American Dream
Sitting here watching the wind whip the snow around outside the dining room window. We are fortunate this year. The heavy snows have passed north and east of us. It is though, colder out than a well-digger’s back side. In its present state, my fireplace is not much help. It’s been rendered to a large grayish white block of mortar. It blends well with the wind swept snow and the single digit temperature. The new facing brick to be installed next week.
I can see the snow because the Secretary of War directed me to remove the drapes. And I did it. With the painter working, it is the logical time to take down the curtains and carry them to the cleaners. Oh, geeze I am sorry. I meant to say custom window treatments from Sonni’s House of Drapes. Makes me long for the days in the trailer park in Newport News, Virginia when a bed sheet got the job done until we could afford a pack of curtains. We did not mind it much. When we left there on our second Army move, everything we owned fit into one box. When I look at Adolph’s revenge standing smugly against the wall, I consider that we have traveled quite a distance from there seeking the American dream. Too many moves and too much busted furniture to contemplate.
Did you hear? Under the president’s executive amnesty decree illegal immigrants may be able to claim up to four years of tax credits? As much as 24 thousand dollars. Looking at my social security records, I believe my first year’s wages as a working American was three-thousand dollars. I worked hard for it. Is this the fundamentally transformed American dream?
The brick mason who is renovating my fireplace, learned his trade from his father. He is a hardworking man. Typically has a helper or two with him. He told me he went off to the Navy for four years and then came back and started school. He had no intention of being a brick mason like dad. But, here he is. A craftsman. A trade well learned. He tells you what it is going to cost and when it will be complete. Then delivers. From experience, I trust his work. I am happy to be along his path to achieving the American dream. Independent craftsmen like him are becoming rare in our society. They are the people who built this nation one brick at a time. I wonder how unskilled underpaid labor will impact how they earn their money.
The painter is as interesting. He is the Pastor of small church. From a congregation of around fifty, he does not earn Joel Osteen level money. The other difference is that he’s an actual preacher and not the prophet of abundance. To augment his meager Pastor’s salary, he paints houses and mows lawns while also fulfilling his pastoral responsibilities.
I am very particular about anyone I hire to work at Pendry manor. The brick mason was recommended to me by another craftsman who did work for me. People such as him do not recommend hacks because their own reputation is on the line. The brick mason recommended the painter. These men are independent contractors. They do not belong to any company or union. The quality of work they produce is what keeps them working.
The American dream. We have been told the playing field must be leveled so everyone has an equal chance achieving it. Government wants to provide the path to the dream. Does not everyone have an equal chance now? The freedom to choose a path? Is government going to redistribute the dream? Take some of the brick mason’s or pastor’s dream and dole it out to illegal immigrants?
Yes dear, turning of the computer now. Headed for the dry cleaner.
© 2015 J. D. Pendry American Journal
Category: Politics
What we SHOULD be doing is taking all those combat-veteran troops we still have on Active Duty, and deploying them along our southern border with orders to stop and search every single vehicle that comes along a road. In the meantime, to fortify the entire border with machine gun emplacements, mines, concertina wire, and orders to shoot to kill anyone who attempts to cross at other than designated areas.
Then, start jailing and heavily fining anyone who provides employment, shelter, food, or anything other than emergency medical care to illegal aliens.
Start rounding up all the illegals and placing them into all those FEMA camps we apparently have dotted around the nation. Fingerprint, photograph and retna-scan every single one of them, then inform them they are being deported, any property they own here is to be forfeited to cover the costs of their incarceration and deportation, and any bank accounts also seized. Their children will be deported with them, and if they were born within these United States, they may come back here legally at a time and place of their choosing, but without their parents.
Inform those being deported that if they are found attempting to enter these United States again, that they will be incarcerated at hard labor for life. Then back it up.
This is OUR country. We have a process, a legal process, to come here to live, work, and become a citizen. We, the people, own this land, and it is NOT public land for anyone and everyone to arrive and squat upon.
And once we get that southern border squared away, we should start working with our friends up north to deal with THAT border as well.
@ AW1 TIM:
I like your ideas!
“This is OUR country”. I think the Native Americans could say your entire post about you and your blood.
Did you ever drive through the Salinas or Central Valleys in the 60’s or 70’s, you know before those uppity wetbacks had the nerve to think they were entitled to a decent wage for picking those salad fixin’s for you.
Between Manifest Destiny and a failed “War on Drugs”, we have created “Our” immigration problem.
We bought Alaska, and the “Louisiana Purchase”, because we were dealing Europeans and Russians, the Mexicans we just ripped off. Godbless Tejas!!
The Indians took the land from people who were here before them. They weren’t the first. If it wasn’t for the European colonists, they’d still be living in the stone age. I don’t have a lot of pity for them, nor for apologists who seem to think that they were this proto-hippie, in tune with nature, peaceful peoples. they were slavers, warmongers, rapists and torturers. They took what they wanted when they wanted it. That’s fact. That’s history.
As to the migrant workers, I have absolutely NO problem with anyone who wants to come here legally. I will welcome with open arms anyone who wants to make the application for a visa, pay the fees, and follow the laws. My mother was one of those. She did it by the book. She didn’t violate the border and then apply for welfare.
These illegals are violating our sovereignty. They are coming here and they are NOT doing jobs Americans won’t do. They are working for wages that Americans can’t afford to work for, and both the illegals, and the folks who hire and support them need to be dealt with quickly and harshly.
So take your leftist pity party and suck it. You and your attitude are exactly the base of our immigrant problem.
The first of my blood to get here was an English soldier in 1637. The last was my Grandmother in 1902, so the whole “Immigrant” thing is no news flash to me.
“they were slavers, warmongers, rapists and torturers”
And we all know those colonists were “God fearing” Christians who did none of these things.
I am no apologist, but when I make a fucking mess, I take responsibility for it!
We had no immigrant problem as long as they came and worked for pittance and cost us nothing, so we opened the gates.
What you see now, is the progressives realizing a ready source of voters flowing into the country.
Your problem sir, is that you are focused on the sheep and not the Shepard.
Just as it is done with our war on drugs, lock up the sheep, the Shepard gets a pass.
Leftist, no not really
We defeated Mexico. Yiu ate free to give your little slice of America to whatever group you feel guilt over as restitution. And yiu are free to take part of your woes and give to an underpaid, unskilled illegal if you feel so inclined
Just don’t expect me to go along with your bullshit and sure as fuck don’t try and force your BS on me through legislation
I’m the byproduct of many people who were immigrants. My people started coming here with the Mayflower’s second trip. They kept coming. They came for the opportunities to become something more than just peasants and serfs. They fought in wars, started schools, had families, founded small towns that grew into large town. They were farmers, schoolteachers, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, ranchers, explorers – you name it, they did it.
I found my maternal great-great grandfather’s pocket journal. He sold Old Cow at the end of the farming season for $10 and ended the year with a profit of $90. Not too bad for an immigrant.
When I get tomatoes in a pack at the grocery store, they have a label that tells me, in several languages, their country of origin:
Product of Mexico. Produit de Mexique. Producto de México. Produto do México. Produkt z Meksyku. Продукт Мексики.
This is a polyglot nation. The Irish, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Russians, Polish, Czech, French, Paki, etc., all came here for the same opportunities my ancestors found. Some of them succeeded notably. Stakowski was an immigrant, as weres Enrico Fermi and Enrico Caruso.
I lived for 30 years in apartment buildings in Chicago that had walls 2.5 feet thick, built in the 1920s of solid brick by immigrants.
The Brooklyn Bridge was built by immigrants from various countries who could not speak English, but could understand clearly drawn, srongly detailed plans drawn to specify how, for example, the pulleys were rigged to hold the massive cables that suspend the roadway and walkway.
If you wish to turn your back on their contributions and grumble, that’s your choice, but I don’t take that choice. If it weren’t for immigrants, I might not be here.
Well said.
As I said above:
“I have absolutely NO problem with anyone who wants to come here legally. I will welcome with open arms anyone who wants to make the application for a visa, pay the fees, and follow the laws. My mother was one of those. She did it by the book. She didn’t violate the border and then apply for welfare.”
Ex, just one little detail. Overall almost all our freedom seeking forefathers came and citezens legally.They did not flood the U*SA with their hand out demandaning free stuff. Forgive the poor spelling really bad this time around. Make them follow the Laws of our land. Rant off Joe
Legally?
Okay, immigration laws did not exist until 1882. The Exclusion Acts, a series of restrictive laws prohibiting immigration, specifically targeted Chinese immigrants. Subsequent immigration laws were eventually consolidated under the Immigration Act of 1924, effecting certain nationalities and social classes of Asian immigrants.
Ellis Island was a US Immigration Station from 1892 to 1954. Angle Cove, in California, was built in 1905 and started operations in 1910.
Before that, immigration was an open door policy. So exactly what do you mean by ‘legal’ as opposed to ‘illegal’? If we are to debate immigration as ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, then everyone I count as ancestors is an illegal immigrant, because there WERE NO immigration laws until the Exclusion Acts were passed.
I said my people started coming here with the Mayflower’s 2nd trip. That was in the 17th century. They were escaping the religious and political turmoil going on in England and France. They just boarded the boat and sailed over here. Were they ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ immigrants?
You see, it’s not quite so cut and dried, is it?
As “MaeWestWoodie” says above, spot on. Many of the “my ancestors came legally” crowd also need to remember their first act (leaving their country of origin without the permission of the government) was often viewed as illegal. Have a male ancestor from Prussia, Sweden, or several other countries? It was likely he left to avoid mandatory military conscription.
Your ancestor “coming legally” was the equivalent of a draft dodger…
Obama makes Benedict Arnold look like a Patriot! At least B.A. was a honorable General before he defected, Obozo has been an A.H. from the beginning, ALWAYS an enemy of America!!
T.O. (“Thanks Obama”)
So you never heard of press gangs?
Do you understand the source of the term ‘Shanghaied’?
Reread what I said: there were NO immigration laws in place in this country until 1882.
Ex, over a 100 years we have had laws about imirants. Looking back we can see the right or wrong BUT we talking about now and laws we have now. This is the Won bypassing our laws to buy votes for his party. LBJ sound familar? Joe
Oh, I understand that, Joe. I can’t think of anything more obnoxious than the film I saw at NPC of LBJ making a speech to a crowd of Mexicans in the vicinity of the ‘Perdunales’ River. You have no idea how condescending he was in that speech, but he damned well wanted their votes.
There are over nine million Legal Permanent Residents that are eligible to naturalize that haven’t yet, an easier potential voting bloc (able to vote immediately) to reach. All naturalization is after Legal Residency anyway, so the theory of it being about votes doesn’t hold up well. Those Mexicans hearing LBJ had the potential to amnestied by President Reagan, that’s what provided any potential for them to (eventually) vote.
Besides the Chinese Exclusion Act being passed in 1882, there was also regulation that established a 50 cent “Head Tax” for immigrants. Ship captains landed some before port to avoid the tax, there were just too many places to enter before the immigration depots went up. Actually there weren’t any national quotas until 1921 that prevented otherwise healthy, solvent Europeans from immigrating.
I think Joe was actually referring to LBJ going after the Black voters and his quotes from that action…
I would like to add that while my skating coach, who is Polish, came here legally from Poland and married a Chilean immigrant, who also came here legally, there are many, many Chinese, Russian and Polish people who are here NOT legally.
It isn’t just Latinos, you know.
It’s not just Latinos only coming illegally either. At the point that we interviewed at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez (the only location in Mexico that handles immigrant petitions) they were finalizing 800 to 1000 visas per weekday that wasn’t a U.S. or Mexican holiday. It’s actually in an even larger facility now, although illegal and legal immigration by Mexicans is currently net-zero (there are more going back or being deported than are coming). Two-thirds of all legal immigration is from a marriage to a U.S. citizen, whether it is from Mexico or any other country.
My Parents had a horse stable built a few years ago, and plenty of young and capable people were around that could do it. The wouldn’t because they were afraid of being caught making too much money and losing their welfare or SSI, thus they had to hire a Mexican crew to build it. I have no problem with those who enter according to our laws, the only thing we owe illegal aliens is DEPORTATION. We’ve also had too many people living too long on handouts, their votes being bought by liberals with our tax dollars!
Note for some parts of the country, a “Mexican crew” doesn’t necessarily mean they are illegal aliens…
Of course not, my point was that there were plenty of locals that were capable of a good day’s work but had gotten too fat & lazy from welfare to bother working for anything.
While at work I see the costs of the illegal immigrant on our society and it just galls me.
I have people coming through my checkout that cannot speak a word of English but have all The appropriate welfare cards including WIC, Food Cards and EBT transfer cards.
They know the laws of those programs and have no problem charging us taxpayers with the bill.
They get all that they can get on their cards then argue with me about why this or that particular item on their cards.
Then they buy the clothes with their EBT cards and when that is empty they reel out a wallet or roll of money filled with hundreds, twenties and they are rolls of them…
And this is what those of you that say how they are all such wonderful people and that we should open our country and pocketbooks to them without question.
A couple of months ago an entire family of legal immigrant Mexicans were killed by a drunk felon in a high speed chase with a car that had been drinking and have many violent crimes on his record…
Yes, what Stretch peloser said, they are as pure as the wind driven snow…
My ass, come on down to south Texas and see what is really going on, idiot libs…
I’ve got two stories involving people immigrating here to the U.S.
The first involves a rental I bought, it came with a Vietnamese family. Long story short, they had a son who was their spokesperson. Mucho attitude about the white an keeping his family down. I asked him where. In Vietnam his family was from. He gave me the big city name. I asked him what village. He told me. I said I’ve been there. His. Eyes got really big. Anyway I asked him since his family had been here had his parents ever worked. No he said, I knew for a fact his dad went fishing every day. So I pretty much told him his dad had a better life than I had. Shut him up real quick.
The second one involved a Hispanic, who rented from meand did landscaping forme with my rentals. I treated him real well like I do everyone who works for me. The little prick went and collected rents from a couple of my tenants and snuck out to Mexico. I tried to track him down, no luck,if I find him I’m taking a trip to Mexico!
I guess my point is:
I’m not real sympathetic to the plight of the immigrant esp. Illegals. So many of them come here and have no intention of being productive. and go on the dole. I’ve ever understood how. Someone can arrive here illegally, pop some kids and collect welfare!
There, I’m thru venting