A few clarifications --

  • I know I'm really mad right now, so I'm going to hold off on making any calls until I've cooled down. Hasty actions taken while angry rarely work out the way you imagine. Better to take a measured, cold revenge than to fly off like a berserker.
  • My Spanish is still pretty good, so I've been able to chat with the gents working on the house. "So it's hard to get work?" the lemur asks. "Oh yeah," the crew chief responds. "Trouble with the police?" He nods, "If you're not careful." And so forth. I'm pretty confident these gents are not legal.
  • I have nothing against the people who come here to work. My problems are with (a) fairness, and (b) contribution. Let me break that down:
  1. Fairness: One of my best friends emigrated here from Serbia. He had to go through a mountain of paperwork, and jump through multiple hoops for the I.N.S. to prove he was going to be a valuable member of the U.S.A. Likewise, there are people from all over the Earth who would like to work here. I don't understand why Central and South Americans should be priviledged to come here in much larger numbers just because of physical proximity. It doesn't seem fair.
  2. Contribution: If one of these gentlemen outside my house has an accident, he will be taken care of by the medical system. His children will be educated by the public schools. It's entirely unfair for him not to be contributing full taxes. Moreover, it's unfair for his employer to take advantage of the lower wages, while shuffling the tax burden off onto everyone else in the community. He's taking advantage of lax enforcement to shove a whole bunch his rightful costs onto the town/county/state/country at large. It's unethical.
  • Lastly, I'm sorry I brought conservative politics into this, but it really cheesed me off. And in my experience it's altogether typical. Am I generalizing from particulars to the general? Yes I am. Is it unfair? Probably. Is it unwarranted? Not entirely. "Conservative" Republicans have been dominating the landscape for six years, and I'm absolutely sick of the disconnect between rhetoric and action on the personal, local, state and national level. If they continue to hold absolute power for another four years, then we the American people deserve whatever ills befall us.