Mobile
Friday, October 1, 2010
Boomer with Attitude / News Meg Whitman & her undocumented maid: Who cares?
Posted By John Grooms on Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 2:09 PM
NEWS ITEMS:
- California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman wants the government to crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.
- Whitman is found to have employed an undocumented immigrant as a maid for years.
REACTIONS:
Liberals: Knowing smiles, snickering, high-fives, and/or mutterings about “hypocrites.”
Conservatives: The Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, a conservative group against illegal immigration, is calling for Whitman to be arrested and stand trial, and her former maid to be deported.
That’s a quick summary of Whitman’s predicament. To this writer, a sensible reaction to the Whitman “revelations” would be “So what?” Don’t get me wrong: It’s a legitimate political argument that Whitman is a hypocrite who panders to anti-immigrant feelings in her state while employing undocumented immigrants herself. But as far as the fact that she hired an undocumented immigrant, I still say, “So what?” Let he or she who has never used the services of undocumented immigrants cast the first stone. At our house, we had a new roof installed and a couple of rooms painted recently. I’m pretty sure some of the workers were undocumented immigrants; I didn’t ask, and what’s more, I don’t care.
Chances are that if you’ve hired a lawn service, or a maid service, or, say, hired “some guy a friend knows” to clean out your gutters, or had some painting or roofing done — or eaten vegetables or fruit from your grocery store (such as those strawberries we now get year-round?) — then some of your money has gone to at least some undocumented workers. And face it: They did a pretty good job, didn’t they?
If American immigration policy made even a little sense, there would be a legal channel that workers from Latin America could use to come here, work temporarily at jobs not many Americans want to perform, and then go home. Instead, we spend a fortune trying to keep out workers some sectors of our economy need — and then demonize the workers who find a way to get here anyway, to pick those berries and oranges, clean those gutters, paint those houses, clean our bathrooms, etc., etc. I say more power to them. The current climate of heaping venom on these folks is frankly shameful, and more of us who feel that way should say so.
Speaking of...
Comments (11)
Showing 1-11 of 11
Latest in The CLog
More by John Grooms
-
Jigsaw, Dating App That Hides Users’ Faces, launches in Charlotte, NCTo Fight Superficial Dating App Culture 3
-
Question the Queen City: The story of Mabel Rea 4
The Charlotte native went Hollywood, returned home and met a tragic demise.
-
Knight and Day: Plot eclipsed by stars 1
Cruise and Diaz are main reasons to consider seeing mindless action flick.
