You're Not Helping

From BLOGS_IMAGES

I would like to start out by saying, I am not racist, nor am I prejudice. At least not any more than the average American. I do have some qualms with stereo-typical ethnic behavior, such as wearing your pants around your knees so you underwear shows, or pushing a shopping cart full of Twinkies and frozen pizza 12 blocks and then leaving the cart in a local park for someone else to push back to the store.

This is a melting pot after all, and all those Irish, and Polish Europeans helped make this country what it is. They defeated fascism and made us into a great economic and political powerhouse on the planet. The Chinese helped build the railroads, and African Americans and Hispanics tamed the wild west and fought in the Civil War. People that come here, make a difference and work within the system to become part of the system are an asset.

Unfortunately, this isn’t really very common anymore. Many of the immigrants that I interact with at my job are here seeking the riches of entitlements. They want health care, good paying jobs, free food, and free assistance.

During this last week, I had to facilitate two hearings. These hearings consisted of numerous meetings that had to be coordinated and reviewed on a schedule throughout the day. The schedules started at 8:30am and typically ran till past 4pm in the afternoon. Many people are invited to these meetings since they deal with child welfare and and other social issues. Invitations are sent to all the interested parties to attend the meetings, both in English AND Spanish. The interested parties are not required to attend, so we never know exactly how many people will be at each meeting during the day.

So it was with a bit of disgust, that twice (2 times) this week, a Frito Bandito and his old lady showed up for a meeting, not being able to speak a word of English, and demanded that we supply them with translators so they could participate. We don’t have a problem with this, except for the fact that the invitations for the meetings state IN SPANISH, that if you need an interpreter, call ahead of time so one can be arranged for you.

These interested parties read the invitations, they knew when and where to show up, but they didn’t bother to inform us of their handicap before showing up. So the end result, is that we have to scramble to find an interpreter that can teleconference into the meeting for them to understand what is going on. This means that a 35 minute meeting runs 45 minutes overtime. In turn, this makes all the other interested parties that show up for their meetings have to wait an extra HOUR for their meetings to begin.

If that alone was not bad enough. Both of these individuals decided to cop an attitude in the meeting about how not enough was being done for them by the 'system'.

I have this sneaking suspicion, that if I got arrested for speeding in Mexico, and I coped an attitude with the magistrate in Ciudad Juarez and told them that their speed limits were stupid and then demanded an interpreter to explain that to everyone, I might not be seeing U.S. soil again for a very long time.

This is a ‘melting pot’ folks, not a smorgasbord. Learn how to blend in and become part of the whole instead of standing off to the side screaming for attention. You're not helping your ethnicity, your race or your cause.