Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Immigration reform?

As you probably have seen on every form of news media, yesterday there was a nation wide protest on the USA's immigration laws. In our store, this resulted in many of our Latino kitchen staff and dish staff to not show up. I'm not sure if our store was aware of this pending problem, as from what I could tell, only one person was brought in to replace the 4-5 (I'm guessing) who didn't show up. No extra managers, nothing.

Our longer tenured Latino's all still showed up though, and I am glad they did. Many of them have gone through the process of naturalization (I think there is a new name for it now), and are now proud citizens. I celebrate each time one completes the difficult process. By the time they are done with the naturalization process, they generally know more about the USA than do most average adults who were born here. They study hard, and learn much about our history and government.

As for reform, I'm not in favor of it at this point, but am open to it if a good plan were in place. My family has only been here for a couple of generations (I'm third gen.), but they came here through the processes in place at that time. I realize the borders were much easier to cross when my ancestors came, but countries do have laws. Bowing to immigration protests by illegals seems backwards to me. It means that those who are intentionally breaking the law are setting the law, and that does not seem to be good policy procedure to me. I think those who are here legally who have gone through the process should fight hard for what they believe in, and if possible change the system in legal ways (if that is truly neccessary).

So in our store it resulted in the dishes being done slower, and a few items not being stocked/prepped as fast as normal. I honestly don't think the guests noticed any difference. I also made sure to eat at Chipotle and shop at Wal-Mart yesterday as well.

I say this all realizing that as a white male, I am in the minority in the area where I live. On my block there are only 3 other white families, so I know what the melting pot looks like. I love the diversity, and intentionally have not been living in the suburbs.

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2 comments:

Scott said...

I don't get it. Why did you shop at Wal-Mart?

Lobster Boy said...

Wal-Mart (at least the one closest to where I live) has a disproportionate number of Latinos working at it compaired to the local population. I'd guess 40% of the Wal-Mart staff are Latino, and only 10% of the surrounding population is Latino. The local store was impacted by the day of no work, and they had signs up at the front door explaining that they were short staffed. I was actually in the store during their morning staff meeting/pep rally/brain washing (it's a 24/7 store) and got to listen to the management team of the store explain what was going on, how to handle things, and how to respond to customers. This is because a gathering of all the employees is held on the floor in a department (in this case electronics) because I would guess there are too many people to fit into any private areas of the store. Even short handed it was a lot of people, as it is a Super Wal-Mart.

Lobster Boy