From: Stephen Thomas (e-mail him)
As unemployment climbs toward 10 percent, many displaced white-collar Americans may contemplate a "Plan B" that includes dropping a few rungs on the ladder of vocational expectations and taking a "survival gig" to keep roof over head.
If they haven't been paying attention, they may be in for a disappointment.
Americans have for the past two decades turned a blind eye toward the usurpation of manual labor-type jobs by illegal aliens. Many assumed we would never again need those jobs ourselves and we could wash our hands of that type of work. Result: Mexicans now permanently occupy that entire lower tier of employment.
And they aren't going anywhere (if they can help it).
Americans historically tended to work such jobs as stopgaps, then the job rolled over to the next person in a jam. We called it "upward mobility."
Mexicans, on the other hand, often take menial jobs as the first step in their lifelong careers. They don't advance and basically "squat" in the position.
Thus there is little turnover and therefore few opportunities for Americans who have fallen on hard times to avail themselves of safety-net employment.
And even when openings occur, small business employment infrastructures—the hiring practices and people doing the hiring—have become Mexicanized.
Americans will discover that Mexicans don't look for or gain employment in the old way we used to—the jobs aren't posted, advertised or interviewed for.
The market is conducted by personal contacts, the word passed among friends and relatives.
In some of the small/mid-size manufacturing firms I call on, those outer waiting rooms where Americans once filled out applications and waited for an interview with a personnel director have been put to other use. They have no legitimate purpose anymore.
When the production manager (himself often a Mexican immigrant) has an opening, he puts the word out within the company. The next day, a fellow worker shows up at the rear employee entrance with a "cousin" in tow, vouches for him in a short conversation in Spanish, and the deal is done.
Meanwhile the clueless, newly-unemployed American who puts on a clean shirt dutifully writes up all this references and is ready to sweat out an interview is instead told "Sorry, we're not hiring."
When laid off in the 1982 recession I was in a bind—newly married, no savings, etc.
But that was a different era. Even with high unemployment it was possible to go to the warehouse district and round up a menial job stacking boxes, sweeping floors or hosing out boxcars, etc. Because I also had experience doing outside electrical work, I quickly got part-time work digging trenches for conduits, too.
It wasn't fun, but it didn't kill me and it paid the rent and put food on the table until I got back on my feet.
I'd hate to be in the position of trying to find work like that today.
Joe Guzzardi comments: Read Edwin S. Rubenstein's series written for VDARE.COM titled American Worker Displacement. All the statistical evidence for Thomas' letter are available to those who care to see them.
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From: Bob Cobb (e-mail him)
Here's how things look in Orange County over Thanksgiving weekend:
"The Second Harvest Food Bank's Irvine warehouse, usually stacked with canned food, bottled water and other non-perishable items, is looking empty and cavernous these days, as demand from charities working to feed the hungry has surged while the economy craters.
"Demand from those member agencies has risen from 20 percent to 70 percent over the past few months as legions of the working poor and the recently unemployed struggle to make ends meet."[Food Bank Depleted as Holidays Near, by Erika Chavez, Orange County Register, November 25, 2008]
Although the story makes no direct mention of immigration—when does the MainStream Media ever report on a negative regarding aliens?—readers can easily figure out for themselves who is one of the largest users of food banks.
According to the 2006 Bureau of the Census, Orange County's Hispanic population is nearly 33 percent, a number significant enough to be a major drain on scarce social services.
You would think that the Orange County Register, which I criticized in my previous letter to VDARE.COM for its immigration obtuseness, would begin to see the light. But so far, it remains in La-La Land.
Donate to these charities only if you wish to encourage more illegal immigration.
Cobb works in the intensive care unit of a major metropolitan hospital. A previous letter from him opposing organ transplants for immigrants is here.
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From: Francis Ford (e-mail him)
Re: Joe Guzzardi's Column: As "Fairness Doctrine" Looms, Americans Must Fight For First Amendment Rights
I read with interest the Newsday story written by reporter Bart Jones around which Guzzardi centered his column. [Lucero's Family Hosts Mass at Home He Helped Build, Bart Jones, Newsday, November 17, 2008]
Jones wrote:
"His [slain illegal alien Ecuadorian Marcelo Lucero's] family had planned to hold the Mass inside their home, but so many people showed up, they moved it to the street, where they set up chairs and a temporary altar. Floodlights lit the scene."
Are your readers aware, I wonder, of how rare it is to celebrate a Roman Catholic Mass outside of a consecrated place?
According to the rituals and traditions that govern it, "Mass must be celebrated in a consecrated or blessed Church (private oratories or even rooms are allowed for special reasons: see Le Vavasseur, I, 200-4)."
That would seem to exclude the Lucero home or a "temporary altar" down the street.
But apparently, a request by an alien family constitutes a "special reason" that the Church will eagerly accommodate.
Ford lives in Vermont where is says he follows the alien crisis with dismay but happily from a distance.
James Fulford replies: While it sounds like the sort of favor that radical priests do for those they think of as the downtrodden (criminals, illegals, terrorist suspects, et cetera), our reader apparently missed the dateline, "GUALACEO, Ecuador." The Luceros aren't aliens in Ecuador, they're right at home there,(a very snug home, built with the proceeds of crime) and in an "impoverished Andean mountain city of 20,000 people," a 300-person memorial service is probably enough reason to set up a portable altar.
It's amazing that a single murder committed by some random teenagers can send an immigration enthusiast reporter all the way to Ecuador, where he writes stories like In Ecuador, a killing on Long Island sparks fear [ November 16, 2008] about how Ecuadorians are afraid to illegally immigrate because of fear of Americans. Is someone going to send a reporter to Winchester Atrocity victim Jan Pawel Pietrzak's native Poland to ask them if they're now afraid to immigrate legally for because of fear of African-Americans? ]
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