A Good Middle-Class Job Lost

As I pointed out in my last article, I drove a taxi for five years while in college. It was a fun and weird job, which suited me just fine. After five years, I was tired of the crying children, passed-out drunks, stripping hookers, brawling dwarfs, Marilyn Monroe transvestites, babbling schizophrenics, pee-in-my-car epileptics, brain-dead dopers, et al, and decided it was time to use my degree.

Another reason I quit is because the money was going away. Driving a taxi used to be a middle-class job. It's not anymore. When I first started driving I met many of the older drivers, close to retiring, who had made being a cabbie a career. They made what today would be about $40,000 a year. One man, who was in his early 60s when I met him, told me that after he started driving right after World War II, he thought, "Man, where has this job been all my life?" And every year he would take a month off so he and his wife could tour the country on his motorcycle.

I understood what he meant. When driving was bad, it was terrible. But when it was good, it was a riot. I once worked downtown for a 'Little People' convention. Years later, when I read a newspaper article about how the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz were housed in a separate hotel, where the police were called almost every night to break up orgies and drunken brawls, I smiled.

I had so many strange things happen to me I kept a diary, because I knew I would forget some of them. Even with the diary I've still forgotten some things. The last time I read it I had no memory of ever having a woman tell me she beat her drunken, abusive passed-out husband with his artificial leg. But since it was in my diary, I knew it happened.

By the time I quit, I estimated the average salary was closer to $18,000 a year. The reason? Uneducated Third-World immigrants. In nearly every city in the country they have moved into the taxi business and driven wages down. Way down. For all practical purposes, there are no longer any American-born drivers who are career-cabbies. The Americans I see are no longer professional drivers. Instead they have mullets.

This wave of immigrants had started even when I began driving. They were mostly located at the airport, since 99% of the rides were from the airport to downtown. The airport taxis didn't have radios – what are called "dummy cabs" – which was a good thing since most of the foreign drivers couldn't speak English very well. Because of this limitation, they couldn't work the radio cabs. So they were stuck at the airport, back and forth, airport to downtown.

One of my friends had worked at the airport before these uneducated Third Worlders started showing up. This guy had one hand, and had barely graduated high school. Yet he was making $40,000 a year. Then, bam, there was an explosion of Third World taxis, and he quit his job after the money dropped below $20,000 a year. He ended up driving deseg, like I did. Since deseg involved using a radio, there were very few foreigners.

Most of the foreign drivers were Russians, Ethiopians and Nigerians. I never had any problems with the Russians, most of whom worked hard and wanted to be Americans. But still, all of them drove wages down to the point where Americans fled. Even the Ethiopians were okay. The Nigerians, on the other hand – every one of them, – were liars and thieves. The ones I met didn't seem to understand the wrongness of lying and stealing. When I started getting the Nigerian 419 email scams, the first thing I did was think, "It figures."

Once, several Nigerians were arrested by the FBI for going through the drive-up lanes at banks and pulling thousands of dollars out of the ATMs by using stolen PINs. They did this in a big red taxi, which was caught on the bank's cameras. None had the brains to realize they would get caught. The driver was the only one who was released, since he claimed he had no idea what was going on. The rest went to prison. When we next saw the driver, all of us razzed him for the idiot that he was. And still is, I'm sure.

Even though I mostly drove deseg, I still occasionally took rides on the radio. During the summer, when school was out, I would sit downtown at the hotels and catch rides to the airport. So many of my passengers asked if they could call me directly when they next visited town I ended up getting a cell phone.

The reason they wanted to call me was because none of them wanted to get into the airport taxis. One ride was enough. They didn't like dealing with drivers who couldn't speak or understand English; they didn't like foreigners trying to take the long way to over-charge them, and the women didn't like being harassed. One woman told me a foreign driver had a mirror in front, aimed between the seats at the back, in order to try and look up women's skirts. It didn't surprise me at all. Another woman told me the driver drove her around and around downtown, refusing to let her out, while he made sexual remarks to her. I made it a point to go out to the airport cab commission and file a complaint against him. If I could have, I would have had him arrested.

I am actually not anti-immigrant. I just want educated people over here, not the Third World. The reason the Third World is the Third World is because the inhabitants have Third-World mentalities. When they come over here, many of them still have Third-World mentalities.

Does everyone have to have advanced degrees to make a decent living anymore? What's wrong with driving a taxi? Someone has to do it. All of the economic problems this country has I blame on the government and its complete and utter incompetence. It's keeping out the good workers and letting in the bad. I've met highly educated Europeans who can't get into the US anymore. But I've seen Third Worlders urinating in public.

The story I keep hearing is that the government wants to flood the country with Third Worlders to support the coming retirees, who aborted – what? – 30 million? potential workers. If this is true, what this country is going to end up with in the future is a hostile, poorly-paid lower-class, hardly any middle-class at all, and a small minority of wealthy upper-class people. This, to me, sounds like what the Third World already is. Those who think the Third World can't happen here are deluding themselves.

Bob Wallace [send him mail] is the author of I Write What I See. Please visit his Shameless Book Promotion Page.

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The story I keep hearing is that the government wants to flood the country with Third Worlders to support the coming retirees

A Ponzi scheme.

So when the descendants of those immigrants become fat and lazy, what then--we import a gazillion more, and so forth until this country has wall-to-wall people?

Kiss your freedooms goodbye when that happens (as it is already happening).

If there weren't so many immigrants, maybe a lot of those old people could get jobs driving cabs.

This is such a joke.

We got people taking "early retirement" at 50.

We got employers who avoid hiring peole over 40.

And we got people over 40 who are lazy, stupid, worthless blankety-blanks.

My solution is no one should be allowed to immigrate to this country unless he can purchase his citizenship from an existing American, who can then take the purchase price of his citizenships, and go to a third world country to live like a leech.

In fact, those Americans wishing to sell their Citizenships could do it on eBay.

Of course, aspiring immigrants should first be licensed by the government to bid, because it's not enough merely for someone to have the purchase price: Immigrants should also pass through an approval process before being allowed to buy their citizenship.

To ensure the governemnt likes this idea, the government could impose a sales tax on the purchase of citizenships--there, that should do it.

The reason the Third World is the Third World is because the inhabitants have Third-World mentalities. When they come over here, many of them still have Third-World mentalities.

Yep, and the educated cream of the crop can't get a visa to come here because the next tier underbids even their wages. Just who do our glorious internationalists think will carry on this country? This guy hits it squarely on the head!

I used to live in Phoenix and did quite a bit of buisness travel. Often I wouuld catch a cab from the airport home. It was always funny that I (the fare paying passenger) had to give directions to the cab driver. Always a treat when he bearly spoke english and didn't have a clue how to navigate outside of the downtown area.

God help those who don't know the area, nobody else can.

It's not only cab drivers, it's a multitude of other entry level jobs we're cheating our citizens out of.

When I got was in highschool (not all that long ago) kids who graduated or even drop-outs could take a job swinging a hammer or remodeling kitchens or whatever. Now all the construction jobs are being scoffed up by illegals or other immigrants who'll work peanuts.

Retards in here will tell us it's a good thing.

When I got was in highschool (not all that long ago) kids who graduated or even drop-outs could take a job swinging a hammer or remodeling kitchens or whatever.

And along came the Great Society, and suddenly they didn't have to work so damn hard to survive.

Now all the construction jobs are being scoffed up by illegals or other immigrants who'll work peanuts.

Yeah, it's a damn shame that those lazy immigrants take two and three jobs that could be performed half as competently for twice the price by Americans.

It's not only cab drivers, it's a multitude of other entry level jobs we're cheating our citizens out of.

I'll bet it's not cheaper today to take a taxi than it was 20 years ago when Americans drove the taxis. So many jobs are going from middle class to impoverished class ---the textile workers here used to make a low-middle class living but now they live off welfare ---wages are now so low that even most working people qualify for food stamps.

"performed half as competently for twice the price by Americans."

My husband, who's in construction, recently repaired a botch job done by immigrants. It ultimately cost the homeowner 3 1/2 times the original bid by the immigrants. An immigrant roofing crew was on the last job he worked. They were unable to do a simple repair to the roof that any other roofers he's worked with would have gone ahead and repaired themselves as part of the job. These roofers had no clue how to repair it, meaning he had to pull his guys off of what they were doing and fix it for them. So much for the savings the homeowner had by hiring cheap labor.

A friend of mine was bragging about how much money she was going to save by having a porch built by some Hispanic immigrants rather than by the one of the more expensive local contractors. I told her to make sure she got a certificate of liability (which my hubby and any legitimate local contractor can and will produce) from them before she let them on her property.... She never heard from them again after asking for it.

It's not a level playing field for the American worker when people employing immigrants aren't paying the huge overhead (various insurances and taxes such as liability, worker's comp, ect.) that legitimate employers pay. Should American citizens be forced to change their lifestyle and live like many immigrants with large extended families to lower our costs of living? Not to mention that with the lower wages many of these immigrants are elgible for medical care and other freebies, all courtesy of the taxpaying citizens.

And along came the Great Society, and suddenly they didn't have to work so damn hard to survive.

I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say. I was a toddler when Johnson was president. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post, but if you've now sunk so low as to be lauding the wonders of the great society, you can speak to the hand until you start making sense again.

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