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My ex husband lost most of his business to illegals. They have taken over the construction industry in California. They do cheap but shoddy work. It doesn't matter now, but in ten years when their houses will be leaking, it will but it's too late for my ex and many many other contractors. Their businesses are gone by unscupulous general contractors and homeowners hiring illegals.
Sometimes it's much faster than 10 years.
I've seen people hire day laborers off the corner to build retaining walls. They aren't built properly, stepped to retain the earth. We have had a few good storms and bam -- sections of retaining wall collapse and the yard had shifted. (We have a fair amount of sand in some areas)
What recourse does the homeowner have then? They'll be lucky to find the guy they picked up, and if they do, he'll no hablo ingles them, and no sabe nada.
In the end -- how much did they really save?
On the LI thread I brought up a point which a few people hadn't thought about.
The people picking up the day laborers are bringing complete strangers into their homes. These men see where you live, with whom you live (young daughter? sexy wife?) and what you own. The homeowner knows NOTHING about them. Where did they come from? Phone number? NOTHING.
There's an affluent community to the east of me. Recently they have had a few break-ins. On Mother's Day, a woman saw a Hispanic man coming out the backyard of a neighbor's house. She phoned the private police and the county police. The private police chased the man and tackled him on my friend's mother's front lawn -- in front of her shocked family while they visited!
He was from NYC, had no business being in the area. He was brought in by someone who hired a day laborer and got a chance to case the area.
I've been to parties with wealthy people who have laughed off the fact that a bracelet or pendant was sic "liberated" from the household, most likely by 'the help.' You can't make this stuff up. I was aghast! I can't afford a maid, and even if I could, I wouldn't tolerate any theft from my home! It was almost like some sort of bragging right between these women.
Until the affluent communities outside Westbury start having serious crime issues (home invasions, car jackings, rapes, etc.) things in Westbury aren't going to change.
Back on topic everyone, please. Also I have to chime in, risking being called a pro illegal, but the way it works those making a claim need to prove it's true. Doing it the other way around is what our politicians do, throw accusations around and wait for those accused to start explaining, regardless of whether there is any truth in these accusations.
Yac.
Why? Because he tries to point out what the Liberal media will not put on the news?
did you watch the clip the op posted. taking a video of people in the park, people sitting in doorways and signs in spanish only prove people hang out in the park, sit in doorways and there are signs in spanish. ya wanna prove illegals have made a mess of your town then film something tangible
I watched this video. I am astonished. First of all, the store fronts that were in business looked like spanish signs to me and they always put the security bars on them. Go to Mexico, all the stores have security gates in front of their doors. If they are legal, they would know English. Secondly, it appeared to my eyes, that there was graffitti on side-walks, which is very typical of the Latino race and although they might not be illegal, it is considered destruction of public property. Didn't I see a little kid painting on the building? I know we can't prove if these people are illegal or not but it astonishes me when they move into a area, they have to place their artistic ability over all the structures.
I feel his anger because as a Southern Californian and now Arizonian, we see such things, and if you take pride in your town and see spray paint on sidewalks and buildings and you are unable to read signs of store fronts, it is reasonable to think, he is right being angry.
I watched this video. I am astonished. First of all, the store fronts that were in business looked like spanish signs to me and they always put the security bars on them. Go to Mexico, all the stores have security gates in front of their doors. If they are legal, they would know English. Secondly, it appeared to my eyes, that there was graffitti on side-walks, which is very typical of the Latino race and although they might not be illegal, it is considered destruction of public property. Didn't I see a little kid painting on the building? I know we can't prove if these people are illegal or not but it astonishes me when they move into a area, they have to place their artistic ability over all the structures.
I feel his anger because as a Southern Californian and now Arizonian, we see such things, and if you take pride in your town and see spray paint on sidewalks and buildings and you are unable to read signs of store fronts, it is reasonable to think, he is right being angry.
This post is meant initially for JOHNINWESTBURY but then can be asked of various others here:
I am just as offended by uncivil behavior patterns on the part of ANY people of ANY background or race or ethnic or socioeconomic class (likely even MORE than you are) and am VERY VOCAL about it. That is, I am disturbed by those persons in our society-at-large who don't take the best care of the environment around them (the environment that we all have to live and work in and share together), who disturb the peace with undue noise or boisterousness, who vandalize public or private property, who litter, who act or seem to act in intimidating or threatening ways towards passerbys, etc. etc.
Yet I can't quite tell, at times, whether your rant is really a racial/ethnic hate rant (i.e., fuming because every other person doesn't look just like you or speak your own language as their first language or come from the same culture you do) OR, INSTEAD, if you are upset about ACTUAL disruptive or threatening behaviors on the part of the persons you yourself ACTUALLY encounter in your day-to-day life in Westbury and environs and whom you point out in your video.
Let me ask you an honest question: If downtown Westbury (where I have passed through by car many many times and sometimes have walked through and around) and the rest of Nassau County, for that matter, had ONLY persons of white Anglo-European descent populating it through-and-through and THOSE SAME WHITE ANGLO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES were hanging out in the park, pushing their baby carriages, sitting on a stoop outside a building, had signs in store windows telling others how to wire funds back to their relatives in their home European countries-of-origin (instead of to Mexico), had signs in the multiple non-English European languages people who lived there spoke (e.g., German, French, Yiddush, Russian, Polish, et al), playing a radio out loud in public, and so on, WOULD YOU BE DISTURBED BY THESE BEHAVIORS AS WELL? Or are you trying to convey the opinion that white Anglo- European peoples never do these things? If a group of WHITE teenagers or young adults were being giddy or boisterous in the streets (which I encounter OFTEN in the city, in the suburbs, in malls and shopping centers, on public transit) or were running around the streets out-of-control, would you be disturbed by this as well? Or is it really only because all these folks you point out are HISPANICS that it disturbs you so and fills you with such rage? I can't quite honestly tell, with the way that you are portraying it.
You keep saying "the illegals"; do you know for a fact that the overwhelming majority of these persons you point out ARE, in fact, illegal (you know for a fact that none or virtually none of them are legal immigrants or even born and raised here but raised in a Spanish-speaking environment, so therefore they speak primarily Spanish)? Would you be disturbed if the town consisted ENTIRELY of, say, Irish Catholics and they were behaving, all in all, in the EXACT SAME WAY as all those you point out?
And are you saying that whenever you see or hear ANY and ALL (or NEARLY ALL) Hispanics around downtown Westbury and other nearby areas, they are ALL or NEARLY ALL behaving in an utterly uncivil way and destroying the environment around them? I see such behaviors on the part of ALL peoples (whites, blacks, Hispanics, East Asian, Indian, et al) wherever I go . . . and then I ALSO see REDEEMING and CIVILIZED behavior patterns on the parts of ALL kinds of peoples wherever I go. I truly don't necessarily always see it breaking down by race or ethnicity.
Do you feel that Westbury is being ruined SIMPLY because you see NON-WHITES living or working or hanging out there (along with the whites)? Or is it that you actually DO experience all these NON-WHITES as an utterly uncivlized lot of humans who conduct themselves in a way whereby they don't deserve to live or work anywhere except among themselves?
JohnInWestbury, these are GENUINE HONEST questions from me to you and I'm not saying that I already know or assume the answers to those questions I ask of you. These are GENUINE questions (not meant as accusatory statements with an exclamation point at the end of them but rather are offered up as genuine questions with a question mark at the end of them) and I ask you if you can be honest enough to answer them honestly for all of us. In other words, can you state and elucidate what your TRUE MOTIVATIONS are behind your feelings expressed here? That is, are they based on ACTUAL OFFENDING BEHAVIOR these persons perpetuate that would be deemed offensive if ANYONE engaged in them (whether white Jews or white Irish or Italians or Russians or Chinese or Scots or . . .) or are you, in fact, offended because the actual or perceived perpetrators don't look like you and speak your own language as their primary language?
THE MAIN POINT IS: I am able to share my world with ANYONE of what background, language, race, creed, history, et al as long as they behave in a civilized, appropriate manner. This doesn't mean that they have to be exactly like me and speak my language and so on. If a person is sitting on a stoop or a bench outside a building or in a public park or square and not otherwise disturbing the public peace, I don't care if it is a little old Irish lady or a young Mexican male or a middle-aged Bolivian female or a group of young black males or young white males or whomever. All I care about is how EACH SINGLE INDIVIDUAL behaves. If children are running around and making undue noise, I don't care if it is all white children or all Hispanic children or all black children or whatever . . . I will be disturbed about it. Is your rant really about their RACE or ETHNICITY or is it about their BEHAVIOR? And is it behavior which is TRULY behavior which would be experience by ANYONE as truly disruptive or intimidating or destructive of the environment or of public or private property? OR is it just that the behavior is "different" (but not otherwise disruptive or threatening) that it disturbs you? Please share your thoughts on this, JohnInWestbury.
Location: Oklahoma(formerly SoCalif) Originally Mich,
13,387 posts, read 19,426,436 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UsAll
This post is meant initially for JOHNINWESTBURY but then can be asked of various others here:
I am just as offended by uncivil behavior patterns on the part of ANY people of ANY background or race or ethnic or socioeconomic class (likely even MORE than you are) and am VERY VOCAL about it. That is, I am disturbed by those persons in our society-at-large who don't take the best care of the environment around them (the environment that we all have to live and work in and share together), who disturb the peace with undue noise or boisterousness, who vandalize public or private property, who litter, who act or seem to act in intimidating or threatening ways towards passerbys, etc. etc.
Yet I can't quite tell, at times, whether your rant is really a racial/ethnic hate rant (i.e., fuming because every other person doesn't look just like you or speak your own language as their first language or come from the same culture you do) OR, INSTEAD, if you are upset about ACTUAL disruptive or threatening behaviors on the part of the persons you yourself ACTUALLY encounter in your day-to-day life in Westbury and environs and whom you point out in your video.
Let me ask you an honest question: If downtown Westbury (where I have passed through by car many many times and sometimes have walked through and around) and the rest of Nassau County, for that matter, had ONLY persons of white Anglo-European descent populating it through-and-through and THOSE SAME WHITE ANGLO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES were hanging out in the park, pushing their baby carriages, sitting on a stoop outside a building, had signs in store windows telling others how to wire funds back to their relatives in their home European countries-of-origin (instead of to Mexico), had signs in the multiple non-English European languages people who lived there spoke (e.g., German, French, Yiddush, Russian, Polish, et al), playing a radio out loud in public, and so on, WOULD YOU BE DISTURBED BY THESE BEHAVIORS AS WELL? Or are you trying to convey the opinion that white Anglo- European peoples never do these things? If a group of WHITE teenagers or young adults were being giddy or boisterous in the streets (which I encounter OFTEN in the city, in the suburbs, in malls and shopping centers, on public transit) or were running around the streets out-of-control, would you be disturbed by this as well? Or is it really only because all these folks you point out are HISPANICS that it disturbs you so and fills you with such rage? I can't quite honestly tell, with the way that you are portraying it.
You keep saying "the illegals"; do you know for a fact that the overwhelming majority of these persons you point out ARE, in fact, illegal (you know for a fact that none or virtually none of them are legal immigrants or even born and raised here but raised in a Spanish-speaking environment, so therefore they speak primarily Spanish)? Would you be disturbed if the town consisted ENTIRELY of, say, Irish Catholics and they were behaving, all in all, in the EXACT SAME WAY as all those you point out?
And are you saying that whenever you see or hear ANY and ALL (or NEARLY ALL) Hispanics around downtown Westbury and other nearby areas, they are ALL or NEARLY ALL behaving in an utterly uncivil way and destroying the environment around them? I see such behaviors on the part of ALL peoples (whites, blacks, Hispanics, East Asian, Indian, et al) wherever I go . . . and then I ALSO see REDEEMING and CIVILIZED behavior patterns on the parts of ALL kinds of peoples wherever I go. I truly don't necessarily always see it breaking down by race or ethnicity.
Do you feel that Westbury is being ruined SIMPLY because you see NON-WHITES living or working or hanging out there (along with the whites)? Or is it that you actually DO experience all these NON-WHITES as an utterly uncivlized lot of humans who conduct themselves in a way whereby they don't deserve to live or work anywhere except among themselves?
JohnInWestbury, these are GENUINE HONEST questions from me to you and I'm not saying that I already know or assume the answers to those questions I ask of you. These are GENUINE questions (not meant as accusatory statements with an exclamation point at the end of them but rather are offered up as genuine questions with a question mark at the end of them) and I ask you if you can be honest enough to answer them honestly for all of us. In other words, can you state and elucidate what your TRUE MOTIVATIONS are behind your feelings expressed here? That is, are they based on ACTUAL OFFENDING BEHAVIOR these persons perpetuate that would be deemed offensive if ANYONE engaged in them (whether white Jews or white Irish or Italians or Russians or Chinese or Scots or . . .) or are you, in fact, offended because the actual or perceived perpetrators don't look like you and speak your own language as their primary language?
THE MAIN POINT IS: I am able to share my world with ANYONE of what background, language, race, creed, history, et al as long as they behave in a civilized, appropriate manner. This doesn't mean that they have to be exactly like me and speak my language and so on. If a person is sitting on a stoop or a bench outside a building or in a public park or square and not otherwise disturbing the public peace, I don't care if it is a little old Irish lady or a young Mexican male or a middle-aged Bolivian female or a group of young black males or young white males or whomever. All I care about is how EACH SINGLE INDIVIDUAL behaves. If children are running around and making undue noise, I don't care if it is all white children or all Hispanic children or all black children or whatever . . . I will be disturbed about it. Is your rant really about their RACE or ETHNICITY or is it about their BEHAVIOR? And is it behavior which is TRULY behavior which would be experience by ANYONE as truly disruptive or intimidating or destructive of the environment or of public or private property? OR is it just that the behavior is "different" (but not otherwise disruptive or threatening) that it disturbs you? Please share your thoughts on this, JohnInWestbury.
For one, your so called "honest questions" are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Another, this is about "illegal" immigration NOT "legal" immigration and race has nothing to do with the issue. If you feel that it does, it's because you're trying to make it that way.
If you have no problem with people illegally entering this country, and you don't approve to what's being said on this forum.........what's your purpose
for posting here?
For one, your so called "honest questions" are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Another, this is about "illegal" immigration NOT "legal" immigration and race has nothing to do with the issue. If you feel that it does, it's because you're trying to make it that way.
If you have no problem with people illegally entering this country, and you don't approve to what's being said on this forum.........what's your purpose for posting here?
Is this a complains only forum? There are thousands of people that read this forum, is your idea of relevance the only one that counts? of course not...
For one, your so called "honest questions" are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Another, this is about "illegal" immigration NOT "legal" immigration and race has nothing to do with the issue. If you feel that it does, it's because you're trying to make it that way.
If you have no problem with people illegally entering this country, and you don't approve to what's being said on this forum.........what's your purpose
for posting here?
It's not your place to decide what's relevant and not relevant for me or for this forum. JOHNINWESTBURY (whom my posting and my questions was directed to) rants on and on about what is happening in downtown Westbury, Nassau County, Long Island, NY-- where I have been many many times --and points out people sitting in a park or town square or simply standing on the street and with him being offended by this, or seeing a sign in Spanish in a store window or seeing a bodega (Spanish grocery) and him being offended by this. His posting seems, at times, to come across as a racial/ethnic animosity rant . . . focused more on WHO the people are, rather than on what their BEHAVIOR actually is when he encounters them in his day-to-day life.
You say "Another, this is about 'illegal' immigration NOT "legal" immigration and race has nothing to do with the issue. If you feel that it does, it's because you're trying to make it that way." OTHERS in this forum have ALSO posted that JohnInWestbury's rant suggests itself as a racially/ethnically animostic rant as well (and he has posted at other times on the City-Data Forums on this issue); it is not just me. I'm not trying to "make" it that way; it suggests itself by the way JohnInWestbury has chosen to present himself (but, in the end, I was not assuming that it is so on John’s part; I was asking him to clarify if it was so or not). If you've read my varied other postings on the CITY-DATA FORUMs about how I feel about uncivil behavior on the part of others amongst us (such as the gang bangers, vandalizers, et al in our society), I am even MORE disturbed than JohnInWestbury is about such behaviors (e.g., read my posts in "Bangin' in the Sixth Borough...coming to a 'Hood near you", for instance). Various people there thought that I was being too tough (calling for our nation's law enforcement to declare all the gang-bangers and other violent crime perpetrators amongst us as "enemy combatants" and to take them out-of-commission (a more polite way of saying to kill them). So DON'T THINK FOR A SECOND of accusing me of being soft on uncivil behavior or criminality. I'd make you look like a flaming liberal or radic-lib compared to my own views for dealing with the uncivil or criminal elements among us. On that issue, I’m even further to the right than “right wing”. But that is, in fact, the main point here: that my problem is with other people's BEHAVIOR, not what race/ethnicity they are or being preoccupied simply by what their legal status in our nation is (whether legal or illegal). As to one’s legal status (legal or illegal), someone of ANY race or ethnicity can be carrying themself in our streets and communities and, if they weren't misbehaving, how would you or I even notice them or be disturbed by their presence amongst us? What if it was a white Irish person, for instance, who was here illegally and was dressed just like you and I, sitting on a park bench or shopping in a grocery store, just minding their own business? Should you or I be disturbed and up-in-arms by the mere presence of that person in our midst because we learn that this white Irish male is actually in our country illegally? Or would we be disturbed by that person only if they were behaving in a way which disturbed the peace or threatened public safety or destroyed public or private property? In the end, I let the courts and the law deal with someone’s legal status and, if and as deemed appropriate, arrest them if necessary and have them sent back to their own nation or, if they were involved in criminal activity, imprisoned or executed (if they committed a capital crime). In my day-to-day life, when I encounter people out there in the world around me, I’m not able to read their thoughts and know their legal status in our country; all I concern myself about is if they are conducting themselves in a civilized, appropriate manner and if they are acting as responsible, productive, useful members of society while they are amongst us. I’m not concerned with who they are but only with their BEHAVIOR as it affects me or other persons or our society-at-large. JohnInWestbury’s video (and I’ve seen other postings of his over time where he expresses issues with the “illegals” amongst us) appears to portray him as thinking that uncivil or destructive behavior patterns only prevail among the Hispanics or illegals amongst us. The perpetrators of behaviors which adversely affect our quality of life and the maintenance and upkeep of our cities and towns is spread out across the whole spectrum of races and ethnic groups. In my parent’s housing development on Long Island, for instance, we’d have teens of white Anglo-European background vandalizing and stealing mailboxes, break into people’s homes (including my parents), hanging out at shopping centers and malls (in the stores or in the parking lots) and acting boisterous and noisy, engaging in public drinking of alcohol, littering and vandalizing, acting like out-of-control wolf packs, et al.
There are many LEGAL residents of our country who don’t deserve to be here because of their behavior patterns and there are both LEGAL and ILLEGAL immigrants who deserve to be here more than many of our legal lifelong residents because they come across as responsible, productive, useful members of society. So no, MKFARNAM, contrary to what you say (i.e., “ . . . this is about "illegal" immigration NOT "legal" immigration”), this is not really about one’s immigration status at all; it is really about (or should be really about) BEHAVIOR. Whoever misbehaves in our society in a way which affects the quality-of-life of our communities or threatens our public safety or intimidates or harasses other citizens needs to be dealt with accordingly (even harshly, if need be); THAT is (or should be) the issue, not their ethnicity/race or even so much their legal status in-and-of-itself. The fact of the matter is that, other than the purely criminal types who don’t work regular legit jobs here and just try to stay “off of the radar” so that they can engage in a life of crime while here, the “ILLEGALS” amongst us wouldn’t be here if the rest of my fellow citizens would not keep giving them work of all types . . . and the law was enforced to make it necessary for all persons to prove their legal status before being allowed to be employed or to set up a business or send their children to public schools or be provided services. Eliminate these factors and the illegals won’t have any reason or basis to be here (other than the criminal types who are here to engage in drug dealing, gangs and criminal syndicates). But while any illegals ARE, in fact, here amongst us, if they are here for what I deem to be morally and ethically legitimate and acceptable reasons (i.e., just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, escaping terrorism or persecution in their own nations or devastation by natural disasters in their own nations or enslavement in forced servitude in their own nations), I don’t make it a personal issue that they are here amongst us AS LONG AS THEY BEHAVE THEMSELVES AND CONDUCT THEMSELVES AS DECENT CITIZENS SHOULD. I don’t hold it against them that they are simply walking on the street or shopping in a store or seeking to work or communicating with one another in Spanish and so on. We or our ancestors are ALL from someplace else and many of us may well come from a different language background than English. Should that fact, in and of itself, be held against us? Or should we ourselves only be judged based on our prevailing BEHAVIOR PATTERNS? I treat others the way that I myself want to be treated and hold them to the same standards of behavior that I hold myself. If other persons around me are engaged in responsible and civil behavior patterns, then I tolerate their presence and even welcome them. If they are NOT, then I do not tolerate them and am vocal about it. But I make damn sure that my objections to them are based on WHAT THEY ARE DOING OR NOT DOING (i.e., their BEHAVIOR), not on WHO they are (their ethnicity/race/language group). Otherwise, I de-legitimize myself and my objections lose any moral standing they claim to have. As I have stated in a few other forums on CITY-DATA FORUM: "I don't care about the color of skin; I care about the color of behavior". And I hope that this is what all these issues brought up in this posting are about: objectionable and offensive BEHAVIOR PATTERNS on the part of others, not focused on their race or ethnicity or language group (or their immigration status or citizenship).
Last edited by UsAll; 05-18-2011 at 10:21 AM..
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