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Our kinda ciudad - Why are so many Mexicans heading for the mid-west?
The Economist | January 9, 2003

Posted on 01/11/2003 7:55:37 AM PST by sarcasm

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1 posted on 01/11/2003 7:55:38 AM PST by sarcasm
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To: madfly
ping
2 posted on 01/11/2003 7:56:24 AM PST by sarcasm
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3 posted on 01/11/2003 7:56:52 AM PST by Anti-Bubba182
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To: sarcasm
In a string of towns running south from Minneapolis to the Iowa border, some of the country's largest meat-packing operations are kept going principally by employing Mexicans, sometimes in appalling conditions. In October, the remains of 11 undocumented Mexicans were found inside a locked box-car near Des Moines, Iowa.

There's the answer to the question in the headline.

4 posted on 01/11/2003 7:58:28 AM PST by Keith in Iowa
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To: sarcasm
No suprise here.
Living a bit north of Cincinnati, we have had an excellent Mexican restaurant open very close to us.
Run by a Mexican family(ies), much better than the chain restaurants. That and my sisters tend to enjoy ogling the "cute waiters"
5 posted on 01/11/2003 7:59:40 AM PST by Saturnalia
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To: Keith in Iowa
"...the answer to the question in the headline"

The answer is simple: Mexico is a collapsing, corrupt narco-republic. The mexicans fled this society (which is of their own making) and came to the SW to find jobs and opportunity. Now that the SW has degenerated into third world status, they are moving to the mid-west.

At this rate, in 20 years, there will be american suburbs on the north pole, with mexican migrants moving into the Yukon.

After that, who knows where things will go?

6 posted on 01/11/2003 8:06:14 AM PST by quebecois
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To: Saturnalia
I live in Columbus and we are overrun with those people and their uninsured cars and ill manners. Would giving up your haute cuisine and "eye candy" be too much to ask for taking back our country?
7 posted on 01/11/2003 8:34:52 AM PST by buccaneer81 (Let's call a spade a spade.)
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To: buccaneer81
I was giving an example to show that not all Mexicans (though I am guessing these guys are legal)
work in a meat processing plant, pee on your dog and live in a van down by the river.
8 posted on 01/11/2003 8:44:29 AM PST by Saturnalia
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To: sarcasm
In a string of towns running south from Minneapolis to the Iowa border, some of the country's largest meat-packing operations are kept going principally by employing Mexicans, sometimes in appalling conditions.

My hometown has two poultry processing plants : A Honeysuckle White and a Tyson's. In HS, the student body was divided between kids who were going to go to college, and kids who planned to start there immediately upon graduation. These last considered themselves clever, because they believed they'd make more money and have better benefits than we college kids would ever get from our MBAs. In the 1980s, that was a logical conclusion.

In the early 1990s, Tyson's especially began hiring illegals. But it wasn't until the mid 1990s that it became obvious that the plant management was systematically replacing local workers (white, black, and 'other') with mainly illegal Hispanics. They did so by a variety of means, starting with draconian enforcement of minor rules with termination for any infractions, and ending with what appears to be management complicity with acts of violence against local workers on the part of the imported workers, especially against white female workers and clerical staff.

Today, Tyson's is nearly all Hispanic. The sheriff gave a front page interview to the local paper in 1998, and he described how the crime rate had jumped almost 40% over a 12 month period, most of it attributable to crimes commited by illegal immigrants. (Most of it being minor crimes, like clothesline theft and bar scuffles.) TB and other once eradicated diseases are making a comeback, housing costs are skyrocketing, and employment is much higher than the national average, this in an area where the minimum wage is the average wage. And the INS raids at the plants every few months...the rumors that plant management is sending busses to the border to pick up prospective workers...and the EPA infractions, like 6 FEET of fat floating on a manmade pond and contaminating the groundwater....and the way none of the INS or EPA charges ever seem to make it to court...and the way we have to boil our water now because the plants have strained the water tables to the breaking points....and so on, and so on...

There is a certain type of poster to FR (I won't call them freepers) who come to these threads to boast of their cleverness in firing American workers and hiring illegals at much lower rates. Well, here's the strange part-the new workers are not being paid any less than the local workers were! I cannot give a lot of details due to privacy concerns, but my husband through his job (not at one of these plants....) is in a position to know what local and "imported" workers (at least the legal ones) are being paid there. The plant does NOT save money by firing American workers and hiring recent immigrants. Nor can one claim that the American workers were to lazy or to proud to do the work they were doing right before they were fired and replaced; they were proud and happy to be working at a job where they could make a decent living without a college degree. And there was no union or talk of union, so far as I'm aware. So why fire Americans? The only (nontinfoil* conclusion I can reach (and this is pure speculation) is that American workers felt they were entitled to be considered for management jobs, based on seniority and performance, which the plant management wished to reserve for college degreed family members. The immigrants just want jobs.

By the late 1990s, people who once supported families on one decent job at the poultry plants were working 2-3 minimum wage service jobs doing fast food or retail sales. Some of these people tried to improve their lot by *somehow* attending classes at the local community college, mainly for computer skills, while working horrendous hours AND trying to raise a family. Can you guess what those associates degrees that the people who stuck with the programs are now worth? Hint : People with good degrees in Computech from 4 year universities , with years of experience, are in unemployment lines or watching the work they once did being 'outsourced' overseas.

The fired poultry plant workers tried to play by what they thought were the rules : They got decent, honest jobs and worked steadily and faithfully at them till the management threw them aside. When that happened, they acted on the words of about a milion freepers :"They should go back to school and learn a trade...Everyone can take classes at a local college and make themselves more attractive to prospective employers, while working 60-80 hours, right?" And now their computer degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on, and some have student loans to repay on top of their other problems.

This is the reality behind the "They just work at jobs Americans are too proud and lazy to do", mantra , which some delight in parroting. And I understand that liberal democrats love describing hardworking Americans with blue collar jobs and diplomas or less as "redneck trailer trash",but it's disconcerting to me how often that attitude shows up at conservative sites, too.

*My 'tinfoil' conclusion? Slo-mo genocide. The PTB want rural southerners and midwesterners to crawl off and die because we are the people most apt to try to stand up for the US constitution and US national sovereignty against the Global Elite's preference for no borders, no national sovereignty, government by NGOs and appointed bureaucrats rather than elected officials obeying nationallaw.... A global government combining the worst features of the EU and the UN, with the ICC as the ultimate law and a huge global army in blue helmets to see that the serfs stay in line. Crazy beyond tinfoil? Maybe...but again, the plant management is not paying the imported workers less than the locals were getting. I thought it was a cost saving measure at first, but it's not. So what is the reason????

9 posted on 01/11/2003 8:47:44 AM PST by kaylar
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To: Keith in Iowa
And in Michigan, it's the farming industry that keeps them working.
10 posted on 01/11/2003 8:47:51 AM PST by rintense
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To: Saturnalia
Some are good and hard-working people. Of course the solution to Mexico's problems isn't really to have every last one of it's citizens move to the US, that just leads to worsening conditions in Mexico in the long-run.

Also not all are hard-working family types ---you also might want to hold off on ogling those waiters because you can bet they've got wives and kids back in Mexico (most are married by 17-18 years of age)---enough of those marriages are falling apart.

Here's an example of the less than great kind of immigrants you'll also see because there is no regulation on immigration right now:

5 charged after teens, family threaten grandmother, steal $7,000

http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20030111-63562.shtml
11 posted on 01/11/2003 9:02:35 AM PST by FITZ
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To: Saturnalia
My only concern is that they are here legally, obey our laws, and assimilate. BTW, one of the local talk jocks here proposed that Mexican restaurants post copies of their employees' green cards for patrons to see.
12 posted on 01/11/2003 9:07:42 AM PST by buccaneer81 (Let's call a spade a spade.)
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To: kaylar
So why fire Americans? The only (nontinfoil* conclusion I can reach (and this is pure speculation) is that American workers felt they were entitled to be considered for management jobs, based on seniority and performance, which the plant management wished to reserve for college degreed family members. The immigrants just want jobs. By the late 1990s, people who once supported families on one decent job at the poultry plants were working 2-3 minimum wage service jobs doing fast food or retail sales.

If you are right it would signify the desire on the management/owners side to further the stratification of society into two classes - the Latin American style division into upper oligarchical class and into docile peons.

Those who like to protest the "class warfare rhetoric" might be conveniently forgetting about the real conflicts of interest and about the reverse class warfare which is as ancient as post-tribal societies when the greed takes the priority before the common good.

13 posted on 01/11/2003 9:10:47 AM PST by A. Pole
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To: A. Pole
A recent editorial was posted here re:'wide-open" borders after 9/11. Specifically, letting in folks from the ME and NE, areas so filled with antiwest/antiUS sentiment. The author pointed out that whatever the drawbacks of such people as 'new citizens', at least they are "well broken to the lash" and less apt to demand their rights be respected. After all, much of the NE and ME is ruled by totalitarian governments. This was only 1 1/2-3 weeks ago, I wish I'd bookmarked that article.
14 posted on 01/11/2003 9:16:05 AM PST by kaylar
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To: A. Pole
Middle classes annoy oligarchs to no end. When elites talk of class war, they conveniently forget their own long-standing despise for the middle class. They've always had terms like "fly-over" country to describe the regions of this country that are the most middle class.
15 posted on 01/11/2003 9:17:44 AM PST by FITZ
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To: buccaneer81
Obviously the Border Patrol is simply overloaded.
At the very least, we should be giving all immigrants a simple health check, not as a humanitarian concern, but to make sure no one brings a previously eliminated disease into this country.
I'm not in particular favor of citizen border patrols, but it sure as hell shows that some people are not feeling safe down there. With the smugglers and whatnot patroling down there, law enforcement needs one hell of a boost to keep up with all that.
Not to mention those people taking pot shots at Border Patrol personnel. If it is getting that rough down there, we just shift towards maintaining peace through superior and overwhelming firepower.
How we do this, I leave to the (ex-)military types out there, as I'm not up on small unit tactics. At the least, issue AR-15s or M-4s to patrol units, no sense relying on hand guns.
16 posted on 01/11/2003 9:23:26 AM PST by Saturnalia
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To: sarcasm
Here in Chicago,it seems like you get a hell of a lot more attitude from immigrants now than just 10 years ago. Where I work now, we have a lot of people from Mexico and Poland and some of their theories about work are pretty strange. When one of the foremen explained to his employees that they had to punch in on time, wear their safety glasses, and not come to work drunk, one of the Polish guys said to him: "This is just like a concentration camp" and one of the Mexicans chimed in: "Yeah. They treat us like dogs." And these guys were absolutely serious.

It seems that ten years ago, the immigrants were outperforming American-born workers in a lot worse working conditions but the opposite is true today.

Another odd thing is that we have a lady from Puerto Rico and one time she was complaining about Jennifer Lopez saying that she was "acting like she's white."
I said, "Well, she is white."
She replied, "No, she's Puerto Rican."
And I said, "I thought that most Puerto Ricans were white. It would be like me identifying my race as an Ohioan (where I'm originally from.)"
She said that she would have to think about that.

We live in strange times.
17 posted on 01/11/2003 9:34:23 AM PST by Chi-townChief
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To: Chi-townChief
Where I work now, we have a lot of people from Mexico and Poland and some of their theories about work are pretty strange. When one of the foremen explained to his employees that they had to punch in on time, wear their safety glasses, and not come to work drunk, one of the Polish guys said to him: "This is just like a concentration camp" and one of the Mexicans chimed in: "Yeah. They treat us like dogs." And these guys were absolutely serious.

I don't know about Mexico, but Poles tend to be proud and resent to be treated as inferiors. Imagine how the American white collar or upper class men would react if they were required to "punch in" or pee at random when ordered to test for drugs. It looks that those newcomers are not eager to take their "proper" place as lower class peons.

18 posted on 01/11/2003 9:43:00 AM PST by A. Pole
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To: sarcasm
LOL! I remember when Southern California and Arizona and Texas and Florida were the main destination for illegal aliens.

There are no more labor jobs, or very few left here, and Southern California is pretty expensive for low income types.

The rest of the country was warned that the invasion was coming their way years ago.

Places like Utah, Illinois (with their new Mexican Consulate), Georgia, Ohio, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Michigan, etc etc etc. Remember this?

March 21, 2002

LOS ANGELESLAX Sweep Nets Illegal Immigrants

More than 140 illegal immigrants have been arrested at LAX this week as part of a federal crackdown on smugglers using the airport as a transshipment point for illegal immigrants being funneled to destinations throughout the U.S., officials said Wednesday.

The operation will continue for several days and could result in a permanent presence of agents targeting outbound domestic passengers, said Thomas J. Schiltgen, district director in Los Angeles for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.The sweep is aimed at curbing an increase in smugglers' use of LAX, officials say. The airport has long been known as a conduit for illegal immigrants smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border and heading to jobs and family members across the country.

The operation, which began Monday in Terminal 1, netted 147 illegal immigrants in its first two days, officials said. All but two were from Mexico. Most were headed to the East Coast.

This was just one day, at one terminal, at one airport! LOL

You folks in the Midwest, East coast, and northwest better like illegal aliens Because this government sponsored immigration invasion is coming to your town at 400 mils per hour!!!

19 posted on 01/11/2003 9:47:52 AM PST by Joe Hadenuf
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To: A. Pole
"I don't know about Mexico, but Poles tend to be proud and resent to be treated as inferiors. Imagine how the American white collar or upper class men would react if they were required to "punch in" or pee at random when ordered to test for drugs. It looks that those newcomers are not eager to take their "proper" place as lower class peons."

Actually, the problem with the new Polish immigrants is their tendency to treat all others as inferiors. Most of us in manufacturing have punched the time clock and been subject to drug testing and , as Americans, we know that it goes with the territory. These guys come here and can't believe that their expected to work to get paid. Too much socialism, I guess.
20 posted on 01/11/2003 9:48:25 AM PST by Chi-townChief
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