[Magdalen] Gap year (or more)

[Jay Weigel]

Actually I know these particular workers were paid well because Bobby and
David asked Ethel (the lawyer who defends Hispanics and owns the rental
properties) for the name of a good contractor after they fired the first
one for shoddy work. She gave them the name of the second guy and warned
them he'd cost more because he was careful about the people he hired, but
they were good. He did and they were. And you never answered my other
question about why carpentry is a respected trade ;->]

As for the jobs "Americans won't take"? Well, in that same town you could
always tell who was on the bottom of the economic ladder if you drove by
the local chicken processing plant. When we first moved there the workers
were almost all poor whites. A few years later they were almost all black.
Now they are almost entirely Hispanic. When I was in home health, for a
brief time I took care of a young man who had worked there. He'd slipped
and fallen and caught his foot in an ice auger. Broke his ankle and chewed
it up pretty good too--very ugly injury. He was a very sweet young man, all
of 19 years old, who lived with family that I never saw because they were
all working when I visited. No instance, Medicaid only. I suspect he may
have been illegal, but who cared. I taught his girlfriend to dress his
injury, which was pretty funny because neither of them had more than a few
words of English and my Spanish was worse than rusty, but that big-eyed
little teenager watched everything and was a quick learner. Within a week
and a half she had it down perfectly. I often wonder what happened to them.

On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 9:57 AM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

> From: Jay Weigel
>
>  You don't have to be nasty about it. They were legal, as a large
>> percentage
>> of hspanics in that particular town are. Now. Again, guess why carpentry
>> is
>> a particularly respected trade among Hispanics, or at least among the ones
>> there. Or do I have to prompt you?
>>
>
> Nothing nasty at all. I certainly support the idea of hiring people
> regardless of papers, though I object strongly to exploitation which is
> endemic for those undocumented among us.. And if the workers were being
> paid less than the others, that counts -- but I don’t think either of us
> know that answer. I also know that some work on other's Social Security
> Numbers. I was shocked to get a W2 when I worked part time for ARA Slaters
> while in college. It turns out that the manager of wone of the kitchens had
> simply used my SSN for lots of employees without papers -- and my Sophomore
> Year had a W2 that indicated I must have worked 60 hours a week when my
> average as actually about 5 hours every 2-3 weeks.
>
> The reality of immigration is the U.S. is that all those people who came
> through Ellis Island and Castle Garden and all the other Ports of entry had
> no more "papers" than a Mexican or Central American sneaking across the
> Texas border. Anyone who arrived from anywhere would be welcomed with a
> medical examination and a question as to whether they meant harm to the
> U.S., and given a Parole Card -- in today's terms an I-94.
>
> What's funny is that working with people interested in family history here
> in the anthracite region, people are distressed because they can’t find
> great-grandpa's citizenship record. That's because great grandpa (and great
> grandma) never became citizens. Some of the coal barons tried to have some
> of these people deported for things like union organizing, but since the
> borders were open to anyone who arrived -- no passport, no visa no nothing
> -- just show up at the door, even those deported for "threatening" the
> oligarchy could save a little money and com back if they liked.
>
> Those who arrived before the Civil War simply arrived -- nothing more. The
> first immigration law was passed after the Civil War -- not to control
> people, but to protect those coming to America from terrible conditions on
> the ships carrying them here.
>
> Everything post WWI (save for Chinese entering in San Francisco --  a
> special, sorry case of American History) is tied to racism, xenophobia, and
> the rise of government benefits regarding Social Security, Welfare and the
> like that tend to require more than a simple parole card.
>
> But getting back to the original subject, one problem in immigration is
> the argument that immigrants (particularly Hispanics) "take jobs that
> Americans won’t take." And the counter among Conservatives is, "Well, if
> they didn’t take those jobs Americans would be happy to work."  The answer
> is that Americans won’t take those jobs because they are hard and dirty
> and don’t pay enough even to attract those discouraged workers (mostly high
> school graduates, I might add) who have dropped out of the workforce
> because those jobs that allowed a high school graduate to make a decent
> living and support a family are simply gone.
>
> What would happen to, say, the market for farmworkers if the job paid old
> UAW wages instead of exploitive wages?
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>
>
>
> .
>