People beat them up and firebomb their homes.
Posted on 07/10/2006 4:08:40 AM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
Illegal immigrants are a diverse bunch. There are about 12 million in this country, working in all industries and living in a range from middle class to working poor to something well below that. They are mostly Latino, but are Asian, African and Eastern European, too. The illegal Irish get a lot of press, but are just one tiny subset, a green sprig of parsley in the melting pot.
Of all these ethnic and economic subgroups, the one I find most compelling is the quiet one at the bottom: the Latino day laborers, the street-corner guys.
They are not the largest group, but they are the most visible, most vulnerable and most hated. They are also the least likely to get anything good out of the immigration bills now festering in Congress.
It takes nothing from the punishing toil of farm workers, hotel maids, wilderness firefighters and chicken processors to say that day laborers occupy a position of particular risk and hardship in these times of immigration panic.
They are silent and anonymous, but painfully exposed. They are jeered by suburbanites, harassed by Minuteman vigilantes and hounded by communities with police crackdowns, anti-loitering statutes and mass evictions. Contractors cheat them. People beat them up and firebomb their homes.
The possibility of being victimized without sympathy or a safety net is, of course, the risk one takes when entering this country illegally.
Day laborers are acutely aware of this and have set out to improve things on their own. In a development that may surprise those who see day laborers as immigration at its chaotic worst, this ad hoc phenomenon is shaping itself up.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This guy's an idiot. Does he say this about bank robbers, too?
IMO there's a heck of a lot more than 12 million.
Cherry picking sob stories about those who break the law is sickening.
"There are about 12 between 20 and 30 million in this country..."
There; that's probably more accurate.
People beat them up and firebomb their homes.
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