There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States," he said in a speech broadcast in part on local radio and reported on newspaper web sites.
President Fox’s statement was inaccurate but it wasn’t racist. It exposes a long understood paradigm that governs perceptions in the US and, through our representatives, international perceptions as well; Americans don’t think much of African Americans. Mr. Fox is a Mexican, and they are not noted for their fondness for their African roots or anyone else’s. That is beside the point. Its not that African Americans don’t want to do kitchen work, landscaping, construction, and the various other jobs that illegal aliens perform in order to prop up the US economy. The fact o f the matter is that African Americans can’t afford to do the work that illegal aliens perform because it won’t sustain an “American” standard of living. Those pernicious vices like food, shelter, clothing, taxes, and health care just keep getting in the way. After 300 years of slavery, tenant farming and Jim Crow, African Americans have come to expect a fair wage for an honest days work. If you have to muck through shit and grime all day and do back breaking labor, it might seem reasonable to expect slightly more than less than the minimum wage. Many people who employ illegal aliens won’t employ American citizens because then they would be subject to the laws of the United States that actually carry penalties that penalize and are more than a slap on the wrist. I guarantee that if you start punishing companies that hire illegal aliens and require them to pay for the work they do in a manner commensurate with the law of the land then you would see a marked decrease in the hiring of illegal aliens and you would see prices for goods and services increase. If the jobs illegal aliens took paid a living wage in America you would see more Americans move into those jobs.
"The president was just telling the truth," said Celedonio Gonzalez, a 35-year-old carpenter who worked illegally in Dallas for six months in 2001. "Mexicans go to the United States because they have to. Blacks want to earn better wages, and the Mexican — because he is illegal — takes what they pay him."
As for Mr. Fox, here is an idea, let the border swing both ways. What would happen if African Americans could move into the Mexican economy the way Mexicans operate in the American economy. Before we begin a discussion on CAFTA why don’t we get NAFTA to work first. Imagine an African American works as a construction worker, cook, or landscaper in
Georgia,
Alabama,
Arkansas or
Iowa for half of the year and then retires to some border town on the Mexican side of the border during the other half of the year. He raises his family in
Mexico and accumulates property, that he has full legal right to, educates his children in a Mexican school, and uses the Mexican health care system, all on the wages he earns in the
US working for what illegal aliens work for in the
US. If such a thing occurred all hell would break loose.
Finally, Mr. Fox is a Mexican that worked for an American company and deals with American diplomats. Where do you think he got his ideas about African Americans? Never mind what he said, what has America been saying when we weren’t around? If Vicente Fox is a racist, it was learned, practiced, honed and polished in dealing with Americans. Now Jesse - Al, run tell dat.
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