porkabilly.com Blog

With the ongoing ignorant debate about illegal immigrants I find it is important to have some straight talk on this issue. By straight talk I don’t mean Lou Dobb’s demonizing of every brown person in the racist way he does.
I want to talk about Alex, my friend, and an employee at my company. Alex is the same age as me 24, hes sorta married (married in a church but can’t get the license) he has a child with his wife who is 2 years old and born here. Both he and his wife work at my company and both have fake IDs and social security numbers because they are not legal. Alex became a criminal here at 2 years old when his parents illegally immigrated to this country. His parents having been here long enough could have become legal if they returned to mexico for 1-10 years, this was not practical for them and their 5 children, 2 of whom are citizens having been born here in the US. Alex is a bright guy, he works harder than anyone in his department and has been with the company for a few years. Alex runs the shipping department and is the go-to guy when it comes to shipping matters, everyone depends on him because they know he is the most capable, intelligent and dilligent employee in that department. Alex makes 11 dollars an hour, which is less than either of his co-workers. The reason he makes less is because our Human Resources department knows his social security number is fake, and know that due to new crackdowns it will be very hard for him to be employed anywhere else. They take advantage of him. His position at any other company would earn him 18-20 dollars per hour. Every 2 weeks when Alex gets paid, money is taken out of his check and sent to Federal, State, Medicaid, and Social Security tax accounts. But Alex will never get credit for this contribution. Alex cannot file for taxes and get back part of that federal money which is owed to him for falling below the poverty line. Alex is bilingual and speaks Spanish and English with equally high levels of proficiency, his English is better than some of our native born Caucasian employees. Alex wants to become a mechanic some day and has taken some community college classes towards this. But Alex knows he can never get certified as a mechanic because he’s not a legally immigrant. Alex is a citizen of this country, he pays taxes, his rent check goes towards his landlord paying municipal taxes, so through that he pays for the fire, police, and hospital services that many argue that illegals do not pay for. Alex isn’t illegal to me, he’s my friend. At the age of 2 when he was brought here he by any standard of our law could not be charged with committing a crime, in our society we believe 2 yearolds do not know the difference between right and wrong. But our system which ignores him and his peers have forced him to break the law by obtaining fake identification. His fake social doesn’t belong to anyone, it’s unassigned so he is just contributing and contributing towards someone else’s retirement that has yet to be born.

Alex lives in fear of his employers, he knows that they will use his immigration status against him when he asks for a raise. His wife is an employee here too, and and more grossly underpaid than him.

I wouldn’t want you to be treated this way. I say legalize all people now. No 2nd tier visas/ temporary worker permits, no fucking 2nd class citizens anymore. This is modern slavery. No more gross profits on the backs of underpaid employees. No more mistreatment of my friends.

No legal citizen would want to work in the sweatshop conditions Alex faces. He and his coworkers literally do work legal citizens are incapable (industrial sewing) or unwilling (shitty work conditions and pay) to do.

If you do not support Alex being legalized, I can not support you, Alex is my friend and I would do the same for you.