The Foreign “Menace”

Over the past couple of months, the roofs in our condominium complex have been under repair. The repairs were originally scheduled for summertime, but because air conditioning units would’ve had to have been disconnected, the job was put off until the fall. Then the rains came… and came… and came. Work did not begin until winter had set in and, of course, during the time the work was being done our area experienced the coldest, nastiest winter weather we have had in years

From the comfort of my apartment, I watched the men labor on the rooftops for 10 hour days, day in and day out. As is the case with all of the construction projects in our rapidly growing area, the faces on the workers who are risking their lives and their health look nothing like those of the red hatted, pale, obese attendees of Trump rallies. I would like to see one of those people mount those rooftops and brave the sub-freezing temperatures and winds that the roofers here have endured. From their appearances, I would guess that most of the workers came here from South and Central America, just the people Trump is already deporting and closing our borders to.

I would like to see his pasty faced supporters go out into the fields to pick the food that they apparently believe magically appears on the supermarket shelves. I would like to see them working the docks, unloading the luxuries that the immigrant workers cannot even afford to purchase on their meager pay. I would like to see them take jobs in the slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants and try to work at any of the difficult, dangerous, distasteful types of jobs that we rely on immigrants to fill.

And not just the unskilled jobs.

Most of my doctors and the nurses and other ancillary medical workers who work with them are of foreign extraction, and guess what–most of them are extremely competent and compassionate. The nurse’s aides who come to my home have come here from such diverse locations as Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco and Iran. To a one they are gentle compassionate helpers who hold no grudge against me despite the fact that my relatively luxurious lifestyle is in stark contrast to theirs.

The MAGA crowd seem to be completely unaware that the economy of this country rides on the backs of foreign labor, people who braved death to journey to a strange land, to roll up their sleeves and get to work on jobs that the ones who fancy themselves “real” Americans would never consider doing. It is, as it has ever been, immigrants who make America truly great. The haters seem to be completely clueless about the fact that their own ancestors immigrated here from other countries, as did mine and yours. With the exception of the first settlers who stole the land from its native inhabitants and were rightly hated by them, subsequent waves of immigrants, Dutch, Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians, Jews, were all initially hated and abused.

If the bigots have their way, the good people on whom they rely every day will be either kicked out of the country or put into concentration camps. If they have their way, America will be paralyzed and go down the tubes so quickly it will make their heads spin.

In a perverse way, I would enjoy seeing this happen. But of course it is my hope that somehow the great purge of the non-white population will be stopped. America needs people like these and many more of them if it is to remain great. What it does not need is for bigoted MAGA fools to carry out their cruel and self destructive agenda against immigration.