Rule One: Don't Hit the Immigrants, or No One Will Cut Your Grass, Serve Your Hamburger, or Make Your Hotel Room Bed

Please see text for full caption -- and check to see today if you

get your hamburger served, your hotel room bed made, your lavatories

cleaned, or your grass cut. (Mine was cut Sunday by Juan, the

nicest guy in the world, and one of the most honest.) Whether you

honor illegal immigrants or wish them to go back to Mexico, please

submit a rating; your ratings are invited and are most welcome. If

you submit a harsh or very critical rating, please submit a helpful

and constructive comment. Thanks! Enjoy! Rest easy, Americans,

they'll be back at work tomorrow. (Note to non-American viewers--

some of America's hardest workers are taking the day off, which many

Americans find insulting, while others are backing them up -- an

issue which divides America just as Muslim workers from Turkey and

Africa divide Germany and France).

I agree with your caption. But this is a nice shot. What could maybe make it better, I think, try capturing the sign, but holding the shutter open longer to blur the cars across it? Well, just a sugestion, good work anyways

Your suggestion is really 'spot on' as they say 'across the pond'. I was shooting into the late afternoon sun and this was a very contrasty shot and this was 'rescued' from a very dark exposure, so I guess I could have just opened the shutter on 'manual' for a longer exposure.

 

You couldn't believe how many exposures it took just to get one where the sign was outlined by a truck (silhouetted in part), and where a car was approaching to give a sense of danger.

 

It's actually tricky trying to get a good photo of such a sign -- except for your suggestion, probably the next thing to improve it would be a mother and kids huddled on the center median.

 

Happy Day Without a Mexican to You.

 

May Day to the rest of the world!

 

John (Crosley)

 

I was supposed to work today (I'm a shift worker), but took it off - ended up DIY'ing all day. I'm taking my beautiful wife out for a May Day meal this evening, we don't have much in the way of mexican workers here :)

 

I was conversing via e-mail with another American PN user yesterday, and he had never heard of May Day.

 

I love that sign btw.

John

Wow! What a sign. I've never seen anything like that. That is scary, not about immigration but that a sign like that exists. Like Ben's comment we really don't have a lot of Latin folks here in Northern Ohio (Greater Cleveland). So I guess this immigration issue depends where one lives. Though we have a lot of Ukrainian retired Jewish immigrants who live on my street. Which is no problem for me because my grandfather deserted the Czar's army and came to Akron before the revolution.

Jim

Your comment just goes to show that what has the radio airwaves filled with news of major cities in America tied up with Mexicans and supporters marching for amnesty from laws proposed to make an estimated 12 million illegals felons (pending before the House of Representatives, as opposed to the Senate which proposes otherwise), that this does not affect the rest of the world at all, but then France has its Africans, especially its Muslims, and Germany has its Turks -- all of which are necessary because neither country has a sustainable birthrate and can't finance their own retirements with their own offspring's production and taxes.

 

America is caught in the same bind; Mexicans reproduce and Americans, with their prosperity and ZPG (zero population growth) together with long schooling and delayed child-rearing and substantial affluence don't have many kids, and a baby boom that is going to tax the social welfare system for the rapidly aging -- and workers are needed to finance the rapidly aging in their retirements and to fuel the need for menial labor -- the solution, Mexicans who can earn in an hour in the US what they make in a day in Mexico.

 

Most are incredibly hard-working, respectful, (at least where I live) and lots of the respect may be cultural, but part is fear, for if they're picked up by the law, they can be deported, and lose their status even as illegals in the US.

 

But most local and state law enforcement won't cooperate with the U.S. immigration officials and won't even ask if they're illegal. They don't have driver's licenses or even insurance, but they drive, (very carefully for the most part, because if they get stopped the police must impound their autos, unless somebody with a license can drive it away for them).

 

In a way, the lack of legal status is a form of 'control' over the Mexican population, something that hasn't been written about enough, and if I were a commentator with a larger audience than PN, I would write (or speak) about it.

 

It actually works pretty well, even though in Los Angeles there are a large number of illegals in jails and in California a large number in prisons -- but not around here. I have a man work around my house occasionally I would trust with my life; he's the most honest man I have ever met, and if he brings someone with him, I know he's vetted that person and I'll never have trouble. In return, 'mi casa es su casa' for him -- we're extremely close, but he won't learn English.

 

His kids will, however, as they've just come over the border, and probably just in time. (I don't know if he's illegal of not, as we never have spoken about the subject -- he works for a large agricultural outfit and has for at least five or six years -- and is a boss there -- el jefe and is the 'work ethic' personified.)

 

I was stunned when I first saw that sign -- it's around a 'checkpoint' where geography squeezes a major highway and there are no collateral roads around the I-5 freeway north--south in San Diego County, some distance north of the Mexican border, and the immigration officers look for heavily laden vans, buses, and trucks, and often find them loaded to the gunnels with illegals.

 

And if illegals get 'amnesty' or some other face-saving substitute, and the border is not sealed or there is no 'guest-worker' visa allowed, it'll start all over again.

 

And so it goes here in America.

 

Happy May 1st.

 

Hope you enjoyed dinner with your lovely wife.

 

John (Crosley)

So your grandfather, although Ukrainian, maybe was a Russian, possibly progeny of those who settled Ukraine under Catherine the Great who settled Ukraine for Russia (there were Ukraines also and they speak a different, related language and write differently, also related).

 

Regrettably there is great anti-semitism in Ukraine -- I wrote about it earlier today in another photo comment, and it's largely open and pretty blatant, which is probably why so many Jews were able to emigrate from Ukraine and immigrate to America (religious visas).

 

Canada long had an open immigration policy for Ukrainians too, and one sees many Canadians in Ukraine going back to visit their family -- ancestors -- and they cluck at the backwardness of their former homeland -- one Canadian -- in his '70s, told me it would take 50 years to set things right in his beloved former homeland, the Communists had wrecked it so badly.

 

This sign really is something, isn't it?

 

You'd probably be surprised how many Mexicans and other Latinos there are in your city -- just go listen to motel maids and go into any major restaurant kitchen and listen to the dishwashers talk -- bet you'd hear a lot of Spanish.

 

Regards,

 

John

Illegal immigration will not go away until Mexico can attract sufficent foreign investment to improve local wages - or at least match standard of living on a lower wage. This is one of the reasons why I actually champion globalisation - in effect it is a mild form of communism - I'm no marxist, but I believe that everyone has the right to improve their standard of living, and if lower prices in europe and the US drive outsourcing and foreign manufacture, then all the better.

 

In the UK we have a lot of immigration, and a substantial percentage of it is 'illegal', personally I think more power to those that are willing to come and perform duties that the layabout dole drawing chavs of the UK do not wish to. I wish we could export our lazy 'unwanted' and bring in more hardworking foreigners, diversity is strength. In fact I honestly cannot understand the mindset of the anti mexican lobby in the US, your country was founded by immigrants - there were no laws to say they could not settle. Anyhow I know your thoughts on this.

John

Your right there is a city named Kazan in Russia. The family name was changed so I know we are at not Russian. It was anti-Semitism that made my Grandfather a deserter from the Czar. As the story goes - There were many brothers and the family would pay off the Comenczar for each brother at their time of military service but the Comenzar would not take the bribe for my Grandfather and one uncle so they headed west landing in Akron of all places and a final resting place in Phoenix. AZ.

Your also right about food service. I know that there are Latinos in restaurants right here in my neighborhood but again the economy here is still suffering as we keep shedding our industrial base so this area is not a big draw.

Jim

I love that sign . LOL funny thing is that truck in the back ground mite be a freind of mind driving it. I own a trucking Company near los angeles airport some places No drivers showed up for work today SO my cargo was not ready.but the freeway was nice no traffic 405 wide open wish it was like this everyday.......:D

This photo was taken a little while ago, so if your friend was driving earlier this year, it might have been him -- have him look it up and tell him he's 'famous' (by juxtaposition) . . . .

 

I don't always go out and just take a photo to illustrate what's going on -- I have a sense of what's important and take 'stock' of interesting things -- with an eye toward 'stock photography'.

 

John (Crosley)

I agree with you about those who 'won't work', but the problems of Mexico are deeper than you may give credit.

 

Are you aware, as I have been informed, that Mexico is about No. 3 in the world in number of billionaires, and if it isn't it's still disproportionately large, and it's the disparity between the rich and the poor -- the disparity of incomes and the lack of a middle class -- that drives the endemic poverty the fuels the immigration engine that sends the underclass (and poorly educated for the most part) across the border to the US.

 

And the US, with its present government kowtowing to big corporations, lecture the rest of the world on the virtues of democracy, but does little on lecturing Mexico on educating its underclasses and promoting democratization next door, and our president proclaims that he's 'pro-Mexican' and a supposed 'friend' of Mexico, and even speaks a little Spanish (poorly), but he's invaded Iraq, supposedly in the name of (pick your choice) (1) eliminating the mushroom cloud over the US as Condaleeza Rice told us was imminent and eliminating other 'weapons of mass destruction that turned out officially 'never to have been there' (official position of Bush Administration now is that they never were there -- is was FUBAR),(2) getting rid of Saddam Hussein to 'protect Iraqi people' (which we were never told about) (3) promoting democracy in the Middle East (which we were never told about until (1) did not pan out), as well as finding no other weapons of mass destruction, as heralded by the Bush Administration, (4) Making a better life for the Iraqis at an expense we expect now will cost the US from its treasure of $1 trillion and (5) establishing 14 military bases (permanently . . . meaning no plans ever to get out) in Iraq for Middle East military dominance.

 

We could have built new schools in most of America (and Mexico) with that money, I bet, or given every American student who academically qualifies a free college education (I'll bet) as well, probably as all academically eligible Mexican students.

 

But we Americans got our priorities, and military dominance is one of them.

 

It's not wrong to be dominant militarily, but I have a friend who used to work for a defense contractor and the stories of bill padding on government contracts were simply astounding -- and under Bush, it seems the padding is expected because that's a 'droite de seigneur' that goes with corporateness. (rank has its privileges, including corporate looting).

 

John (Crosley)

I know about the 'buying off' business, as I have seen evidence of it firsthand, even recently, as a friend of mine, who had a partial scholarship, was presented with an ultimatum -- go teach in a village for two years which sent this big-city student into apoplexy -- the thought of walking through the pig stys on the way to a village schoolroom to teach village kids, since that person never had even 'seen' a village and was a 'city person'.

 

Well it turned out that a 'well-placed *donation* to the school's *building fund*' which never was receipted seemed to cure the 'village blues' for my friend.

 

Such is the way of things in the former Soviet Union, and though your ancestors should have done their military service, I'm certain none of their friends did theirs, and that the refusal was on account of your ancestor's Jewishness, which is why he went to Ohio, and not because of any other factor. Imagine they won't take your commonly-accepted bribe because you're Jewish, maybe sending you to your death, but if they don't accept your bribe and you're killed, they can just say you're doing your duty for your country. . . .

 

Such are the ways of discrimination.

 

It's so pervasive in Russia/Ukraine but Stalin himself didn't per se discriminate -- he had Jewish advisors and generals, and he purged (killed) them just equally with everybody else.

 

Now that's equality!

 

Life's better in Ohio, I think At least you'll live longer and be safer.

 

Can you join the country club?

 

And if you can, would you?

 

Remember what Groucho said?

 

'I wouldn't join any club that would have me.'

 

;-)

 

John (Crosley)

Hum, this is a sign I had never seen before. Could make a real interesting staged shot.

 

Aesthetically, it is far from your best, mainly because of the strongly burned sky. But you made the right choice in exposition with the condition you had, as you always do. Nice job.

 

I really like the irony of the shot as the car on the left, because of the perspective I guess, looks like it is going to hit the sign.

 

Funny and clever title.

I havent read the thread yet but this shot brought back a memory. (funny how you do that) I spent sometime in southern california where signs like this can be seen. I was camping at san onofre. (yes, I camped at a nuclear power site and even tried surfing in the water) One morning as I stepped out of my tent, I noticed a family creeping along the train tracks near our site. They looked at me as if it was all over, and I smiled at them and let them go on their way. I hope they made it somewhere safe. I do think soon you will be able to get a shot of this road without cars. It wont be much longer before no one can afford gas.

 

Photo wise, I dislike the foreground car but like the placement of the sign, the light on the road and the traffic on the other side of the railing.

 

 

And I heard the environmentalists complained that the warm-water species that have built up around the cooling elements (as predicted) sued or threatened to sue that shutting it down was an 'environmental hazard' which required an environmental impact statement. (how's that for turning Jane Fonda's movie on its head?)

 

And my family once sheltered a woman and her family who were refugees from Guatemala, threatened victims of 'death squads', before they eventually moved on to Canada.

 

I was a licensed member of the Calif. State Bar at the time, as was my wife, and to do so was very dangerous at the time (times pre Simpson-Mazzolli when they did take immigration rules seriously and both if us risked our law licenses and hence our very substantial livelihood), and I think it kept my later divorced wife from becoming attorney general of her state (she became a special deputy to the attorney general of her state before dying suddenly a number of years ago, suddenly of cancer).

 

We actually thought so little of our act of grace we didn't even have a 'family discussion about it. We just did it.

 

So, I would have waved at those people along the railroad track, I think.

 

Was the water there at San Onofre glowing green? I thought not.

 

As to the car, I like it there; it adds a sense of danger and helps fill the frame. I have other frames that are similar in which there is no car there, and they do not show so well -- I had wondered about the car too until I saw the other frames. The captures were all hard to read because all the vehicles were dark in shadows and had to be brought out in 'levels' to be seen properly, as their side toward me was in shade, and I was shooting in a hurry to avoid getting a moving violation from the California Highway Patrol for stopping on a freeway (they do such things), and was a little fumble-fingered with my camera adjustments -- the D2Xs were newer to me then.

 

Thanks for the comment (I'm still wondering about that tree with those anthropomorphic bumps and that 'orifice' on it.)

 

John

So I just innocently clicked on this image to leave a comment for John and a half an hour later I have forgotten what image I clicked on. What a great thread. I think this would be a great POW. Some lively discussion for sure. I too have seen these signs, when living in So. CA. A very poignant image and excellent timing. Always great work John, thank you for the informative discussion. Where do I click to subscribe to the John Crosley Newsletter?

for clarification's sake, its not that there is a car in the foreground but the type of car that I dont like. maybe a different model would be nice - say a mercedes or something in the high dollar range to give this a bit more of a social/economic commentary.

 

I was wondering if there was a statute of limitations on helping immigrants. I worked for a dr who hid a few families as they worked their way up north. Is homeland security going to come get me now and track him down now that I have posted this info?

 

Knic

It's called the 'interesting persons list' -- if I'm not there, just put me there, and look at my photos from time to time. Almost always great comments. I can hardly guess why others gripe about not getting comments. I have left wonderful comments on others' photos and go back three months later and they just sit there, alone, and unresponded to.

 

It's like they are unappreciated.

 

You're always welcome here.

 

John

Yes, far from my best-- it was posted for our 'Day Without a Mexican' as a sort of commenoration of that particular day as Mexicans marched in our major cities, and the caption was in keeping with the theme of that day.

 

I took a lot of photos in a very short time in late afternoon (hence the blown sky as the sun was past the trucks, left, blowing the sky, and the best was where the car, left, was approaching the sign, giving that ironic twist -- a juxtaposition, if you will.

 

John (Crosley)

Hola,

 

Now that your bring up Homeland Security, it seems that they and Bush are not feeling bound by law.

 

Bush keeps signing laws then he signs 'signing notees' that purportedly exempt himself from the laws he signs --- he signs little notes that says 'I don't have to obey this law if I don't want to, nyah nyah nyah, so regardless of any statute of limitations, I'd be afraid of being picked up and 'extraordinary rendition' -- say being sent to Romania and being tortured about events around, say San Onofre with the 'aliens' and their intentions and what you were doing there and why, and your patriotism. . . . if you actually have any, and such things . . . . everyone is suspect these days . . . (I just watched 'Goodnight and Good Luck' about Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy -- episodes which I actually had seen on television, and which formed a vital element of my sometimes crusading ways -- part of why, maybe, early in my career, when I was a journalist, I was forthrightly honest and crusading and never corrupted by anything (and I can say that with a straight face).

 

I'd start out by running now.

 

In fact, I'd add an outline of you to that sign now.

 

A father, a mother, a child, and an outline of Knicki!?!

 

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

 

These are very tough times.

 

j

Maybe not the best, but the comments are all very interesting. I can relate a little because, as you stated, sometimes people are just in transition in the US and end up here, in the North!

Thanks for sharing this image. I live in Sierra Madre and I lived in San Diego for a while and I commuted back and forth several times a week so I am so very familiar with it. This image truly represents some of all that has been discussed here and more. To me this sign, in addition to all that has been said,further enhances our insensitivity to the plight of the Mexican workers, in that it represents them, among other things, as running fugitives and almost as animals being chased, their depiction on the sign is just that.I agree with all that you have pointed out. They don't take our jobs, they do them because we have become too "Snobby" to perform them and as a generality, we can't " Lower" ourselves to those standards. Yet they are honest, hard working and for the most part the monies that they earn goes back to their families rather than their "Bimmers". Great shot and great statement, especially for the ones of us that live it every day.

 

Thank you.

Good and interesting comment and I respect your point of view, which I share in part.

 

I think this sign means what it says: 'Don't hit the illegals' who are evading the border patrol check point on I-5 north of San Diego where the mountains squeeze the sea and there are no collateral roads for them to inch their way north, and all vehicles that appear 'heavy' are searched. So, from one point it just 'means what it says' -- no ulterior motive should be read into it.

 

And I know a number of illegals; in fact my surrounding community is 85% Hispanic and they are all the wonderful things you say they are and I like them very much and I respect them a lot, almost to a one (there are one or two exceptions, but I'd be hard-pressed even to identify them). And people who work near my property, I am sure, are almost to a one illegals, and they like me very much, and please know I am sympatico to them.

 

But meat-packers in America once earned an average $19.+ per hour and now earn between $9 and $11 per hour largely because the industry has become dominated by illegal labor. There is no shortage of American citizens and legals who will do the work, but immigrants without documents will do it cheaper.

 

Similarly, construction trades used to be very high-paying since it was not year-round work, and now it's dominated by Hispanics, with the large number of them illegals, depressing wages hugely. Unions sit aside, perhaps waiting until illegals get documents and they can 'sign them up' and sensing that it's a 'lost cause' now anyway since illegals can sign up for no union or anything else.

 

There are many Americans who cannot take work at wages that are 'living wages' (not the minimum wage which is artificially low and has been that way for far too long), because the value of their labors are deluted by the influx of illegals willing to work for 'anything'.

 

It cuts both ways and if you have a child who wants a job at Burger King, that job may go to an illegal, and that valuable training may be denied your child.

 

But I would hire an illegal too, because in Ciudad Mexico (I think I got it right) one man can earn in a day what he can earn in an hour in California, and he can live 'not well' here on that and send a surplus to Mexico.

 

And the Mexican government turns a blind eye to illegal border crossers into America because the second highest component of the Mexican Gross National Product is 'remittances' send home by Mexicans in America (or elsewhere abroad).

 

That is the 'golden egg' and nobody in Mexico's perennially corrupt government is going to kill the 'goose'.

 

I think the sign 'means what it says' and you have projected a personal feeling onto it, and that feeling is a political projection -- but that feeling is not altogether unwarranted.

 

(And in response to Knicki, who smiled -- I think -- as llegals walked by her at San Onofre -- see above comments -- I think the sign should bear the outline of Knicki at the end, and maybe Homeland Security (parent agency of what use to be called La Migra) officer behind, chasing Knicki!?! and company.

 

This a subject about which my views are quite complicated, for if there is to be true justice, my immigrant wife would have been able to come over years earlier and stay and get documents under an amnesty, but she had to jump through the hoops, and to let 12 million through because of 'large numbers' is somewhat intellectually dishonest.

 

But it's hard to put 12 million (best estimate of the numbers of illegals) in jail prior to deportation, and even deporting them would be a massive effort that would be literally impossible.

 

So, it's a 'fair accompli' -- these people will get documents of some sort.

 

I'm hardly anti-immigrant.

 

I married one (regrettably she got brain cancer, and wrongfully blamed me for 'causing it') so the subject is very personal to me.

 

Be well and don't take offense.

 

John (Crosley)

Offense is never taken especially from you. I respect your point of view and your art immensely and I value it very much because it evokes feelings and thoughts that are very stimulating and that, to me is what art is. So keep your great images coming since they teach, stimulate and challenge at the same time.

 

Thanks again for your time.