[cyncooper]

HUD has slipped three illegal families onto my block. One of them is a foreman for a landscaping company. They in turn are using their home to slip more illegals into the country.

How do you know that

A) They're illegals

and

B) the particulars of their financing?

[MissAmericanPie]

Their kids told me, also the parents have come by wanting to put in a sprinkler system and the sign on his company truck is a landscaping company. Neither parent speaks english and the kids barely do. Plus I have my Dick Tracey detective certificate and my decoder ring.

The other family is happy to tell you that they just arrived from Mexico. At least that was the excuse they gave when their two kids came busting into my house without knocking, driving the door knob into the sheet rock, and breaking some figgurines. Obviously they are not familiar with living in a place with doors.

The other family are party animals the street is lined with cars, the meriachi music is blasting, drunk revelers are squatting in the street in the dark begging to be run over.

Meanwhile, the American section of the block has formed a crime watch and a neighborhood association with it's own web site. They are at the city council meetings, on the phone with the cops, and fighting for this neighborhood tooth and nail. It's always been a special neighborhood, the hottest selling area in the city, and they want to keep it that way. Me, I give up.

I was pretty offended when a family member came for dinner on Christmas and told me I need to move out of the barrio. It's just impossible at the moment, to pick up and move. But eventually I will.