In November, millions of rural voters will mark their ballot for a man who has pledged to “close the borders”. In interviews and in rallies, this group of white voters will pretend that they don’t need immigration, yet the evidence of their deep need of immigrants to work on rural farms is all over the heartland. This picture was taken in a bathroom stall at a Love’s truck stop in Boise City, Oklahoma, a panhandle town on US Highway 287. Anyone who’s visited non-resort areas of Mexico knows exactly why it’s there — the plumbing can’t handle toilet paper so every toilet has a garbage can next to it for used TP. Well, that’s not the way we do here in God’s Country, where we flush our TP the way Baby Jesus told us in the Bible. So the Mexican, Central and South American truck drivers and workers need to be reminded of that fact.
Walk into any small-town Wal-Mart in this area after suppertime and you’ll see at least a few Latino workers in the aisles. If you look on Google Maps, in some of these towns the highest-rated restaurants serve Mexican food, and they open around 5 AM and close just after noon. Who, I wonder, needs to pick up food at that hour other than workers who are picking up lunch or having an early breakfast?
These workers, who are treated as the lowest form of human life by the Republican Party, are absolutely essential to the rural economy. And they work hard. But, because we’re supposed to venerate the “heartland values” of white rural voters as somehow being better than the rest of us, we tiptoe around the fact that they’ve been fed a fantasy that white kids will somehow come back from the city to do the hard work that documented and undocumented immigrants do every single day. Well, the simple fact is that those kids aren’t coming back, and everyone needs to accept that fact and start building a path to citizenship for those workers who want to stay in the country.
Every Cletus Safari that I’ve seen goes to the diners where a bunch of old white guys are drinking coffee at 10 in the morning. Maybe those reporters ought to get up before the sun and head over to La Unica Taqueria, just off Highway 287 in Childress, Texas, to interview people who work for a living instead.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Rural American also gets a lot of its health care from immigrants. I realize the “close the border” people don’t mean to keep those professionals out, but unintended consequences can happen.
RepubAnon
I expect those farmers feel that Trump’s hate-filled screeds help keep their migrant workers subservient.
The most effective way to discourage hiring undocumented workers would be to arrest and imprison those who hire them. As these folks trend Republican, that’s not something Trump would propose.
On a side note, how about putting photos on Social Security cards? It’d be a good (free) way to get photo IDs issued to folks who need them
West of the Rockies
Ditch the Cletus safaris? Will no one think of angry, misinformed, aging white guys? How will we hear the pained voice of toxic masculinity?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Walk into any small-town Walmart in red, rurl CO, NM, TX and KS and you’ll see a lot of Latino *shoppers*.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@RepubAnon: That’s sensible, and diametrically opposite the intent of the people pushing the Voter ID laws: make it as difficult as possible for undesirable citizens to vote.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: This is America. We don’t do sensible.
WaterGirl
Righteous rant:
Kay
I’m glad you’re writing here again, mm. Thank you.
smith
@WaterGirl: Amen. This is another issue on which Democrats need to stop debating from a defensive crouch.
bbleh
Maybe those reporters ought to get up before the sun and head over to La Unica Taqueria, just off Highway 287 in Childress, Texas, to interview people who work for a living instead.
Ewwww, noo! Cooties! And besides, brown people don’t vote (or at least, they probably shouldn’t be allowed to). And really, who gets up at that time of day? Isn’t everyone still sleeping off Cocktail Hour?
Frankensteinbeck
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
A lot of them do. Come on, you’ve watched even leading, elected, establishment Republicans talk about their policies. They’re not aware of the consequences. They do not think through the consequences. They don’t care about the consequences, or about nuances. This is all gut “I hate brown people, keep them out,” and they are surprised every single time their hateful ideology slams them face-first into the brick wall of reality.
Citizen Alan
@RepubAnon: That would require renewal of social security cards on a regular basis. I still have the original social security card issued in my name when I was born locked away in a safety deposit box.
bbleh
@Frankensteinbeck: … which they then blame on Democrats.
Best example I saw was several years ago when GA, WA, and one other, mighta been MS, passed laws that went after growers for hiring undocumented agricultural labor. This actually had an effect — there aren’t that many growers, and they have records and stuff — and hiring of undocumented workers plummeted. And for some strange reason, no True Americans showed up to do the low-paid back-breaking work, and … the crops rotted. And then — to absolutely nobody’s surprise — the laws were quickly and quietly shelved. Can’t be hurting profits now …
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: @Frankensteinbeck: If it wasn’t for immigrants, my small rural hospital would have 2 doctors on staff and only 3 or 4 traveling Docs for the specialty clinics.
Matt McIrvin
The mass-deportation sweeps never go after the people who employ these immigrants. Because they dare not really deport them all–one of the purposes of them is to keep the remaining workers scared and cheap. And whenever the true-believing ethnic cleansers get a little too zealous, it hurts Republican farmers and they have to dial it back.
JMG
One thing I have noted here in suburban Massachusetts. For decades, landscaping companies have employed Latin workers, but the names of the companies on the sides of the trucks were Irish or Italian. This spring, I have noticed trucks with names like Ramirez and Fernandez Landscaping on the trucks.
lowtechcyclist
@RepubAnon:
Makes sense to me – if they want to imprison doctors who perform abortions, they also should imprison people who hire undocumented workers.
Dems ought to put a bill on the floor that would require all employers in the U.S. to maintain records of proof of citizenship or green card for every worker they employ, and must name a specific person in management to be personally responsible. Failure to comply? Six months for first offense, five years for second and subsequent offenses.
Then they can ask their GOP counterparts what the deal is with their lack of enthusiasm for this legislation.
Another Scott
Great piece, MM.
Made me look.
It looks like there aren’t any non-stops from LGA to CRW. Leaving NYC at 6 AM means getting there at about 1040 AM, so our intrepid reporter makes it to Biscuitville or WaffleHouse around the time for a late breakfast/early lunch. Who’s there except the retired regulars?? They spend 30 minutes chatting and head back to the airport, maybe in time to get home for dinner. They’re not going to go to, say, Los Agaves and talk to the customers and staff there.
To ask the question is to answer it.
[ sigh ]
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
AliceBlue
Vidalia onions are a major crop here in Georgia. Sometime back in the ’90s, the big farms were raided by immigration officials and the workers (undocumented of course) were arrested. Our Republican senator at the time, Saxby Chambliss, had an epic meltdown. IIRC, he referred to the immigration officials as “jack-booted thugs” or some such thing.
Chris
As I’ve already said here before:
“Anti-immigration” politics are largely a gigantic con, played by the “anti-immigration” faction on everybody else. These people don’t want to stop immigration. What they want is to stop as many immigrants as possible from ever having any path to citizenship, a regularized status, or anything else that translates to “equality with me under the law.” They want nonwhite immigrants to continue to exist as a poor, easily exploitable workforce under their boot.
And yes, this is true of far too many average joe wingnuts, not just the stereotypical rich people in the smoke-filled rooms of the Chamber of Commerce. There’s a reason why every time someone puts a measure on the ballot to punish employers for using illegal labor, it goes down in flames, despite the biggest gripe against illegal immigrants supposedly being “they’re taking our jobs!” Ordinary wingnuts know goddamn well why there are so many lawnmowers, house cleaners, babysitters, or even just low-level service industry people at their little mom-and-pop business, that are so cheap.
They want their slaves.
Percysowner
Many years ago, I got a job in Southwestern Ohio, very rural, completely Republican. You couldn’t win any office if you had a D by your name. It was also the only place where stores had signage in both Spanish and English. It was obvious that the farms needed and used immigrants, but I’m pretty sure the farmers in the area vote Republican and want to keep those brown folks out. I have come to believe that what they really want, but can’t admit, yet, is that what they want is the black and brown folks to go back to being property that they can use to farm their crops and work their dangerous machinery and only have to give them a roof over their head and food to eat. They want slavery back again, not immigration.
@Chris: Great minds and all that.
Rockstar
Absolutely perfect post, thank you!
Jackie
@RepubAnon: SS cards aren’t supposed to be used for ID.
Frankensteinbeck
@RepubAnon:
That doesn’t scratch the ‘being cruel to brown people’ itch. Conservatives didn’t even care how much immigration was coming through from Mexico during Trump’s administration. They saw him sadistically ripping children away from their parents, and his ICE making Latinos feel unsafe anywhere, and they were happy. That’s a big part of why they remember him as a successful president.
Beyond a hazy ‘If everyone I hate is being hurt then the world will become a better place’ they’re just not concerned with consequences. The cruelty is the point.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well stated. The concept that racism is no longer an issue in this country is bull and shit at the highest order. It may not be nearly as prevalent in your more metropolitan areas than in the simple countryside but it is there.
Shakti
I truly wish I could vote DeSantis out this coming election. As of yesterday, I’m still registered to vote and have a mail ballot.
He wants the cheap labor to die of heat exposure:
From The Tampa Bay Times:
Phylllis
@bbleh: I seem to recall something similar in meat-packing states several years ago. INS raided a couple of plants and rounded up a lot of workers that couldn’t be replaced by the local populace. INS was quietly uninvited from continuing their efforts.
Layer8Problem
@bbleh: I think I recall that state as being Alabama. And a few “Real Americans” showed up to do the work, found out just how hard that work was, and noped right out of there.
Another Scott
@Chris: Similarly with wanting to gut child labor laws and imposing work requirements for any public benefits. They want an army of cheap, cowed, easily controlled labor.
It’s kinda interesting to think about the battle between the MotUs that want an army of cheap labor vs the MotUs that want to replace workers with their robots and LLMs “(AI)”. There’s a bit of a conflict there…
Grr…,
Scott.
Chris
The reality people don’t want to hear is that if liberals ever want to be competitive in the heartland again, they need to start going to bat for illegal immigrants, because they, not old white heartlanders, are the only place they’re ever going to get votes from.
You always hear people wailing “oh God, there used to be so many Democrats in the rural areas, and not just Democrats but liberals, and not just liberals but radicals! Economic radicals! Oh God, what happened? Why don’t they vote for us anymore?”
Well, what happened is that you’re comparing apples and oranges, just because those apples and oranges are both white. (Oh dear, metaphor really isn’t my thing, is it? Nevertheless). The people in farm country who used to find economic radicalism appealing weren’t just farmers, but farm workers, and tenant farmers. People whose relationship with their boss, or with their landlord or banker, wasn’t fundamentally that different from that of dock workers or factory workers in the big city. And a hundred years ago, these people’s opinions mattered, because they were citizens (even if a lot of them were also immigrants, because this was before all the big anti-immigration legislation of the 1920s).
The people giving New York Times interviews in Iowa diners are not these guys. (Though a few of them may be their descendants). They weren’t these guys a hundred years ago, either. The people giving New York Times interviews in Iowa diners are their bosses. That class of people was never economically radical, and in fact, were probably the single biggest reactionaries in the country in the early twentieth century, just like they are today.
The modern version of these guys, the people doing the same jobs that used to belong to all the prairie populist voters, are disproportionately illegal immigrants. The exact people that all these consultants tell us to stop supporting if we ever want to win the heartland back because Boss Hogg gets upset when you ask him to press # 1 for English. You want your prairie populism back? Go out into the avocado fields and learn to speak a lot of Spanish. Then go back to Washington and figure out how you’re going to make these people matter electorally again. You’re not going to bring prairie populism back by talking to the bosses and the landlords. That’s not how the original prairie populism happened, either.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
Those gop counterparts would do as they always do, say one thing and then do exactly what they say no one should be allowed to do.
You do understand that from their point of view, laws are for everyone else. They stand somewhere apart from/above the law, because it is beneath them, you know – for the little people.
cain
Schrodinger’s Cat posted this in the last thread https://twitter.com/EFischberger/status/1778866179769032732?t=uRSe1pSZl_ybTfSdc2I9vg&s=19
This woman has managed to piss off the modi supporters, Hindus in general, the Jews, and likely whatever that liberation front people for exposing them.
That fucker Andy Ngo is on the case. I hope that he runs into the bhakts and the two right wing camps start fighting 🤡
wjca
The lady who has been my primary care doctor (for decades) is also an immigrant. (From the Philippines, IIRC — just from the name, Hispanic of some variety.) Not an uncommon occurrence, anywhere in the country.
gene108
Parts of rural America, especially in the South, have large minority communities
I grew up in NC. There are a lot of rural black folks throughout the Southern U.S. People from Mexico and Central America have rapidly increased in number over the last 30 years. I remember, in the 1990’s, when Raleigh got its first Spanish language station and it was a bit of a shock from what the area was like 10 years earlier.
They don’t usually have the numbers to affect Congressional races, versus rural whites, but they’re there and are as much a part of rural America as anyone else.
Ruckus
@AliceBlue:
As I’m sure you understand their point of view is that the laws are for thee not for me. IOW they are free to do whatever the hell they want, they are the privileged class. It’s them and everyone else is beneath them.
Chris
@RepubAnon:
Oh sure. And the same for all the additional border security and generally turning the border into a free-fire zone, and the general growth of ICE as an out-of-control state-subsidized Ku Klux Klan. Some people will still make it through, and these people will be a traumatized workforce that’s all too aware of just how bad things can get if they put a toe out of line. It’s just good business.
cain
@WaterGirl: also these people eventually buy homes and become a permanent part of the community.
Ruckus
@Chris:
They want their slaves.
Four little words that say it all.
They are above everyone else.
Five little words which they worship.
wjca
Definitely vast opportunities for amusement there. While the Republican members have gotten adept at ignoring questions from reporters, the campaign ads write themselves.
cain
@Percysowner:
What they should be worried about is farms being swallowed by bigger farms using automation and not workers. One thing you can absolutely count on with AI is smarter more precise equipment.
Wait till the hedge funds get into it.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Beyond a hazy ‘If everyone I hate is being hurt then the world will become a better place’ they’re just not concerned with consequences.
The cruelty is the point.
I set the last line apart, because you are correct and it is important to show why.
The Cat's Chair
A woman who brags about her farm-family bone fides got into office as a county commissioner here in 2020 (rural west-coast county that leans Dem) by capitalizing on her involvement in Timber Unity (a mill-owner funded, pro-logging, anti-climate-change-action, anti-tax ‘grassroots’ group). At least in 2020, the right voted in the May election while the moderates who elected her predecessor didn’t (mail-in elections here).
She’s savvy and intelligent (has a masters in Ag Education) and knows how to read a room. Anti-immigration is non-negotiable with her. I don’t know if she’s really a bigot or just caters to her anti-brown-people voters. Prior to her initial run for office, she participated in a lot of online discussion groups. When I pointed out multiple sources showing high numbers of undocumented immigrants working in Oregon agriculture sectors she made sympathetic noises about undocumented immigrants being necessary to the ag sector but pivoted away to claiming that in her own experience there weren’t many immigrants working in ag in Oregon.
It frustrates me that her knows-how-to-read-a-room savvy would get her in trouble with her bigot base — and I used to have the receipts. She made some ‘I’m not hard right, I’m a mushy moderate’ online comments to try and persuade non-MAGA conservatives in her initial run… but I spilled water on the laptop I had them bookmarked on. Is there any way to search for all comments by a specific person during a specific time period in a particular Facebook group?
Xavier
Interesting factoid in yesterday’s paper, New Mexico is the only state where the foreign born fraction of the population is declining.
WaterGirl
@wjca: Are you familiar with the I-9 form?
Ksmiami
@bbleh: having driven that route countless times, I can verify
TBone
According to Project 2025, they’re still planning to invade Mexico.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/yes-donald-trump-still-wants-to-invade
Gvg
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
One thing nobody seems to point out is most Central American immigrants are brown because why? The Spanish aren’t brown. Look at Penelope Cruz. It’s because they have a non trivial portion of Meso American heritage. So they’re more American than the people trying to keep them out.
WaterGirl
@The Cat’s Chair: Welcome!
Melancholy Jaques
I doubt that the “build a wall” anti-immigrant voters can be persuaded by facts or reason. But I am told by many political experts that it is a key to the 2024 election. Why? I guess because FOX keeps running invasion stories and the rest of the political media always call it a crisis. I am not sure what, if anything, Biden/Harris can do about the widespread belief that they opened the border with Mexico and that millions of criminals have entered the country.
Gvg
Many hispanic people have been citizens since birth or even generations, especially in texas. The brown haters don’t care.
Ss cards are illegal to use as id. It became very common by default and the government had to push back because it mase id theft too easy.
Illegal immigrants are essentially forced into being like scabs. Their existence keeps legal workers who want to do the same jobs wages lower. That can cause resentment too, but the ire should go higher. Frankly we don’t have enough legal immigration allowed. Rather like prohibition it causes more illegal immigration.
Geminid
@cain: There is a whole genre now of what I call “protest porn,” where the most obnoxious and unsympathetic “pro-Palestinian” protesters that posters can find are shown, ridiculed and excoriated. Among other sites, Visegrad24 does this a lot.
So this Bakersfield woman is all over the Internet now. I can’t be too sympathetic, because she made choices and they were bad ones, but she strikes me as a mentally disorganized person. I guess people will be able to find reporting on her situation before her arrest and her attorney might have something to say, once she gets one.
wjca
Only to the extent that such “legal workers” even exist. Which, as various people have noted above, they mostly don’t.
Baud
@Geminid:
In fairness, when right wingers act the fool, the liberal Internet would mock them too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gvg:
To conform with many state laws.
pat
@Shakti:
I can simply not imagine what a cruel person could say, hey it’s hot and you might die, too bad….
There is a word for it that escapes me…
Also, is it possible for a farm worker to get a work permit? How does that work?
Another Scott
@The Cat’s Chair: I’m not on FB so I cannot answer how you would do that there. There’s a chance that it’s on the Internet Archive, maybe?
https://archive.org/details/facebook.com
Happy hunting, and welcome.
Cheers,
Scott.
Marcopolo
I just recall after Trump’s crackdown on immigrants began all the stories from small rural towns of that guy named Jesus or Juan or whatever who ran a Mexican restaurant (or some other business) for years and was a good family man and a civic booster (like maybe sponsoring the local little league team) and then he was rounded up because he was undocumented (but his wife & kids were citizens) and deported and there’d be quotes from the townspeople about how shocked they were and what a loss it was and so on and so forth and then they went and voted straight R in the next election. So it goes.
Baud
@pat:
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/agriculture/h2a
Mike in NC
Many years ago I worked on K Street in DC on a project for the INS. It was obvious that thousands of vehicles and tens of thousands of people crossed our borders every day to go to work, go to school, go shopping, or visit friends and relatives. The notion of “closing the border” could only make sense for the brain-dead MAGA crowd who live in fantasyland to begin with.
RevRick
@West of the Rockies: The whole virtuous rural whites goes back to Jeffersonian mythology about yeomen farmers by dint of their independence being superior to the urban laboring class.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m so old that I got my SS number and card when I was a junior in high school and got my first part-time job. They weren’t issued at birth when I was born (1951)!
pat
@Baud:
Thanks. Haven’t had time to read it yet…..
Geo Wilcox
@Chris: What happened in my rural Catholic town was Roe vs. Wade. Instant switch from heavy DEM to heavy GQP in one election. They never went back. It became Trump central here.
Geminid
@Baud: The Visegrad24 site I referred to aggregates a lot of Ukraine war news, which is how I ran into them. They’re based in Poland and are said to have conservative ownership. A lot of news sites (and people!) chose sides early on in this war, and Visegrad24 chose Israel’s so they try to discredit Palestinians by showing their most discreditable allies in action.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
I would also like to mention that I have encountered the put-the-tp-in-the-wastebasket requirement during my travels in both Greece and Costa Rica. On the Greek trip, a lady on the tour who worked in waste management in the U.S. explained that processing tp in the toilet bowl took a lot more water than keeping it separate. So actually separating the tp out is a sensible water saving device. With the global shortage of clean water, this technique may be coming to areas of the U.S. also. Grok on that, Cletus.
sab
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Also rural Israel in the Negev has waste baskets for toilet paper. Flushing tp is a stupid waste of water in desert regions.
Marcopolo
@Gvg: I’ve seen the video of her speaking. She def did what she did which sounded like a threat to me (and she’ll get her day in court) but 1A lawyers may have a more nuanced take. But I’m left with two thoughts:
1) whether her thinking is disorganized or not post-Drumpf the use of threatening & violent speech is through the roof (by a lot of different people) and someone who isn’t too sharp just looking around at what is happening in public discourse today might come away thinking this is just what one does (and I am not saying that makes it acceptable just predictable).
2) Wtf is it with these protesters that they’ll target a local city council for demanding action vis a vis something happening half a world away. From what I’ve read these protesters have been doing this here for months. Isn’t there some local issue (housing, zoning, local energy use, something…) that the council actually has authority over that they can put their energy into?
Obviously I am an old & inured (to a certain extent) about the injustices of the world (especially the ones I have little control over) but hell just ensuring everyone they know their age gets out and votes would be a start. Hell, maybe she should run for a place on the council (though success w/ that would put someone on it who apparently has problems differentiating who has responsibilities for what in the world).
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Yeah. Funny that. Almost looks organised and curated. I wonder who could possibly benefit from trying (though, to be fair, overwhelmingly failing right now, thanks to Israel’s unhinged fuckery) to put a toxic face on a huge and growing movement of people from all walks of life who are simply sick to the back teeth of their countries funding and providing political cover for genocidal military expansionism by a series of increasingly hard-right governments?
Mmmmm. Could be the Welsh. Never trusted them. They spend too much of their time hanging around with underage sheep for my liking.
sab
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Interesting is that Social Security cards are issued regionally, so the numbers, especially the first three, are regional. People move around a lot, but for us olds you can guess where their parents lived when they finally got the kid a card. I was born in NC but got my card in KY. In northern Ohio my SSN is not unusual. When I lived out west it was weird (only to tax accountants who notice such things.)
Recent babies get their cards before their first parents’ tax return, so mostly birth state.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I’ve always suspected their long unpronounceable town names were terrorist codes.
sab
I still think Sirhan Sirhan has a lot to answer for to his people for American attitudes about Palestinians. Not fair to Palestinians but completely fair to him.
Sister Golden Bear
@The Cat’s Chair: You can search a Facebook group for posts by a particular person, and then filter by year.
Baud
@sab:
Looked it up. I didn’t realize he was still alive.
sab
@Baud: Still hoping for parole. Not going to happen.
Back in the day I naively thought the US population was on the fence. Both sides have legitimate issues. Then Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy, and we switched into all Arabs are potential Assassins.
He was a stupid angry drunk young man, but he completely shifted the paradigm, not in his favor.
ETA Some of our more stridently violently posting jackals should listen to Cole and Silverman and just shut the fuck up.
Rusty
@Ruckus: During the pandemic I was very surprised by the people I know that had near meltdowns over not being able to go to restaurants. It wasn’t the food perse, it was about being served. I have always thought there was a bit of this in that need to be served.
Baud
@sab:
Just him? Munich was just a few short years afterwards.
JoyceH
It occurred to me the other day to wonder what happened about that guy who rammed his car into the gate of a GA FBI station – news reported in a few sentences that he was a Q-anon Trumper and then the story died. Is the fact that supporters of one (and ONLY one) presidential candidate routinely commit acts of individual terrorism just a commonplace now? No longer newsworthy?
Tony Jay
@Baud:
You could be onto something there. Llancaseofkalashnikovsgogogoch has always tingled my spider sense for some reason.
FastEdD
Reminds me of the post “The Pride of Man”, also by MM, from 2022. That one really got me thinking. About the song Levelland. About the imagery of a town whose only source of pride was a high school sports team from decades ago, and most of those kids left town as soon as they could. About an old couple watching Fox all day and all night, because there wasn’t much left in town, and not much else to do. Fox is telling them to hate dems and hate the “other people” and all the resentment building up. Man I understand the resentment, but you’re blaming the wrong people.
I’m from SoCal and I have friends from Texas and they kid me about being a Coastal Elite. They are kidding of course, otherwise we wouldn’t be friends, but I am doing a lot better than they are. I don’t have any answers, other than to make sure you’re angry at the people who really are making your life miserable.
sab
@Baud: Yes also. Random assassination doesn’t send the message you want. Kills a few people, but motivates and antagonizes a lot more.
Mostly on the other side.
bbleh
@Melancholy Jaques: it’s a problem in part due to the fact that there ARE a lot more undocumented border crossings now than there were during the TIFG era, mostly because of the booming economy, and a lot of them ARE released because the TIFG people systematically de-staffed and dismantled the organizations for processing undocumented immigrants — notably asylum-seekers, who are NOT REPEAT NOT “illegal” and who comprise something like 1/3 of undocumented crossings. But the part about it being consequences of (1) a Really Good Thing under Biden and (2) Really Bad Things under TIFG just somehow don’t get mentioned, on Fox et al. at all or on most other media most of the time.
sab
My dad is dying in a nursing home, and when I got up too early today to go visit him some fucking cat was offended and pissed on my bed!!!
Cats are small, cute and cheerful, but rarely are our friends.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: I think a lot of European sites are Nativist and anti-immigrant in motivation. Visegrad24 really leans in to reporting on large pro-Palestinian marches in Europe, with particular alarm about the number of immigrants present. According to “RadioGenoa,” you Britons are headed towards Sharia tyranny unless you wake up! and it may be too late already!
There also seems to be a dynamic of negative partisanship. Many of the more organized opponents of Ukraine jumped onto the anti-Israel bandwagon when this war broke out, and I think some pro-Ukraine advocates noticed and decided that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
sab
@Tony Jay: I can often recognize fake Welsh when I see it. Ll then a bunch of random letters, mostly consonants at the last half of the alphabet.
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So many of the nurses in the hospital here are non-native. Lots of them are from the Philippines.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Shoot, you see them here in SWMO. The products in the stores have changed because of it. The people who run them want to make money. Lots more variety in restaurants, too.
karen marie
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): My parents got my sister (1955) and me (1957) our SS numbers some time after I was born. Our numbers were identical but for the last digit.
Wapiti
@pat: There’s an agriculture visa; H-2a. Apparently about 300k were issued last year.
There was some flap raised when it was discovered that Eric Trump was using H-2a’s to hire workers for his vineyard.
Geminid
@sab: That makes me wonder if there are Welsh Scrabble games with extra consonants and “y”s.
WaterGirl
@The Cat’s Chair: I should probably mention that WordPress doesn’t like apostrophes in nyms, so it throws you into manual moderation with each comment.
Here’s a link where we share a workaround – a character that looks like an apostrophe but is just different enough that WordPress doesn’t throw comments into moderation.
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
The curse of ‘an interconnected communication world’ is that it gives really shitty people a clear signal along which to transmit their sub-soul garbage to all and sundry. When you’re selling hate and division it doesn’t matter what it says on the box as long as you’re shifting units of product.
sab
Nursing homes really suck at explaining the shift frrom normal to hospice. And is it justified or is he very very old and you just want to rent out his extremely nice room to a likely longer tenant at higher prices?
Hospice companies hired on also don’t distinguish the difference. It would be helpful for family to get a clear distinction, but God doesn’t care, so mere mortals can’t know. Just deal with it, whatever is coming.
Our hospice people think today, tomorrow, or two weeks. At least finally some honesty. That alone made the nursing home shift worthwhile.
One thing I have learned, when very old demented people get fussy, they are not old toddlers. They are old confused adults actually frightened and/or in pain. Their concerns are real and need to be handled. Dealing with their concerns is more important than pointlessly preserving life. What would you want at your end of life?
Tony Jay
@sab:
As I understand it (so caveat that emptor) Welsh place names are so damned long because, like the Germans, they see no reason to put in any gaps when calling a place ‘Smallfordoaktreestonebridgegravemarker’ or something like that.
Very musical language, though. Which is why Tolkien based Elvish on parts of it.
Geminid
Looks like a workday at the White House. From Laura Rozen:
sab
@Tony Jay: Musical indeed. The run-ons make sense in your context.
$8 blue check mistermix
@FastEdD: Thanks for remembering that post. I think the song pre-dates the heyday of Fox (which I’d say is around 2009-present), but this is about right:
Also, in my post about rural resentment yesterday, I posted a photo of the massive sign in Eads, Colorado celebrating the Eads Eagles, their high school team. Google tells me Kiowa County (Eads) still has a a high school and the total enrollment (PK-12) is 215.
Baud
One for Betty C, via Reddit
Another Scott
@JoyceH:
There’s reporting that he had some sort of mental health crisis. E.g. AJC.com
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
JoyceH
@Another Scott:
All of these lone wolf terrorists have mental health issues. But why is it that only one candidate is such a draw for the crazy people?
Anyway
@lowtechcyclist:
There are many many varieties of work visas that allow non-green card holders to work legally. Large employers ask for proof of legal employment as condition of making the offer. Don’t know the rule for small employers.
Kelly
@sab: We moved Mom to an assisted living studio apartment about 3 weeks ago. She had lived alone for many years. January 2023 she had some health problems which led me to make a daily visit. Pressure ulcers and a TIA (little stroke). She didn’t always need help but often enough. Her health really went to hell September 2023. Cdiff and a small heart attack. It took September and October to control the Cdiff. She went from 120 to 99 pounds. Care went to 24/7, mostly my wife and I. I slept in her room the help her to her bedside commode at night 2 to 8 times a night. A bit of dementia during the day. A lot of dementia at night. She started getting around OK with a walker around Thanksgiving but fell and cracked her humerus Feb 17. Oxycodone handled her pain for a week but her mind didn’t handle it well. We had a helper coming to her home Nov thru Jan but when that fell apart I was to scrambled myself to get it going again.
The staff is 95% Hispanic and Filipino. The seem gentle and kind. The place has a memory care wing. She may end up there next month.
I started her physical therapy visits to her room Thursday. She’d have run the guy off if I wasn’t there. Once we got her moving she was into it. I’ll let physical therapy run it’s course the make a decision on hospice care.
bbleh
@sab: One thing I have learned, when very old demented people get fussy, they are not old toddlers. They are old confused adults actually frightened and/or in pain.
This is very important! They’re SCARED. Most of the time they KNOW they don’t know what’s going on, and that’s scary AF. It’s difficult to keep that in mind when they’re acting out, but it’s important to try.
Citizen Alan
@AliceBlue: Unsurprising. Undocumented workers who live in fear of ICE are basically the closest thing that farmers in the south can get to actual slaves.
VFX Lurker
Kelly
@bbleh: I concur. The last 8 months have been a steep learning curve for me
UncleEbeneezer
It’s amazing that we are at near-historically low levels of unemployment, we’re getting great Jobs Reports every quarter but Republicans are still going back to the scare tactic of telling everyone that Immigrants are coming to steal all our jobs (or refusing to get jobs, despite the contradictory low unemployment stats…somehow both things are happening according to Republicans) and the Media still treats it as a serious claim. I’m not particularly worried about Immigrants (documented or not) stealing all our jobs, but there’s really no reason to fret about it when job-creation numbers and unemployment numbers are also good.
LiminalOwl
So glad to see your byline here again, mistermix, and to read your excellent commentary. (BTW, the same was true of plumbing in Peru, even in the major tourist city of Cusco. Lima may be more modern, but I haven’t visited there.)
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Well, what I figured was the biggest chance seems to be playing out. DeSantis, out of the running for President, is now not just a sadistic asshole, he’s a sadistic asshole who has no reason not to take out his bitterness at losing on the rest of the world. Ugh.
LiminalOwl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’ve encountered many medical professionals from majority-Muslim countries in recent years, and wondered… We hear less about them than about our Latino/a/x neighbors , but what about the “Muslim ban” and the bigotry supporting it?
LiminalOwl
@Chris: Well said.
Kelly
@UncleEbeneezer: I live in very red rural Oregon. I’ve had several conversations that started with someone complaining about how hard it is to hire help. I reply along the lines of “that’s to be expected the economy is great. Lowest unemployment in 50 years. Employer’s need to up pay and benefits to compete.” Responses are unemployment stats are being faked, economic stats are being faked and people ought to be happy to have a job at all.
cain
@Geminid: I find that she has anger management issues..what happened to her is a cautionary tale of what happens when you threaten violence.
It’s just raging. But also she is part of an organization that is radical.
Kent
Large employers now know how to get around these rules by hiring subcontractors. That is how you get things like undocumented children working in meat packing plants. Everyone just shrugs and says “hey, what can you do?”
Geminid
@cain: This incident reminded me of the guy who was arrested last weekend setting a fire to a door outside Sen. Sanders’ Burlington office. It was on a 3rd floor and people were working inside so he could face some very heavy charges. Right now he’s being held on a federal charge with a potential 20 year sentence.
Not much more has come out about Shant Sogohomian except that court records showed he had been living in nearby motels for over a month and police arrested him at one. When he was arrested law enforcement said he used to live in Northridge, California. His age was given; it was arpund 40.
Other new reporting was that Sogohomian had been seen or recorded outside the office the day before he set the fire. Maybe he’ll have a court appearance next week and we’ll find out more then. And maybe some reporter in California will find some friends or family for comment. There’s been no word on motive
I guess a reason one incident reminds me of the other is that the principals seem like they may have mental health issues. That’s a reason I want to know more about them, and I think the info will come out.
Brachiator
@Shakti:
Coming late to the thread. This caught my eye.
Business groups are backing this?
So, this would hurt both immigrant and citizen workers.
Are Florida political and business interests trying to kill the state economy?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Can confirm about Greece and trash cans for TP, though in Athens it’s less about water conservation and more about clogging the sewer pipes. My building has a big warning sign on the inside of the lobby door that throwing things in the toilet will leave the building liable for charges if the sewer lines need unblocking. On the other hand, I’ve seen TP being sold with a selling point being that the roller itself is supposed to be water-soluble.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Brachiator: Sounds like another instance of “the cruelty is the point, logic be damned”.
Mai Naem mobile
@cain: I know this isn’t the most important issue here but I feel sorry for all the 20 something Riddhi Patels who aren’t this Riddhi Patel who are going to be thought of being this Riddhi Patel.
NutmegAgain
@Gvg: Sure. Families in San Antonio who have been there since it was part of Mexico. National boundaries shifted, they’ve stayed put.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … VOANews.com:
Worth a click.
That’s part of the solution to reducing resentment everywhere – seeing others for who they really are, and letting them be who they really are.
Cheers,
Scott.
Melancholy Jaques
@bbleh:
Immigration as a political issue and a set of policies suffer from many problems, but I would argue the first and most important is that it is difficult to impossible to find reliable information about immigration.
It’s always going to be hard to explain things to the general public and even harder to persuade them to support a particular policy, but the fact that people have such strong feeling in the absence of knowledge is tough to overcome.
Another Scott
OpenThread: A USAF KC-135R tanker is doing laps in central Iraq now…
Reuters.com – Biden returning to Washington Amid Iran Threats Against Israel.
:-/
Fingers crossed,
Scott.
Another Scott
TimesOfIsrael.com:
Early reports, fog of war, etc. Caveat emptor.
We’ll see if Bibi’s genius plan to keep attacking Iran’s personnel, even in diplomatic consulates is actually a genius plan or not. :-/
Grr…,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Another Scott: I’m glad he’s finally supporting his daughter, but god-damn! If we have to wait for the Leopards to eat all their faces, we’ll never get anywhere!
prostratedragon
Some Jan 6 insurrectionists finding ways to occupy their time [Link]:
Sister Golden Bear
@Brachiator:
Classic case of “I got mine, Jack.”
Sister Golden Bear
@Another Scott:
Unfortunately conservatives seem innately unable to do this until it affects them personally
Martin
I’m always late to this stuff.
I always try to point out that in the largest state economy in the US – California, approximately $4T GDP knocking on the door of passing both Japan and Germany – fully ⅓ of the workers in the state are immigrants. Assuming they carry ⅓ of the GDP, that puts Californias immigrant economy at about $1.3T, a touch below #4 Florida and a touch ahead of #5 Illinois. Or about the size of the economy of Mexico or Spain. Throw in children of immigrants and that probably doubles.
The idea that immigrants are a drag on the economy isn’t just exaggerated, it’s completely the opposite. CAs economy would be garbage without them.
And even upthread there is a bit of a stereotype of these being low-wage workers. And sure, California definitely has overrepresentation of immigrants in agriculture and hospitality jobs, etc. But 18% of all hospital workers are immigrants – not in California, but in Iowa. Doctors and nurses – above median wage professional careers that every goddamn one of us is life and death dependent on. In California it’s over 40%. My anecdotal count when Ms Martin was in the hospital, in my very diverse city, it was around ⅔. And these workers come from *everywhere*. Asia is the largest region, the Caribbean is next, Africa and Mexico/Central America are pretty even, southeast Asia and Europe. You have university faculty who were about half foreign born. There are highly skilled tech workers coming in under H1B, but also entertainers and athletes who also come from all over the world, and in bigger numbers than you might realize because a good way to get established professionally is to come here as a student. Say what you will about our former governor, but Arnold Schwarzenegger checked a lot of those boxes.
And I think it’s indisputable that a big part of Californias economic success over most other US states is that CA is a welcome host for immigrants, not just having them in our communities but also fostering the industries that draw them here.
Who is the beneficiary of this policy? Mostly California agriculture who compete most directly with Florida ag. States that invest in higher education diversity faster, and that education also helps drive economic growth. CA tried to go a different way in the 90s and it thankfully backfired. While there are some adverse trends in CA, one of the most notable positive ones is that per capita GDP in the state is growing faster than almost anywhere in the US. If immigration is bad, why is it making the state wealthier, and wages in the state higher? And at a faster rate than the rest of the country? In a lot of ways immigrants feel more like our superpower than a burden.
Ruckus
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I got mine when I was 12 and a HS freshman for the same reason, although I was born a couple yrs prior. And I had actually worked the year before – local city paperboy. No one asked for a SSA number for the paperboy job.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
RE: Are Florida political and business interests trying to kill the state economy?
You kill business, nobody will have anything.
And if a business wants to exclude immigrant workers, why make jobs even more undesirable for citizens, who already reject these types of jobs?
Business must be praying that AI and automation will deliver a reliable robot workforce.
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: I think that’s broadly true of Americans in general, but yeah, conservatives are the worst here. Periodically I reread the Scandinavian Law of Jante, because it seems so foreign to us:
You can read it as ‘we’ being separate from ‘you’, because that’s how it would be expressed in the US – you (black person) are not as good as we (white people) but that’s not how to read it. You’re to read it as a person is not separate from their community. The problem can be solved better if we work together than apart. If we prioritize the health of the community, then all individuals will be taken care of in that effort.
It’s actually difficult for Americans to even parse what the intended meaning there is because we are so ‘me’ focused.
Ruckus
@Rusty:
I agree to a degree. I do know people that just do not cook, and a few of them absolutely NEVER should. Then there are the people that go because they have to be served.
Bupalos
When communities move forward, youngs may return or stick around. It is possible, and immigration patterns in the US are changing. But no community moves forward by closing off. Or by cutting it’s own legs out from under it. Absolutely the best thing about Texas is the number of immigrants and shockingly low cost of good services.
wjca
Accepting immigrants, and integrating them, has always been America’s superpower.
Immigrants, pretty much everywhere, are people who want better lives and are willing to work to make that happen. The difference here is that, while our xenophobes have always worked to demonize them, their children and grandchildren are just more Americans. Elsewhere (with a handful of exception, e.e. Canada), integration like that just doesn’t happen.
Martin
@RepubAnon:
They are not ID. They were never intended to act as ID. Lots of people don’t pay into Social Security, particularly certain religious groups like the Amish.
There should be a federal photo ID, and we’ve tried it a few times:
It never gets any further than that, and for exactly the same reasons.
Given it’s an intractable problem, it leaves the matter of policing immigration to be functionally impossible. So, we should just accept that’s the trade off. You can control illegal immigration or you can avoid the mark of the beast. You cannot do both. You must choose.
The ideological debate is just a distraction. They want this result, here is the cost. Pay it or shut up.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I know men, mainly, who don’t cook, don’t know how to cook and have always been served by their mothers and then their wives.
I love restaurants because I hate cooking and leftovers and love the tremendous variety of food in California.
And I love serve yourself buffets as much as I love sit-down places. Sadly, some buffet places went under during the pandemic.
Brachiator
@RepubAnon:
As others have noted, Social Security cards were not intended to be ID.
Also, many parents get Social Security cards for their infant children for tax purposes. I’ve even had my card since I was a kid. You would have to get a new card and photo every few years after age 18. Too much hassle.
Gvg
@wjca: It varies. Around here construction is wanted by whites, and blacks but mostly goes to Hispanic, who might be illegal. A lot of landscaping too. There are skilled repair people who are being underpriced out of business. Some of the whites who are being crowded out are good and some are fuck ups. The fuck ups ended up in those specific jobs because other Americans recognized what was going to happen (lower pay) and found other work sooner, because they were desirable employees. The good ones who are white are mostly old or they inherited a firm from a parent. So the immigrants end up with a rep of working hard for less money.
If we didn’t have the ileagle immigrants we would have gradually gotten used to paying more and if there still weren’t enough workers, we would have less done or invent ways to improve worker efficacy such as some machine. We would also have made the jobs safer.
Or we could have enough legal immigration and they would not be vulnerable to bullying. They and the native born workers would have better pay and conditions, though probably not as high as the shortage scenario 1. In this scenario 2, we would also know who was in our country and cut back on criminal activity. Not end it, just limited the one area.
The only scenario where we have nobody immigrating in, legal or not is one where our economy and social conditions suck badly compared to the rest of the world. I do not want to experience that.
Martin
@Gvg: The dynamic I’ve seen here in SoCal is pretty different.
Mainly, there are whole swaths of the economy that corporations have been driven out of. Most of these service industries where you find a lot of immigrants are self-employed, or small businesses of a crew of workers. There’s effectively no administrative overhead – no home office, no phone number other than the owner’s cell, no advertising, none of that. What you get is a largely worker-owned economy here, with no room for a corporate entity to get a foothold (which I would argue would be worse to work for – pay probably the same, less job security). What is lost is an environment to get rich, and what is gained is an environment where more people can be self-employed and make a better living. As a result you have is more of a word of mouth economy, more like a small town, and less of an ad-driven regional one, even though we’re one of the denser more urban parts of the country. And it’s not just things like lawn care and house cleaners, but mechanics, and so on.
I don’t see any evidence that the skilled trades are being driven out, just that there is no room for them to corporatize – they have to hustle, build a word of mouth network, and so on. If I hired a landscaper I know exactly who it would be – the same crew that does my neighbors, because they’ll be cheap because the marginal cost of doing my yard is low – they’ve already paid the transportation time/cost, the equipment loading/unloading cost, so adding my house has low costs and since they’re not trying to build an empire, just pay rent, buy food, replace their truck now and then, adding my house would likely help keep the prices for everyone else a bit lower because of that added economy of scale. If they aspired to be millionaires their business would operate completely differently, because they lack the path there running it as it is. But if they aspire to have steady work, they’ve nailed it. Nobody here is looking to comparison shop. They want someone reliable that there’s a mutual interest. Both parties want the same thing – to have this relationship for the next x decades. If the crew says they need to raise prices, yeah, fine, no problem. They’re trusted.
And that also applies to roofers, plumbers, etc. as far as I can see. If you’re bad at your work, you can’t get that word of mouth network and you move on to something different (probably get a job at the corporate one serving the commercial businesses).
Misterpuff
@Baud: And all the hijackers (in Europe, at least). (Our hijackers were kooks, crooks and home-grown terrorists and they’d all end up in Havana).
Ruckus
@Kelly:
It’s never easy – they were likely a strong influence upon you growing up and they took care of you. Depending upon your age you may have gotten all the illnesses that kids used to get – that was before vaccines – the only one available when I was born was for smallpox. Therefore I’ve had all the rest of the diseases that went around into the mid 1950s. And parents and siblings all had or got those diseases. Good Times! If you were born after the MNR vaccine came out you missed a lot of days off from school. Of course you only got to stay in bed and suffer from those diseases if you are older and didn’t get the vaccines as a kid.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
THIS.
Right wingers hate it when things get better without them screwing over the country (which is the only time things get better for everyone) Selfish bastards.
wjca
That may be why so few anti-vaxxers are our age. We lived those diseases. And, contra some anti-vaxxers I’ve met, they were NOT fading out before the vaccines came along. We were here, and we know,
Ruckus
@wjca:
Personal realistic knowledge is the key to getting rid of anti vax idiots. So many people who were around when vaccinations were far fewer (down to only that one) are now real old or possibly real dead that these morons really have likely never seen most of the diseases in action – they are ignorant – and yes in so many ways. They think that vaccination is unnecessary because they never had the experience of all those diseases. If they had, they’d be the first in line to get them. They are just ignorant fucks who know they are better than any vaccination and you aren’t making them take them. All we can do is hope they actually learn (or die) from getting the diseases they are too stupid to vaccinate against. I’m not holding my breath.
wjca
It is perhaps unfortunate for their educational prospects that covid is so (relatively) mild, and thus unlikely to provide the necessary wake-up call. And definitely unfortunate that only having their (blameless) children contract one of those almost extinct “childhood diseases” has a chance of doing so.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My discovery about this truth made me open my eyes to the resentful racism of those folks. They literally resent the people there trying to help them and give them healthcare😒😒😒
rikyrah
@TBone:
This is about the 700 Billion in Lithium that Mexico just nationalized