Well, both my wife and I are descendants of slaves then. My parents migrated out to California during the Great Depression. They worked at low paying menial jobs in miserable living conditions all their lives and, in fact, sometimes packed up the entire family to work in the fields while "Scarlet" looked on from her porch.
And my wife's grandparents immigrated from Finland around the turn of the century. The family worked the coal mines of Pennsylvania and later worked on farms in Michigan and California. They ended up homesteading a farm on land no one wanted near Reedley. Her father worked the ranches of the valley his entire life.
OK...do you or your wife consider yourselves citizens of the "Old Country" first? Did your ancestors refuse to assimilate? Do you still sent home your dollars to the "Old Country"? Do you assert that where you live is actually "property" of the "Old Country"? Do you speak the language, or did you refuse to learn English, then demand that all services be provided in your "Native" tongue? Do you or your ancestors stage protests to demand more from the very people you/they are defrauding?
Do you aid others from the "Old Country" to come here illegally, and commit fraud on the American people? Did you or they steal/make up ID's and forge work documents? Did they come here without a check on who they were, and what diseases they might be carrying? Did they protest at being checked out?
Now as for those jobs they took...the times were different. One could make a better life for themselves from their old one by the sweat of their brow...not off the backs of the American Taxpayer; we who actually make up the difference in what an illegal makes, verus the State/Local/Federal services they consume.
And as far as "Scarlett" sitting on the porch...I'm sure that your ancestors hoped and dreamed that one day they would be living like Scarlett. That IS the American Dream.
The railroads and Robber Barons/Cattle Barons have been replaced by construction/menial labor jobs...all with the nod and a wink from a Federal Gub'Mint that sees no problem selling Americans out for the promise of cheap illegal aliens and their futurte votes. Never mind the Social Security fiasco that says an immigrant needs only 10 Quarters to qualify (even if they used a phony/stolen S.S. ID)...while Americans need 40 Quarters.
So Jim...it is an entirely different situation we find ourselves in...we are being invaded and taken over with the complicity of our Gub'Mint in favor of one big trade zone from the Tropics to the Artic circle...and we Americans are NOT the beneficiaries of this "Zone", yet we are paying for the luxury of becoming second-class citizens in our home...at gunpoint.
My family too came to the valley during the great depression, worked as farm hands, and picked fruit. So we identify with your struggle and if the new migrants too. My grandmother went to school in Reedley But I don’t recall anyone leaving graffiti like we see the kids there today, or our kids did not join gangs, we never asked for charity, we kept our yards clean, some of us even went to on to higher education, some of us farmed. Some of my famies farms are still in it there, but these were family farms.
More and more farms now are being sold and combined into bigger ranches, and every time I visit the valley, I cant help but notice the greater and greater disparity between the classes, with huge ranch mansions, and then shanty shacks at the corner properties on the back acreages. It isn’t anymore the valley I grew up in, where there was a string middle class, with protestant Christian American values. Perhaps the change was inevitable with time, or perhaps our valley towns which appear like 3rd world communities of peasants and aristocrats as we see today was the result of our own greed.