family was on welfare, and they weren't immigrants.

That's the thing, kinda - why I get so annoyed with people and this stereotype about "lazy immigrants" - most of the immigrants I know, have met, heard about, come across - they're working very hard to make a new life for themselves. It pisses me off that the opposite has become the accepted generalization.

Yep.

Which can actually be kept quite separate from any ideas about policy on immigration. It should be perfectly possible to formulate a standpoint from which this is acknowledged and from which strictly regulated immigration is promulgated. Unfortunately, it is much easier to coerce people into supporting a strict immigration policy if you appeal to an already latent instinct toward xenophobia. (Also a latent instinct toward migration, it seems to me; perhaps this is why we are a warlike species.)

As said, you find such in Europe as well:



The quotation is from this newspaper summary:

Recent deaths of immigrants

thanks, walter. <smiles>

It's been suggested in the press, that one way to cure some of the Social Security problems in the US, is to increase the number of immigrants to the US. More workers means more taxes and an increased flux of $$ into the SS fund.

Well, when the number of the legal immigrants increased and parallelly the illigal immigrants being deported, this really may prove useful for the economy of the receiving countries. Legal immigration enables to choose people with proper qualifications that are needed and lack in the labor market. Legal immigrants, besides this, may undergo background screening that will diminish chances for terrorists entering the country. Meanwhile, no one can exclude that potential attackers are not mixed with plain laborers entering the country illegal (I am far from alleging that there is a high probability of Mexican, Salvadorian or Guatemalan national being a terrorist; but no one can exclude that some Lebanese, Palestinian, Yemeni, Egyptian or Saudi national may arrive at first in Mexico, and then try to penetrate into the USA pretending being one of the job seekers).

Are we associating terrorists with migrant farm workers now?

Gosh. This terrorism angle is a hugely flexible and powerful tool, can be used to create fear about ANYthing we dislike!

That's COOL! I want some!

"No one can say for certain, that my boss at work is not a terrorist. Yes, you see, he doesn't seem Arabic but he could be.
I have some highly-placed intelligence that indicate some issues of grave concern. Let me hypothesize how it might work... someday... if my boss were to take action against us. He certainly could you know."

Some women say, all those who penetrate, are terrorists.

I don't mean to be disrespectful of those looking for terrorists. But the issue of terrorism has been so overplayed, and so abused for marketting purposes, it has become much like the mindless jingo patriotism and the crass marketting of the red, white, and blue.

I am so sick of every pet cause being associated with this fear, itself so manufactured and so contrived, that it just makes me hysterical. I can't handle it, and just giggle and twitch at what has become of our once-proud government. Sorry if I go off on it. It's not you. I'm just burnt out on all the hype and what seems like pre-Nazi fear-mongering.





I don't know anybody as honest and hard-working as the illegal immigrants from Mexico. I hope we can respect them and their contribution to our society. Legalizing the activity is probably the only way to accept the inevitable and see it done right.