Working hard or hardly working?
Our Internet at work has been down for the past two days and finally came back up. Thank God!
Lots going on at work the next two weeks. I'm glad I'll have Good Friday off to spend with the kids and my mom. Will be nice.
This morning, I saw a really sad site. In our hometown, we have a "day laborers" site set up so the men seeking work have a designated place to go and the contractors or folks just looking for some help know where to find them. I drive past this place every day on my way to work. This morning, I saw a big double cab dually pull up and you should have seen these men pouncing upon this truck. Men were scrambling to get close to the truck. Others were waving their arms. They just want to work. Most of these men are Mexican immigrants. I would bet that most of them have families to support. I admire them for wanting to work so hard and feel a twinge of sadness to see them doing whatever they can to get the attention of the employer. The lifelong Texan in me wants to be disgusted, but I just can't. Occasionally, I'll get irritated that our public health system, our public school system, my car insurance and even our welfare programs are bogged down with illegal immigrants. I get frustrated that my tax dollars are funding programs in our public schools that are taught in Spanish because the children don't speak English. But, then I look at the great families we have on our boys' soccer teams. These are good people. They're hardworking. They're sacrificing to provide for their children and help them succeed with extracurricular activities. Those are the times when I feel like a bigot. My mother would say Mexican with such contempt that I thought it was a bad word for the first 15 years of my life. I really did. I would hear someone use the term Mexican to describe someone and I'd put my hand over my mouth with disbelief that they used this vulgar language in public. Sometimes I slip back into that frame of thought and then I have to remember the people that I know and how much I like them. It is easy to stereotype and characterize entire races or ethnic groups of people, but that really is unfair. Some stereotypes hold true, that is for sure, but others don't. For every Mexican who gets stabbed in a bar fight, there are those who are pushing around the ice cream carts working to support their families. Stories like this one are just sad. This guy was trying to earn a living and gets killed for it.
Lots going on at work the next two weeks. I'm glad I'll have Good Friday off to spend with the kids and my mom. Will be nice.
This morning, I saw a really sad site. In our hometown, we have a "day laborers" site set up so the men seeking work have a designated place to go and the contractors or folks just looking for some help know where to find them. I drive past this place every day on my way to work. This morning, I saw a big double cab dually pull up and you should have seen these men pouncing upon this truck. Men were scrambling to get close to the truck. Others were waving their arms. They just want to work. Most of these men are Mexican immigrants. I would bet that most of them have families to support. I admire them for wanting to work so hard and feel a twinge of sadness to see them doing whatever they can to get the attention of the employer. The lifelong Texan in me wants to be disgusted, but I just can't. Occasionally, I'll get irritated that our public health system, our public school system, my car insurance and even our welfare programs are bogged down with illegal immigrants. I get frustrated that my tax dollars are funding programs in our public schools that are taught in Spanish because the children don't speak English. But, then I look at the great families we have on our boys' soccer teams. These are good people. They're hardworking. They're sacrificing to provide for their children and help them succeed with extracurricular activities. Those are the times when I feel like a bigot. My mother would say Mexican with such contempt that I thought it was a bad word for the first 15 years of my life. I really did. I would hear someone use the term Mexican to describe someone and I'd put my hand over my mouth with disbelief that they used this vulgar language in public. Sometimes I slip back into that frame of thought and then I have to remember the people that I know and how much I like them. It is easy to stereotype and characterize entire races or ethnic groups of people, but that really is unfair. Some stereotypes hold true, that is for sure, but others don't. For every Mexican who gets stabbed in a bar fight, there are those who are pushing around the ice cream carts working to support their families. Stories like this one are just sad. This guy was trying to earn a living and gets killed for it.
3 Comments:
At 7:28 PM, March 22, 2005,
Joan Crawford said…
There is a gathering place like that right across the street from where I work, too. It's so sad. I have work crews going in and out of the parking lot all day. Sometimes in the mornings when I get there, the guys will come over and ask me if I have work for them. It's rare that we can use labor that hasn't been certified for safety (we put up towers...cell phone, television, radio, etc). So it's rare that we can use anyone unskilled because of our insurance and safety inspectors (not to mention OSHA). But occasionally I'll have a job for them...usually just cleaning up around the building or helping move coax onto utility trailors. But they get SO excited, repeatedly telling me what a good job they'll do for me, when I have a job for them.
When I lived in California, I didn't see as much of the hunger to work in the migrant population as I do here.
At 4:17 PM, March 24, 2005,
Army of Mom said…
There is some insight that I wouldn't have. There are lazy bums and hard workers in every group. Some days, I fit into both of those categories. ;)
At 4:38 PM, March 24, 2005,
Anonymous said…
I think a lot of it is that the population has ben in CA long enough. The ones in Alabama are newr immigrants and like most immigrant groups they are very eager for work-any work when they first arrive in America.
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