Part Three: California - Originally Posted 04-29-10

I noticed in the fast food businesses there were mostly Hispanics working there. I did not pay much attention to that. There are a lot of Hispanics in the area. Then I noticed they were cutting yards, working in grocery stores, etc. Most people would think, big deal, right? The thing was, these were not teenagers or college kids. They were all adults. I wondered why all these adults were doing the jobs I did as a kid and were used to seeing kids do. I thought it was just in my area. But, it was actually all over. I later found out they were illegal aliens. The business people preferred to hire them instead of kids because they work for less than minimum wage. They could pay them off the books as well. I asked what the kids did for jobs. I was told they did whatever they could find or did not work at all. That was my first introduction to the illegal alien workforce.

I found out it was in the construction industry as well. I knew a couple of contractors who only hired illegal aliens because they did not have to pay them much. Also, they did not unionize and if they had a complaint, they could be fired and new ones picked up at the Home Depot parking lot. I still did not think it was a big deal. It was the early part of the new century. The economy was good. There were plenty of jobs to go around, I thought.

Then I had kids. Not long after the twins were born, Tammy started having problems with her back. A few times we had to go to the emergency room. The place was packed with illegal aliens. Since they do not have insurance and cannot afford health care, the go to the ER for every little thing. We would have to wait for hours in the ER waiting while a bunch of illegal aliens were trying to get their kids with stuffy noses seen. That started to bother me. It was not just our local hospital, it was all of them. On top of all that, I was paying for them as well with my taxes. We did not get free healthcare. They did. Over time, it got worse and worse.

Then the kids had to go to school. We lived in a pretty nice place. The kids went to a good school. As the years went on, they started bussing in the illegal kids from South Placentia to my kid’s school. The school started going downhill. In the third grade, Alex came home and said she was tired of teaching. I asked what she meant. She said she had to help the English language learners in class. I told her that was a good thing to help her classmates along who were not quite getting it. Then she looked at me and said, “I have to do it every day. They make us help teach the English language learning kids.” I can see helping along, but this was something different. This was taking away from the teachers teaching my kids. It was slowing the entire school down. They were supposed to have special classes to teach the non-English kids learn English. Most of them did not even pay attention.
Then there was the crime. As the years went by, crime in Placentia escalated. My garage was broken into. My truck was broken into twice. There started being problems at the high school with gangs. There were shootings and stabbings that were previously unheard of. Break-ins, robberies, DUI’s, everything started going up. Even if we had not moved out of the state, we were looking to move out of that area. It was not fun. The first time my garage was broken into a radio was stolen. I thought it was just kids. When my truck was broken into, they stole my radio and my toolbox out of the bed. That was not kids. Kids steal radios and CD’s, they do not steal tools and toolboxes. Of course, the police did nothing. They were just as terrified of the Hispanic community as the city council and the mayor.

Now, let me make something clear, racial profiling is not racism. I we had done a little racial profiling at Logan Airport on September 11, 2001, we may have confiscated a few box cutters from some Arab men. In turn, that would have saved about 3,000 lives. Almost every other country uses racial profiling in one way or another. It is a safety issue. Given the past fifty years of terrorism in the air, who has been the majority of terrorist? Given the cold, hard, statistical facts, Arab men in their twenties and thirties should be given extra scrutiny at airports. Does this mean all Arab men in their twenties and thirties are terrorists? No, it means there is a greater likelihood of the terrorists being Arab men in their twenties and thirties, traveling alone, with no carry on except a Koran. Yes, I want that guy checked out. If the terrorists begin to show a different demographic, I want them checked as well. Do you or your loved ones want to be on that next plane that blows up because the security was afraid to check the passengers?
Why does the Arizona law call out Hispanics? Plain and simple, it doesn’t. Have you read the bill? I posted it. I do not mean what CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the activists, the East Coast liberals, etc. are saying. They do not know. They have not read the bill. Now, I have heard the questions about why they do not check the Canadians. How many Canadians are sneaking into Arizona, illegally, using up their resources, kidnapping and murdering their people, and committing other crimes? My guess would be very few. How many of these are Mexicans, Central, or South American? I do not know, but I will bet it is a hell of a lot more than Canadians. By the way, that kid in PK’s third grade class I took the butterfly knife away from, he was an illegal alien. He did not speak English. Guess where he was from. I will give you a couple of hints. He did not speak French, either. He was not from Canada.
And this crap about being pulled over because you are Hispanic. That is a load of crap as well. I am not saying it does not happen in isolated incidents. I am sure it does. If the police pulled over every Hispanic in AZ just to check their driver’s license, they would not be able to do anything else. It has to be a stop for a reason like speeding, an accident, DUI, or other infraction of the law. Not that being an illegal alien is an infraction of the law in itself. What is always the first thing an officer of the law asks you after a traffic stop? It does not matter what color you are. It does not matter what gender you are. It does not matter how tall or short you are. None of that matters. They ALWAYS ask for your driver’s license, every single time. This bill does not change that. You are required to carry a driver’s license anytime you are operating a motor vehicle on the public roads. The bill did not change that, either. You know what it does change? It gives the local police the authority to protect the citizens of the State of Arizona in a way the federal government refuses to. That is all it does. Period.

The federal government does not give a rat’s ass about you. This may be news to some of you. Others may already know this. It cares about noisy special interest groups with a lot of money. It cares about lobbyists who donate to campaigns. It cares about businesses that contribute to their campaigns. It cares about who is paying them the most money. You do not fall into that category, at all. You are nothing to them. The states, however, take a different view. Well, the good ones do. California does not. They are as bad as the federal government. Anyway, the states see their people as a resource, not necessarily as a burden. That resource pays taxes and keeps the state’s economy going. Illegal aliens in the states do not contribute to the livelihood of the economy. In balance, they are tax takers. Yes, they pay sales tax, but that is it. They consume more of the resources than they contribute. The states have tried to get the federal government to do something about this problem for years. This does not fall on Presidents Bush and Obama. It goes back before they were even around.

The main reason they do not do anything is the money. The Republicans and their partners in big business see them as a cheap source of labor. The Democrats and their partners in the unions and big business see them as potential voters and members, even though they are not legally able to vote. But, what does that matter they are here under illegal pretenses anyway. Meanwhile, the south western states are going bankrupt trying to take care of this invading horde. The reason nothing is done is because there is no serious problem with illegal aliens east of the Mississippi River. So, Washington does not care.
The citizens of these states are not bad people. They do not want any harm to come to these people, except the criminals. They just want them to either go home or have the federal government help them out with the problem. Things are so bad in California, they burden of supporting the illegal aliens contributed to the collapse of the state’s economy. It was not the sole issue, but it contributed more than most people thing. It got so bad we had to flee the state. We were not the only ones. A lot of businesses that provided jobs left as well. The only people left in California are the super rich and the destitute poor. The middle class has been almost eliminated. The few that are left are barely hanging on.

That brings me to my next issue, culture. I am proud of my culture and my ancestry. I am proud to be from the state of Tennessee. I am also proud of my second home state of California. I am proud to be from the South. I am proud to be a descendent of the United Kingdom. I am not too proud to be from Memphis. But, that is another story. However, on top of all of that, I am proud to be a citizen of the United States of America. I put Old Glory above any other flag; Confederate, Southern Cross, Tennessee, California, Union Jack, any. Most legal immigrants feel the same way. They come to this country to take part in the greatest nation on earth. They also come and swear their allegiance. Even though they are proud to be from a different nation, culture, place, etc., they now consider themselves to be citizens of the United States of America above all else. Most of them immerse themselves in our culture and history. The learn English and occasionally take on English sounding names in order to better assimilate into our society. They keep their culture and language as well. They add it to our culture. That is why we refer to the United States as the “Melting Pot”. It is a wonderful metaphor. I love it. I like REAL Chinese and Japanese food. I enjoy a variety of music from other cultures. I learned so much from my mother working at the university about other people and nations.

On the flip side of that, the illegal aliens do none of these. When I saw the first May Day Rally in Los Angeles, there were Mexican flags. No United States flags in sight. They refuse to assimilate. They do not want to be a part of our culture. They want to turn Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas into Mexico. They even have a term for these territories they insist were stolen from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. They do not try to learn English. They do not try to encourage their children to get an education. In some areas, it is considered an embarrassment to achieve more than your parents. No, I do not understand it. Most legal immigrants see this country as the land of opportunity to do better. These people see this country as a giant teat waiting to be suckled dry.
They live thirty to a two bedroom house. They bring their families up here with them as well as gangs, drug dealers and murderers. They do not care about this country and its way of life. They just want whatever they can get and send it back south of the border.

Now they want amnesty. I say, no. Let them go through the same hell as friends of mine had to trying to get citizenship. You want to sit there and tell me these people should be pushed ahead of the line, in front of people who have been waiting for years to get citizenship. These people, who broke the law in the first place to get here? These people, who cannot even read or write the language of the United States? They take no citizenship tests. Do not have to learn anything about this country and its history? Do not even have to show proof of identity? These are the people who should get preferential treatment in the eyes of the law above those who have done the right thing?

Lastly, the only thing I see going on in Arizona is an act of desperation because the federal government will not do anything. Drug smugglers and gangs are murdering citizens on the border. The country of Mexico itself is falling into chaos and anarchy because of the corruption of its people. They try to blame the Spanish for their way of life. The Spanish have been gone for a very long time. It is about time they take responsibility for their own instead of sending them over here, illegally.