The short and stocky Salvadoran woman was very talkative in
her unschooled English. She’s been in this country for twenty years. She had fled
her native country for economic reasons; she paid a coyote $1,000 to bring her
across the southern border with Mexico, her family’s savings. She had promised to send money back every
month and, once able to marry and have babies, she would wait patiently until
she could claim legal residence and bring her extended family to the United
States via chain migration.
She and Juan had four children and now, at the age of 40,
her 18 year old daughter has given birth to an out of wedlock child who became
an automatic U.S. citizen the moment he took his first breath, thanks to the
anchor baby ruling twisted by liberal courts into a birthright citizenship under
the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
She has kept her promise and some. She has brought to the
United States her mom, dad, sisters, brothers, and cousins from her large
extended family. She has recently taken
in a stranger, an eight-year little girl, who had been sent to the United
States unaccompanied by her parents on the government’s promise that she would
be allowed into the U.S., no questions asked.
Many such children were brought in the middle of the night and
dispersed to centers around the country in communities willing to take them in
and shelter them with our government’s money. Maria was grateful to Obama for bringing in
small and unaccompanied minors even though most were male, way past the age of
adulthood, and sporting gang tattoos.
El Salvador, with approximately 6.34
million people, is the smallest and most densely populated nation in Central
America. The Salvadoran economy produces about $4,000 worth of goods and
services per capita. The official currency is the U.S. dollar which makes it
quite convenient when the illegal Salvadorans in this country send home
tax-free money to their relatives. It is a social security net that their
government cannot possibly replace.
They had a home in El Salvador with glassless windows to
allow some air circulation from the humid and overpowering heat. Tropical
critters, including snakes, plagued them often. Depression and a sense of
hopelessness surrounded her and suffocated any desire to try and make things
better. Her mom had told her that she would do fine so long as she did not irritate
the police and the gangs that roved in all neighborhoods asking for and seizing
food, clothing, and whatever valuables a family may have had. Nobody dared to infuriate
them or else they would wind up dead. It
never crossed mothers’ minds that it was up to them to change the culture of
crime and fear by raising good sons who could oppose the criminal life that
ruled them daily.
Having no education beyond eighth grade, Maria works hard for
$18 an hour, cleaning a few homes of the wealthy, earning an untaxed living
while her extended family takes advantage of the U.S. taxpayers’ generosity who
provide them with welfare and Medicaid insurance. She is not the best cleaner,
she added, but she tries, never admitting when she brakes things in some of the
homes that hires her.
The work ethic in her country is vastly different than here
and she does not understand the American obsession with work and the lack of
the three-hour siesta. Perhaps that is what makes Spain the happiest country to
live in, their extended siesta. Family and their needs are most important to
her, not the needs of an employer who hired her.
She changed employers often – breaking their stuff while
cleaning and using cleaning methods that were not up to par with our western
standards. She did not quite understand the issue of germs and
cross-contamination. She thought Americans to be obsessed with cleanliness and
disinfectants. What could possibly be wrong using rags to clean commodes by
hand and then use the same rags to clean countertops?
She explained that her countrymen are not so generous as the
Americans are – they only give up their possessions and hard-earned money if
MS-13 gangs and police come around demanding to be paid, confiscating their
valuables. Whoever dares to say no, winds up dead.
The small country struggles with excessive poverty,
inequality, and crime. Mostly agricultural, depending heavily on coffee
production at one point (as much as 90%) and the indigo plant during the
colonial period, El Salvador is now turning to other sectors (finance,
industry) to improve its GDP.
The fact that Maria knows nothing about civics and
government in our country, does not stop her from voting for the party that has
given many immigrants like her welfare – the Democrat Party. There is an occasional
Democrat Party drive in her Hispanic community to rally the vote and those who
do not have transportation are offered rides. They are always coached how to
vote and for which candidate, always Democrat.
She is just smart enough to know how to manage her family’s
budget but not knowledgeable how the free market economy works in our country.
Like all third world citizens who come to this country illegally with stars in
their eyes, she thinks money grow on trees in the United States and there is an
endless supply of it because it comes from the generous government. She does
not see any connection between the funding source of government and the “rich”
American taxpayers who fund it. By the rest of the world’s standards, any
American with a job is filthy rich and should share their wealth with the world.
I asked her if it bothered her that she is voting for the
Democrat politicians who want open borders and are bringing in the MS-13 gangs
she escaped from El Salvador, turning this country into the unsafe country she
left behind for the wellbeing and economic prosperity here. She raised her
shoulders with a deer in the headlights look on her face and said nothing.
It would only take ten percent of the millions of the
flotsam and jetsam of the world currently residing illegally in the U.S. to
vote Socialist Democrat, fundamentally transforming this country into a ruling
regime diametrically opposed to our U.S.
Constitution and Christian roots.
When I compare Maria's story with mine, I want to cry. It took me several years of test writing, forms completing, English language examination, blood tests for venereal diseases, Chest X-ray for tuberculosis and a signed declaration that I will not apply for any social service, while a permanent residence in the USA. Ugh, I have forgotten! I had to produce evidence of a job waiting for me and a bank account showing that I had enough money to self-sustain my family for three years. Was it fair Maria? You're a blood-sucking parasite crawling out of a shit-hole! Then, when I have reunited a few more members of the family in the Land of the Free, I had to guarantee them, food, residence and healthcare for 3 years as well! Was it fair Maria? Your relatives also are a bunch of blood-sucking leeches spending my tax money....
ReplyDeleteDoc,
DeleteI had to go through the exact same thing as you in order to come to the U.S. legally. It took four years of paperwork to get a passport and a visa and then another four years to become a naturalized American citizen. And it was a quite expensive and exhausting ordeal.
Ileana, you've clearly illustrated a major component of our illegal immigration problem: too many sympathetic citizens are attributing American ideals to immigrants who do not share them. My own example is Rosa, a 30-something Guatemalan women, with whom I worked about 20 years ago. She held a responsible job handling the bookkeeping of a small Alexandria corporation. I don't know that she was an illegal immigrant but suspect so because the Hispanic women working under her always seemed afraid, guarded. Rosa proudly told me of her growing equity in her condo that she counted on for her future retirement. She planned to use the condo's sale proceeds one day in her return to Guatemala where she gleefully foretold a life living "like a queen." One has to doubt that Rosa loved America or its ideals. Just its money.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience with an ungrateful La Rasa member who told everyone that they must learn Spanish because the invaders from the Hispanic world were too dumb to learn English and illiterate in their own dialects.
Delete