Thursday, June 03, 2004
Oh it's hot and the AC is out on my car. I'm taking it in tomorrow morning, in the meantime I drive my portable oven with the window open and it is quite unpleasant.
Also unpleasant are the nasty letters-to-the-editor published in the Tucson Citizen, our community's slowly dying afternoon paper. Tucson is basically a community made up of people who moved here from elsewhere, only a small percentage were actually born here. The number of senior citizens is very high- I noticed the contrast on the plane from Minneapolis last week- more than half of the people on board were elderly.
The moment these people move into their stucco and frame houses they start screeching about those damn illegal immigrants. A stream of people moving north from Mexico pass through this area, heading into the United States looking for work. Wages in Mexico are so awful- 35 cents an hour or some such foolishness, that a minimum wage job in the US is a dream-come-true.
Many recent elderly immigrants from Michigan or North Dakota or Nebraska can't understand why we don't shoot-to-kill these poor people from Sonora or Chihuahua. In response, the US government has increased border patrols and made it much more dangerous to come across. The number of young men and women dying in the desert increases each year. Now people are fighting over whether good samaritans should offer these people food and water. The problem isn't going to be solved any time soon- now until the Mexican economy gets dragged up enough that there is no incentive to come here. I'm guessing that the hate-filled retirees benefit a great deal from the immigrants- cheaper housing, cheaper food, Social Security payments- but all they can see is the darker skin and Spanish language, and not the individual hopes and dreams.
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Also unpleasant are the nasty letters-to-the-editor published in the Tucson Citizen, our community's slowly dying afternoon paper. Tucson is basically a community made up of people who moved here from elsewhere, only a small percentage were actually born here. The number of senior citizens is very high- I noticed the contrast on the plane from Minneapolis last week- more than half of the people on board were elderly.
The moment these people move into their stucco and frame houses they start screeching about those damn illegal immigrants. A stream of people moving north from Mexico pass through this area, heading into the United States looking for work. Wages in Mexico are so awful- 35 cents an hour or some such foolishness, that a minimum wage job in the US is a dream-come-true.
Many recent elderly immigrants from Michigan or North Dakota or Nebraska can't understand why we don't shoot-to-kill these poor people from Sonora or Chihuahua. In response, the US government has increased border patrols and made it much more dangerous to come across. The number of young men and women dying in the desert increases each year. Now people are fighting over whether good samaritans should offer these people food and water. The problem isn't going to be solved any time soon- now until the Mexican economy gets dragged up enough that there is no incentive to come here. I'm guessing that the hate-filled retirees benefit a great deal from the immigrants- cheaper housing, cheaper food, Social Security payments- but all they can see is the darker skin and Spanish language, and not the individual hopes and dreams.
