Dear John,
I watched you on tv as you tried to make light of the immigration issue. You gave big smiles and threw back your hands and just grinned. It was such a big joke to you.
Please allow me to relate a real life experience, which I am sure is happening all over America.
I keep hearing that illegal aliens are only doing jobs that Americans won’t do. That is a political myth.
In 1997, I worked as a plant engineer, for a company in Oklahoma City. This company had two hundred employees. The mix was 70% white and 30% black. All were Americans who had been with the company for years. Average pay for this group was 14 to 18 dollars per hour. That was about four dollars more then the local average.
At the start of 1999, the owner hired a Latin American, with whom he had actually graduated from college. Three months later the layoffs came. Every Friday, eight or nine pink slips were handed out and Monday morning eight or nine brand spanking new non-English speaking Mexicans would show up for work. This went on for a year, until one hundred and seventy American workers had been replaced. The new salary for all those Mexicans was $7 an hour.
The girls in accounting, use to joke that we had 150 workers and only five social security numbers.
As Chief of Maintenance, my department was the only one to survive the cuts. However, since we spoke no Spanish, I was assigned an assistant straight from Mexico, as my interpreter.
One hundred and seventy American workers, fired and thrown back into a job market with no hope of making their original salary. Many of those workers had fifteen or more years of loyal service.
As for the Boss’s Latin friend, he was a goody. He would drive a nine-passenger van to Mexico charge five hundred a head and just drive back across the border with a new batch of workers. He bought five small houses, and as he imported all of these new workers, placed them in these homes and charged them two hundred a month rent. He had ten to twelve people living in each of those homes. Being the full service provider that he was, he set up a shuttle system to Kansas every Monday. See, in Kansas, you can take your drivers license test in Spanish. Six months later you can turn it in for an Oklahoma license. You could make the trip to Kansas for only one hundred dollars. This guy was a real capitalist.
The language barrier was just too excessive for the company to withstand. The problems with teaching someone how to run complicated machinery, without speaking their language, and the breakdowns due to improper operation, and quality control issues, were just too much.
An American company, that had been grossing twelve to fifteen million dollars a year, folded in 2003. One can only assume it was greed that brought it down. Greed that was allowed by a non-caring government to protect its people. Greed that was allowed by the IRS for failure to correct accounting practices, it knew was wrong. Greed that was allowed by a dozen other government agencies for failure to do their jobs. Greed that was allowed and encouraged by simple minded politicians who fail to protect Americans. People like you, JOHN.
Now John, you will say, “Gosh that’s only one company.†And I will say to you, “Visit some companies.†Find out how many of their workers speak no English. People born in America speak English, John. There were fifteen companies, we did business with, in OKC. If you call them now, you will be put on hold until they get someone who speaks English on the phone.
Now capitalism does work John. There was all those new businesses that opened up. You know, the ones that only speak Spanish, like the two radio stations and the tv station, which only speak Spanish. And all those little stores on the corner, that make it easy to send half you paycheck back to Mexico. It seems like OKC suddenly had a population of thirty thousand Mexicans within a year, John.
I hear it is not as bad as Arizona though. You know, that state you promised to protect and serve, that you no longer care about.
My father hauled ice for a living in 1954. His average pay was eight dollars an hour. Yea, that was three hundred dollars a week, way upper middle class. In 1998, the City of Tulsa hired college grads as sewer plant operators for eight dollars and fifty cents an hour. That is a job any HS grad can learn in only three days. As long as we allow illegal immigration to continue unchecked, the American worker’s pay will remain at poverty level. Here is a simple rule John, “When companies can’t find enough workers, they raise their pay scales.â€
Now I am not against immigration, John. Around the world, everyday, hundreds of people line up at our embassies, trying their best to come to America. These are people who believe America is the finest country in the world. People who are willing to learn English, and become productive members of our society. People with more than just a strong back to offer. However, we can’t except them, because we allow the US to become saturated with all those loyal Mexicans, who constantly attack our culture.
No Mr. McCain, illegal immigration is not funny, not one damn little bit. Your letting those American workers down, John.
John C...
