Unwelcome Guests

This morning, as he woke me up, my husband informed me that he had an anniversary present for me. (Today is our 7th wedding anniversary.) He added something about having captured it, so I should have been suspicious. In my own defense I can only say that I was barely awake and hadn't had any coffee yet. When I got around there was an empty coffee container sitting on the counter which Hubby indicated was my "anniversary present." Inside was a young brown tarantula that he'd captured in the kitchen. Now mind you .. although it's not nearly as bad as it used to be .. I have arachnophobia! And then he pretended to be hurt that I didn't like my present. Sometimes..... I asked him to take it outside and let it go. I think it has a right to live, I just don't want it in my house. Which brings to mind another "unwelcome guest" issue....

An online pal of mine has an email signature which says "Calling an illegal alien an undocumented immigrant is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist." One can argue, as some have to me, that it's not a valid comparison because the "undocumented immigrant" isn't hurting anyone.
Isn't he? This is such a 'hot' and emotionally charged issue on both sides that I think we need to step back and come up with another way of dealing with it.

Besides, I'm an immigrant myself. Came over on a boat as a matter of fact (Ok, so it was the USS Queen something, it's still a boat.), when I was four years old. And when I entered the California Public School system that Fall, no allowances were made for the fact that English was not my first language. In fact, I was dumped off with my stepdad's relatives in Missouri at the beginning of the Summer knowing exactly five English phrases (I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm tired, I need to go to the bathroom, I'm hurt) and by the end of the Summer I spoke English well enough to enter the school system with no problems. Yes, you say, it's easier for kids. Well, what about my mother who was 22 at the time? Within a very few months of arriving in America, she spoke English well enough to get a job. And within 2 years, you couldn't have told that either of us was German by our speech. What I'm getting at here is that I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who want to come to this country to get a better standard of living but aren't willing to assimilate (a bad word only if you're watching Star Trek). You want to be an American? Fine! Learn the language! The official language of the United States of America is English (albeit a somewhat mangled and altered version of the King's English), and that should be all that needs to be said about that. No one ever offered any services to my family in German, and we survived. See what I mean about it being an emotional topic?

When I was attending high school in Hammond, LA, we had a family of Chinese immigrants move into our town. I don't remember the details, as a teenager I really didn't care, but I do remember that they initially spoke Chinese and that their father was deceased; it was just the mother and four sons, the younger two of which attended school with me. Somehow they got a loan or something, took over an abandoned burger joint, and turned it into a Chinese restaurant. To this day I think that was the best Chinese food I've ever eaten. Within a very short time, like a year or so, they were able to expand from 10 tables to 20. The boys all worked there, and the younger ones could be seen doing their homework at a back table between customers. Had you suggested removing them from Hammond, there'd have been quite an uproar. "What! We have the best Chinese restaurant in three counties because of them! Don't you even think about taking them anywhere." They became well-liked and well-respected business owners, an asset to our community, in a very short period of time.

Surely there are Mexicans out there - I've heard about some of them - who do exactly what our Chinese family did in Hammond, become an asset to their communities. I don't see a good reason to deport them, and I don't see any good legal way to separate them from the chaff who take advantage of social services and programs (oh YES they do! I've been working in the nonprofit sector for over seven years now and I've seen it firsthand, with my own eyes, so don't tell me they don't), refuse to learn English and assimilate, demand that we spend untold thousands (millions?) of dollars making said services available to them in their language, and are burdens rather than assets to our communities.

People say they come here to take jobs that Americans don't want. Huh? We have 5% unemployment .. how can there be jobs that Americans don't want? Ok, never mind that, I was unemployed for 6 months a while back and I didn't go be a street sweeper or fruit picker either, I kept looking for the type of clerical job I'd had before. But.. There are close to 4 million people in the US on 'Welfare' right now. How about we 'convince' them (surely they can't all be unable to work) to do those jobs that other Americans "don't want to do?" You want that check, buddy, work for it. And there better not be any job that you're too good to do!

So there you go .. make the people who've been on welfare do the jobs the Mexicans have been doing and make the employers pay the government the same amounts they've been paying the Mexicans to offset the welfare checks. The Mexicans who have learned English, assimilated, and gotten better jobs or opened successful businesses will be largely unaffected. But the others .. the unwelcome guests .. they won't be able to find jobs any more and they can't get welfare (Please tell me I'm right and illegals can't get government services?) they'll go home .. all by themselves, because there will no longer be a better future here for them than in Mexico.

The US government saves money with this plan in a bunch of ways!
* People who suddenly have to start working to get welfare will go get real jobs, further reducing the welfare costs.
* Part of welfare costs will be recovered from the employers who are paying the government for the welfare recipients' labor.
* Once most of the Mexicans who won't learn English go home, we can save money by getting rid of all those "press 2 for Spanish" programs.
* The border police and all the programs designed to enforce immigration laws can be greatly scaled down, since Mexicans will stop wanting to come here.
* Lots of money will be saved by making illegal immigrants a non-issue; no more proposed laws will be tying up our legislature on either side of the issue.

And the ones who truly want to become Americans and not just transplanted Mexicans, they can stay, and eventually become citizens just like my mother and I did.

And one more thing, for those of you who will say that many social services recipients are unwed mothers who can't get jobs that pay them enough to pay for daycare. Screen all the above and pick the most responsible/capable 25% and send them through child care training classes, then make them watch their own kids plus the kids of 3 other women. Now the 25% are at least doing something to pay their way, and the other 75% can return to the workforce and become self-supporting.