Illegals Sucking Up Food and Help Meant For Poor Citizens

Hey

I worked today. For those of you who don't know, I work in a crisis ministry in N.C. that helps people below the poverty limit with food and utility bills. Our main source of funding is our Thrift Store. We also get government funding, donations from private citizens and churches.

In the past 6 months I have seen a major increase in the amount of Mexican illegals coming to us for help, and as a result, the amount we can help "legal" poor people with has been drastically cut. This has become depressing as hell for me and the people we work with when we watch what is going on. And mind you, the only problem we have with Mexican illegals is just that - they are illegal and they pay no tax, get paid in cash, and do not respect ANY of the laws of the United States or North Carolina!

Race is unimportant to us. I use the term Mexicans because that is the nationality of illegals that we here in Western North Carolina are dealing with. Other areas probably deal with other Nationalities, but we deal 99.9% with MEXICAN illegals.

Today a group of 6 Mexican immigrants came in and 5 of them were new arrivals to the area. Two of the women bought shirts and had the nerve to complain that one cost $1.00 and the other $1.15, and THEN they bitched about the tax.

To top it off, we were giving away free produce, two of each kind of veggie to a person (4 varieties today). One of the women filled up two bags and ran out of the store, and the other was plopping her 10th Butternut Squash into the bag when I stopped her and told her only dos (2) of each, not 10! She got pissy and left the store without any produce.

Now, we deal with actual starving people in our store, old people who don't eat much and who have to chop wood for heat or else freeze. People who lost jobs in the textile mills and furniture factories here when they moved TO Mexico. Those people have families, too.

HALF of our food and utility assistance goes to illegal Mexicans. There are at least 6 other food distribution points in this county of 15,000 people (where the median income is $21,000).

Unemployment is high here but of course, the statistics only count the ones receiving unemployment and does NOT count illegals at all. Here is what the Mexicans do (and the folks at our fellow food pantry- that deals almost exclusively with Mexicans - agree):

NOTE: There are a few exceptions to what I cite below, but not very many.

1. They live in apartments with 10 other people. The men work, the women have babies that become US citizens - thus they qualify for food stamps and welfare.

2. The men work on the Xmas tree farms, etc. for cheap wages because they live 10 to an apartment - This overcrowding into housing is illegal, but obviously they don't care because just being here is illegal and they know that no one is gonna do anything to stop it.

3. The men work and send their wages to Mexico and they come to places like where I work to support them because they have no money left. They make the rounds of all the free food and utility assistance programs. Once they send enough money to Mexico, their extended family arrives and the cycle starts again. In effect, we are paying for more to come here.

4. They do not get driver's licenses (except in rare cases), drive junk cars that are hazardous and do not insure them. They don't know the rules of the road. This past summer such a person - a woman - slammed head-on into a car carrying four senior citizens and killed 2, injured the others, and guess what? She, the illegal, not only had no license, insurance, or proper registration (they find cars broken down on the side of the road and steal the license plates) BUT ALSO no one deported her, put her in jail, or anything else. She just disappeared, and the family of the dead people were forced to pay the funeral expenses, take the monatary losses and not only that, they lost two family members!

5. They STEAL. Shoplifting, the aformentioned theft of license plates, they even break into dumpsters to steal IDENTITIES so they can apply for - and get - credit cards! They break into OUR dumpster to steal clothing we have discarded - not to wear, but to sell at flea markets so they can suppliment their incomes and send more to Mexico. Part of my job now is to cut the clothing we discard so they can't do that. They have destroyed 3 dumpsters of ours, and they litter the parking lot with the trash they throw out of it. They break into cars and trucks in our tiny lot.

REMEMBER, we're talking a county with 15,000 citizens and an average income under $22,000! Our poverty level is skyrocketing.

Now, the place where I work is also supported by funding from FEMA's emergency food and shelter program and several local churches. Guess what? We are not allowed to ask these Mexicans if they have "green cards", YET we must ask other people for their social security cards.

Get the drift? This WASHINGTON D.C. administration WANTS this to go on. So do the churches. I forget how many hundred million Bush wants to put into a program to help illegal aliens FIND WORK and HOUSING (not the same as the Guest Worker program) but it is more than $200,000,000. Meanwhile he wants to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy and make them permanent while cutting Medicare, medicaid, and Social Security. Right now there are programs run by the government NOT OPEN to citizens that support immigrants and ILLEGAL immigrants. Funding for small business, housing grants, etc. YOU and I cannot get this money. Yet our taxes pay for it.

I secretly think Bush's plan is to get the Mexicans to force down wages so that ALL Americans will be forced to lower their living standards. Then the rich can get richer.

I THINK the plan is to eventually ANNEX MEXICO in a non-hostile overthrow. I think he wants Mexico to be part of the United States. And with the new eminent domain laws, maybe he will take YOUR house to put up public housing for illegals ("guest workers"). Far-fetched or not, the possiblilites exist.

So what is the answer to dealing with the illegal immigrant population? Who is the most at fault? The church or the government?

Don't hand me this "I don't blame them for coming here crap." They have a perfect right to apply for and get visas. There ARE Mexicans who DO come here legally. They pay the taxes, they buy car insurance, and they are valuable members of the American work force and population.

We've exported thousands of businesses to Mexico that employ hundreds of thousands of Mexican Nationals, and Bush wants to open our borders to allow Mexicans to come here to take many of the remaining jobs that he says "American Citizens don't want." Tell that to those out-of-work textile workers and furniture factory workers!

Right now the South is being overrun by illegals, and we need a solution FAST! In THIS small county, it has become a near-crisis! Some of these families have lived here for 6 generations and for the first time, there is no work.

Poverty is alive and growing South of the Mason-Dixon line, and much of the money alloted to helping out is going to the Illegal Alien. That SUCKS. I've become a hard-liner on this subject after 3 years of seeing the problem in action.

What about YOU? Comments, please.