The Criminal Who Cuts Your Grass
Next to a busy shopping center that I find myself frequenting several times per week, Hispanic men tend to gather en-masse. They are looking for work. Specifically, they are laborers awaiting anyone willing to hire them for the day. I understand the ongoing rate is $10 per hour paid in cash, plus a meal. And until recently, they had little trouble finding employment, and most would be gone before noontime. Now they seem to linger most of the day, conversing and pestering passersby. Waiting For Godot.
Of course the authorities know they are there. This is a conservative and Republican area. Therefore we have legislated the obligatory, and in my opinion draconian, rules against illegals. It is patently hypocritical that our economy is so much dependent on these same people. Businesses hire them for the cheap wages, to do jobs that most good white folk consider to be beneath their dignity and below their worth- jobs like landscaping, mowing, and otherwise primping the opulent homes of those who pass their silly legislation and then pay the criminals under the table. The police do nothing to disperse the gathering of these law-breakers, knowing to do so would likely mean a quick change of venue or even demotion. You don’t “bite the hand that feeds you”. Or, in this instance, cleans your gutters and tends your children.
I do not like driving down that little stretch of road. Fox Street. And I try my best not to make eye contact with any of the dozens of hungry looking men, because to do so inevitably elicits a query for work. I feel sorry for them. The housing industry, once so robust, has dried up. So the majority of these immigrants cannot find work. Since I live and pastor in a transitioning area, I have met lots of these people with brown skin and strange language. They are not evil. Simply they want the same as most- pay bills, raise families, worship God, and be at peace.
It is not a perfect situation. I think they should make a better effort to assimilate, and especially to learn the English language. We should do better to put an end to the black market economy, and that includes fines for employers who like to pay cash and thus circumvent the tax system. A reasonable and accountable path to legal residency should be provided for those now here illegally. I believe such would be well received. And let’s do away with this silly and unworkable notion of shipping fifteen million people back to Mexico. It’s not a workable solution. Besides, then a lot more fine and upstanding American citizens would have to trim their own hedges.
