The first thing I learned when I moved down to Los Angeles in 1996 was that Los Angeles counts and the rest of the state does not. (There are tiers of not counting, of course: the Bay Area is often referred to as “Northern California,” despite the fact that there’s a whole bunch of California north of it—but that Northern California, filled as it is with rural, blue-collar towns really doesn’t count.) I remember complaining to my friends back in Cupertino about the ubiquitousness of political ads on TV during the fall campaign season, and they hadn’t seen one.
The second thing I learned when I moved down there is that Los Angeles runs on illegal immigrants. Hispanic gardeners drive beaten-up jalopies with the wooden sides covered with gardening tools. Hispanic nannies have walking clubs, pushing babies in strollers. When you order an appliance it arrives from the store being carried by four or six burly guys who speak only Spanish. You hire a cleaning lady from a firm, and she has dark skin and a Biblia she reads on the bus going home. The staff in kitchens of restaurants? Janitors?
The funniest story I heard was a guy who told me about hiring a firm to redo the floors in his house. The work crew showed up the first day and sanded the floors, which, if you’ve ever had your floors sanded you know leaves a big mess. The crew didn’t come back the next day. Or the day after. So the guy calls the floor company and says, “What’s the deal?” The manager says, “Oh, after they finished your place, they went out for a beer and got picked up by Immigration and deported. They’ll be back later this week.”
And they were.
Central California—the agricultural part of California that, you know, feeds the nation—runs on illegal immigrants too. You see them as you speed by on Highway 5 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. They’re bent over the rows of lettuce or strawberries or whatever the hell else is growing out there.
Maybe I’m not supposed to talk about this out loud but it’s the truth. California runs on Hispanic labor, and quite a bit of it is illegal. Nobody asks questions and a lot of work is paid for in cash. Maybe they’re taking jobs away from Americans who desperately want them. I doubt it. The pay is lousy and the benefits are almost non-existent.
Prop. 187 is often described as the initiative to deny social services to illegal aliens. It was more than that.
“Proposition 187’s provisions require California law enforcement, social services, health care and public personnel to:
- Verify the immigration status of persons with whom they come in contact;
- Notify certain defined persons of their immigration status;
- Report those persons to state and federal officials; and
- Deny those persons social services, health care, and education. ”
Okay? It’s not just denial of services—services paid for through taxes that everybody, including the illegal aliens, pays. It’s an unfunded mandate to turn the entire public sector into an arm of the immigration service. It’s about turning an already difficult situation into hell. I mean, does anyone think that using public medical services is an optimal choice?
California voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 187, especially in Los Angeles. This, to me, is proof that most of the people in Los Angeles are, in fact, stupid. Or maybe just incredibly, willfully blind. 187 is the “Muahahaha” Initiative: We know you’re going to keep coming here to take our shit jobs…and we’re going to make your life even more severely hellish while you’re here!
Anyone want to guess what would happen to food prices if all those farmers had to pay for medical insurance for the farm workers? Or what would happen if all the businesses had to pay employment taxes on the people lifting those bales and toting those barges? If, you know, employers had to put up with all those annoying costs instead of just getting away with it because all of those workers are off the books?
I happen to have been against 187 for purely pragmatic reasons (I think)—I’d much rather people go to see a doctor when they’re sick and, you know, avoid passing the illness on to me.
That Arnold Schwarzenegger was for 187 tells me everything I need to know about him (like I didn’t know enough already).
silly silly
food prices won’t go up, we’ll just buy the stuff imported from mexico and chile and pay the same people the subsubsistence wages they came here trying to avoid. then we’ll subdivide the central valley and let white folks in SUV’s clamor for more freeway construction (at subsubsistence wages)as they drive – one per vehicle – for hours to get to work. at subsistence wages. i really believe a good part of the anti-immigration crap raining down on the whole west coast comes from people who just prefer seeing white people do the shitwork rather than anyone of color.
Merz, they smoking something new out on the West Coast?
NKA, it’s not just Los Angeles. You can stand at the kitchen door of just about any restaurant in the Phoenix area and shout “La Migra!” and watch ’em scramble.
Ideas like Prop. 187 are for people whose brains are so poisoned by indignation over the idea that some fraction of their almighty tax dollars might get spent on an illegal immigrant (who, by the way, almost certainly pays taxes too) that they aren’t capable of thinking through the consequences.
The immigrants will still come over the border, and people will still hire them. That’s easy. Whatever we may say about public policy, as individuals we want to have the benefit of cheap labor. The Mexicans want to have the benefit of not living on the scraping edge of mortal poverty.
But if Prop. 187 goes through, they’ll live in worse circumstances than they do now. They’ll be even more vulnerable to exploitation. Their untreated illnesses will be public health hazards. Their uneducated children will grow up to be even bigger hazards. And if you want to encourage the growth of ethnic organized crime, create a population that regards every public employee as a potential enemy who could wreck their lives.
Stupid, stupid. Even people who care about nothing but money should be able to see that it’s much cheaper to let illegal immigrants have access to the basic mechanisms of civil society.
Thanks for posting this, Diane! And thank you too, Teresa! These are excellent point which must be made clear. The same Pete Wilson who stumped for Prop 187 and 209 also voted for measures to facilitate the importation of indentured servants to his friends’ plantations.
Wilson knew it was efficient to blame California’s recession on immigrants (and other politically voiceless groups), and enshrining that hate speech in the California Constitution is a lingering disgrace. But he also knew that he had achieved what amounted to a fugitive slave act for his cronies in the massively-subsidized agribusiness. As a student of tax policy, I can also tell you Wilson played a giant role in the corporate tax cuts which bankrupted the state.
Hello i’m Holly molly and im from canada, also north of california
quote: services paid for through taxes that everybody, including the illegal aliens, pays.
They don’t pay income tax, silly bear.
They don’t pay income tax, silly bear.
You are, in fact, wrong about that.
And, if you think income taxes are the only taxes you pay, you are ignorant of the tax structure in this country and should work hard on informing yourself about it.