We have seen a complete absence of workable policy solutions for the Mexican border crisis, so how is this for a plan — put our heads together with people in our local communities as a whole, and subgroups such as the churches and even strapped charities that have always born the brunt, and also government agencies and businesses and housing authorities, and even individuals working individually, to develop a comprehensive plan (government term) to accept immigrants into our society workably when they inevitably arrive here, as they are sure to keep acoming to chase the American dream. It hasn’t gotten much REM sleep lately, as the thus-named band will tell you, in so many more ways than one. So stay awake (rather than going for broke, with WOKE.) Help them to go for the gold that has of late become tarnished bronze. Little glimmer of silver here. Do they have that as well as the long-sought-after gold in Mexico? And do they get to keep the gold that falls, like Americans, when Coming To America?
How to help them leverage such an advantage, when they get to The States, from the provinces?
Maybe we will welcome in someone who will become the next Lady Gaga.
— Sometimes on analogy or analysis, or argument or metaphor, can be taken too far.
As possibly in the post that appears at bookkends to this brief. Imagine, possibly, that you can only accept the immigrant so far.
Can you stick too many people in a room too often, to keep none on the street? Or slash your profits too much, to save the poor?
I really think not. But …
Take these two examples as metaphor.
And place virtually all things on a continuum, albiet on the far upper end. Is that too far left?
How you ever seen the silly sovereign citizen video clips? Yes, of course, question authority and how it is allowed to rule over you, but make your stance logical. For after all, there always has to be a ruler. Even if he or she wields a ruler like a nun. Sorry about that, but there can never be a real thing like anarchy. Because some overlord will always rise to the top, and then … there is a ruler! And layers of sub-rulers, even if under him as minions. Power can never be shared equally.
And, who actually eats eight servings of veggies, even if a vegetarian devoid of consuming meat? Or what, four f—— kinds of an even fave fruit? I don’t know anybody who even hoards that much junk food, much less commonly consume a couple of sticks of carrots. This is merely an ideal, to keep in mind, obviously, and not be removed and made a Piece Of Mind, but in realization that is just not practical or doable. Are you listening Bernie Sanders? —
But to use a cliche, we all have to roll up our sleeves and sacrifice from our relatively greater wealth, perhaps sell the cloth that is saved, then donate those few sheckles, (since as many migrant workers know, a ragged T-shirt, even when it was worn by WASPs, is better than no shirt at all.) At an hourly rate of a migrant worker who would launder those for us, one piece at a time, and piecemeal just might win the game if enough pieces are conserved and converted. And that may be the rub.
So there can be, say, seven ways to win it, the total of all the sums. With a creative mind opened sevenfold. But there are also seven deadly sins, and seven sacred and verily scary roads to hell. So, each individual action and effort and ability mounts and is magnified, for good or evil. There is no such thing as: Just one passibly bad legislative bill, or excusing yet-another housing denial that could be avoided by restructuring a security deposit, or low-pay jobs for which people could be better trained with the price of, in time and fees, one less trip to the golf greens, or not teaching a second and related skill to such employees who thus might be given more to do than shoot the breeze if not the (busy?) boss who won’t delegate, as profit ebbs if the lone task of said employee idles for a time and kills productivity, or wisdom in shrugging off the advice of retirees or refugees who have been in the working-world trenches and can teach management a better way …
So I will offer some practical solutions, if not food for thought as even that can help the surge of refugees. Since maybe it is the piggyback, added idea, so share it even if you don’t actually volunteer, you have that could cumulatively thrust us past the rule of sevens to aid our fellow humans. For eight is not enough, when it comes to the outdated ideals of those TV-touted times that need some alteration by even lawmaking amendment — or re-establishment of their few positive principles.
What if we did this with housing more refugees and especially families, even if at the rather slight expense, by comparison, of individual comforts: Let more of them in some apartments then is usually allowed by things such as code, to live together in love if not luxury. Yes, maybe that bedroom only has enough room for what’s prescribed to be two people, but a bit of room on a couch, for a third, is better than than such on a dirt floor in the desert. Or add a get-away-from-the-rest nook, it need only be the size of a bathroom, aside of the front apartment door entry. And another tucked in the corner beside something they don’t often have in the Mohabi, a microwave? Little kids can play for a while with little dolls in some fairly little places. And just provide a distance between them and mom and dad, and siblings.
Other things could also be in the mind of building planners, such as to make rooms just-even-a-bit-if-budget-stretching big enough to give options for using partitions (decorated with what would be wall hangings?) and things like bunk beds to make more living space for just a few other people to live, and share the rent. Even a great big throw rug can provide the illusion of being a buffer. And where some of us reside, the party and gathering rooms and patios, are often ending up virtually empty despite their great big spaces, so maybe just issue a “pass” that has a time limit for their use to spread the wealth around, so to speak. And defuse the severe housing need, refugees included and at the forefront.
I know, not many people would be tolerant of making apartment buildings become nearly mere crammed dormatories, but there is a greater principle. And it can be made practical by when needed and not pages in length, sprinkling in limits here and there, and giving refugees and others appeal options that are straight-forward and cut through red-tape. Is it really that important if your pet be a such-is-now-needed certified service animal, or if say, merely a tiny stay-at-home dog who gives you therapeutic comfort but yips a bit when you’re hurting from war wounds and worse. That call should not need to be made by religiously reading through several paragraphs of information, and then cross referencing to other paragraphs in other places.
Also, there are few better places to relax than in an easy chair plopped in the back corner of the back (or front) entryway to stairwell(s) leading into your very building. So make use of them. Really, wouldn’t you like to share it, for just a little time, time at a time?
I have no doubt that most migrant workers head south for the winter, where unlike Snowbirds they mind (or should I say mine) the greener pastures, literally, as they need to keep on working. No vacation for these guys, and gals.
But you know what? Like a motel maid who becomes very familiar with the rooms she (or he) cleans, and their nooks and crannies to arrange them faster, there is an advantage to an employer to have a worker who knows the drill, literally, and you don’t have to fill in the blanks with regularly recurring newbies, even if you take the stance that manual labor does not require much time for you to get them up to speed. They still need, for instance, to know what cleaners to use on what surfaces, to save your capitalist costs. In our materialistic society you buy boatloads of those that do not duplicate each other, to be used on every imaginable surface, and of any strength. (As a counterpoint, a bartender friend said she can go a long way with one jug of basic bleach.) And even Lenin’s housekeepers, and I’ll bet he had them, I’m sure needed to quickly learn a nurse’s corner.
So even if not a tree or vegetable hugger, you have to see that when plucking the peppers off the field you own, there is an advantage to not keeping on with a need to keep on, come spring and its basic training. Get it to having no training required. So to get the same workers coming back year after year, why not give a travel voucher, even if its used from Mexico. If you can manage a farm and its hundreds of acres (that’s most all of them these days), you can figure out with banker help maybe, how to encrypt such a voucher for only travel use. And even set it up for food use, and not traveling steak, that’s low-cost and healthy, like what they harvest — sans cheeseburgers. I get that farmers as owners, especially the non-corporate kind, don’t make much money either, but maybe you could get them as far as Kansas City? Then hop a train? Every bit helps, like a half of a hot pepper on a sandwich.
It’s not just charity. It could be good business.
What about allowing migrants more of another basic US experience, that of the fitness club. Yeah. It has to ache, picking crops all day, bending over and lifting constantly, and could it be that your workers would be more productive with the knots out of their back, come the next morn and go at it in renewed fashion. Again, choose activity options that are mostly based on such relief, if your business has short funds, and forego the actual racquetball?
And if you really want want to perk up your profits, learning from those in the trenches who know a thing or two, maybe mandate that your managers once in a while hang out in the hot tub to gather with those who do the food gathering, bonding in a good and human way.
How bad is that ache? Things and technologies and such may have evolved, but I was thinking this on a recent trip back to the same abode, where harvesting peppers was the thing: The workers would lie flat, I’m guessing, as best they could on what was much like a pallet, then grab from in front of them as they inched along. That’s an ouch. You don’t do it anymore when you’re pushing retirement age, if you can afford to, so maybe then you could just drive the tractor-type unit that makes the whole apparatus go. So … what if, and maybe come now its all been done before, install a button that would replace what you’re yellin’ for. The picker could hit it if he was about to miss a few big ones, a message for the driver to slow down the pace for a moment. So everyone is grinnin’ as the picker wouldn’t have to rush as much, the tractor driver has a more vital purpose, and the farm owner gets a better profit margin, even if just measured per pepper. All this, hypothetically, just because you invested in a few (Old School) buttons to hit. This chastisement from a blogger who has not yet established even a donate or subscribe button, and to those who have clamored, yes they are coming when my IT guy is done with a long lunch, so it’s literally, do as I say not as I do. That’s a bigtime music commonality, too.
Lastly on the subject, and this could really keep the crews coming back to you for decades, not the other guy down the dusty farm road, set up a small college fund for their kids — who might be working on the same fields too unless attending summer school, so more money for you since you’re making this measure — to be fully redeemed after a given number of years of consecutive service. The parents might not be able to go back to school themselves, but this could be just the ticket to enabling their children to — and let’s just go ahead and call it this — have a better life.
To go one step further, if I have not overtaxed you already, what if a big-business farmer would also become a landlord — another chore I realize — and build better-than-barracks housing units for his employees, and thus retain total control over their building template (and they usually do have them) to make them best for the migrant families they have come to know, or should have. See above for things like room size.
All these things need to be allowed by reshaping existing rules and codes and laws, and they need not be exactly the same in every town — although that can create a slippery slope to work in or on — and a determining factor might simply by the sheer income and other means city by city. Thus, creativity and flexability could be keys here, but they need a proper framework within to work. And these things would likely have a price tag, but more than that just require say, more feet on the floor to provide service, occasional quick compliance checks and yes, security. So collaberation between all sorts of entities and individuals would be a must, as so often they run on a parallel course but do not intersect to work as a team. So a by-product of all this, for business and profit margin, might be weeding out some unneeded duplication of tasks.
So in floating my craft as a writer, did I miss the boat on these topics as I swim upstream? Should I go jump in the lake? Or did I defend those who “would sell my soul for water. Nine years of breaking my back …”