Let me give you all a wake-up call: this is not just about “illegal immigrants”. I live with a Rinso-white disabled friend who was born in Anaheim, California and has lived and while he was able, worked in the US all of his life. He is severely disabled, now in his mid-50′s and keeps getting the screws put to him by Social Security. He should not have been pulling weeds or using a shovel to dig holes or using a hula hoe in a people’s yard this past spring, but he did this to survive, to pay for electricity and a local “life line” telephone and insurance for an old vehicle he barely keeps running. He also has medical and prescription co-pays and faces fairly major upcoming surgery. He has been CHEATED by the nice, wealthy white couple he worked so hard for..according to the math, they paid him less than 77 cents per hour. How did they justify this? “We do not pay you by the hour. We pay you by the JOB.” Each time he worked, the job got larger. The husband asked for certain tasks to be done and then the wife would ask for other tasks to be done. Soon, he was doing twice the work and the absurdly low agreed-upon pay remained the same.

Of course, the husband complains that this man “works slow”, claiming that the guy who worked before him “could have had the same (enormous!) job done in two hours!” The guy who worked there before him also had housing on the property and it was claimed that he was a tweeker who stole and destroyed property.

My friend spent hours bending, removing a great deal of trash, including old filthy diapers and many hundreds of old cigarette butts from the premises. Every once in awhile, the husband would toss him a twenty. At the “end of the job”, he gave him $300..he’d worked many more than 300 hours! Then AFTER the end of the job, he is called back and works an ADDITIONAL 52 hours and is paid 40 dollars. Meanwhile, the man who owns the property has bought himself a boat, additional properties he expects to have cleared (manually) of weeds, purchased many expensive stepping stones, lumber for a deck, a number of large and expensive fruit trees and it has been painful to watch my friend have to BEG to be paid for work that he has done when he should NOT have been doing this work at ALL. My friend told them a Neurologist had told him he could not lift more than 15 pounds BEFORE he began the job…they did not believe or did not care. There are MANY witnesses who saw him out there working, day after day, week after week, month after month…the word has gotten around on these people.

He would NOT have had this injury, would NOT be requiring surgery had he NOT worked for these fine, upstanding WHITE people. They pray to Jehovah. I am sure that this Jehovah will be very proud to know his “people” cheat, lie to and deceive the poor and vulnerable who worked even against medical advice and are now suffering for it. I’m sure they’ll be among the 144,000 who make it into Paradise. NOT. People who are Day Laborers, regardless of the color of their skin are not asking for CHARITY. They are not on the Welfare rolls. They are out there in an effort to make an honest living. Do I believe Jan Brewer is making an honest living? Sadly, I do not.

What happened to the old but ethical concept of A Fair Day’s Wages for A Fair Day’s Work? Trying to create even more obstacles for them than already exist in the form of people who are arrogant and self-serving criminals should not be permitted in America.