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The Boycott — Why Now?
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The Boycott

There were about 500 people demonstrating in Pensacola, which seemed to come as a surprise to local people.

You let Lowes and Wal-Mart build their big-box stores, and you are going to have people who are less than fluent in English and who run like they grew up wearing sandals – a crouch and a scuffing as they run – familiar to residents of South San Diego County.

After the hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 the area’s Hispanic population jumped, and I have it on good authority [my next door neighbor] that Wal-Mart has expanded its grocery section to include “all kinds of Mexican food with foreign language labels” and Saturday night is “Mexican night, most of the cashiers don’t speak good American.”

If this continues she might have to go back to her hometown: Andalusia…Alabama.

The life guards at the beginning of the season have for some time come from Poland, and the last time I was getting my driver’s license renewed there were a number of people in the waiting room speaking Russian.

Until the government gets serious about the borders, and stops giving businesses the incentives to import labor when they are unable to export the jobs, people had better understand that we are going to have immigrants, just like their ancestors.

4 comments

1 andante { 05.02.06 at 2:49 pm }

1. Tighten the borders
2. Make the immigration laws fair and equal for all
3. Crack down on employers who pay slave wages
4. Lay out a course to citizenship for those already in the country that includes fines or a portion of back taxes and a minimum language requirement.

Much more, of course, but basically that’s the way I see it.

2 Bryan { 05.02.06 at 3:07 pm }

Andante, if they would make the immigration laws logical and fair, it wouldn’t make any difference where you were when you applied. If everyone was treated exactly the same way we could probably reduce the number of people that process these things.

It’s the employers who are the big problem. Those who recruit them need some jail time and those that just hire them need to pay for doing it. Real enforcement of labor laws would be a big help.

If taxes are not being collected, that’s the fault of the employer, not the employee.

3 oldwhitelady { 05.03.06 at 12:37 am }

Of course, the businesses also build their stores or companies in other countries where they can get slave labor. A question that comes to my mind is, “Do you want the company in another country where the us citizen would not be able to get a job, unless relocation, of course, or do they want the company here where the us citizen can get a job, along with the aliens.”

4 Bryan { 05.03.06 at 9:11 pm }

The corporations get to choose where to locate, but if they are going to locate in the US, they should follow the laws. The corporations should wonder if their managers are hiring undocumented people, what other laws are they breaking?