Alan Vervaeke - Admit it, we want illegal immigrants here

The president tweeted the following a couple of weeks ago: "We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections."

Are we being overrun by illegal immigrants? Conservatives love to talk about an "invasion." President Trump used that exact word, too. Invasion. Well, where is it? Along the border in south Texas, Southern California, and Arizona you certainly see noticeable populations of immigrants from Central America. Do you see them in Minnesota? Ohio? North Dakota? New Hampshire? How big of a problem is this invasion, really? Consider the vast majority of Americans — especially those terrified Trump voters afraid of such an invasion, the ones who live in Minnesota, Ohio, North Dakota, New Hampshire, etc — how many actual illegal immigrants do they actually run into on a daily basis? Are they being trampled in Walmart?

The funny and ironic thing though, is that these illegal immigrants come here for the same reason illegal drugs do: BECAUSE AMERICANS WANT THEM.

That's right. Americans want them. We want illegal immigrants and we want a boatload of them. Yes, we do! We like cheap labor. It’s summertime and you need look no further than Shaw’s, Dunkies and Weirs Beach concession stands for local immigrants to do the work that the rest of you fat and lazy sloths won’t. I have a friend who runs a number of Subways who cannot find people to work in them. I bet he’d LOVE some hard-working folks from Costa Rica who would appreciate him. But in the rest of America, they like cheap stuff made by Illegal immigrants. They like their food picked, processed, cooked, and cleaned for cheap. They love cheap lawn care and cheap childcare.

Don’t deny it. I lived in Southern California 35 years ago and saw it every single day. I saw it in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Americans complain about illegal immigrants, but you have businesses who need manual labor, cruising street corners every morning to hire cheap day laborers and they sure aren’t checking for green cards. Heck, I cannot tell you how many different men worked on my lawn in Massachusetts who couldn’t speak a word of English and got paid in cash by their boss every night after a long day of hard work.

No, we like cheap labor and we love not paying benefits, or taxes, or workman's comp, or a living wage, or health care, or any of the other things we'd have to pay to actual Americans. Heck, how many employers do their best to screw over the LEGAL employees who ARE American citizens because they don’t want to pay benefits?

Just like drugs. We complain, we elect righteous pompous men to make them illegal, and then we keep right on buying them. Heroin. Fentanyl. Even marijuana. It is here because there is a DESIRE for it.

The simple truth of the matter is that we like having illegal immigrants around to do the work these businesses won’t pay an American. If they did, then manufacturing, customer service, tech support, programming, billing and payroll, telemarketing, pharmacy services, data processors, medical transcription, credit analysis, insurance underwriting, drafting and illustration, switchboard operators, bookkeeping, and all the other jobs we increasingly send overseas, would still be right here in America. Those jobs are in India, Russia, the Philippines and Romania now.

Trump himself just hired 70 foreign workers for his "Southern White House." The Trump Organization routinely hires foreign workers because they're cheaper than Americans. He says he can't get Americans, but that's because he won't PAY Americans a living wage. Americans can't afford to work for Trump. And a lot of people in that area of South Florida have tried to get hired there. No luck.

And no wall or border — no matter how secure — will change that. Just like it won't stop Americans from buying drugs manufactured in Central America or shipping your jobs overseas. If there's a demand, migrants — legal and illegal — will find a way. Trump tries to scare you with some MS-13 boogieman, but he doesn't talk about the CAUSE.

Finally, imagine sending your child north through Central America to cross our southern border. Alone. For hundreds of miles. Jeez — some of you won’t drive 30 minutes for a JOB! Why would these parents do that? Because no matter how bad we make it, no matter how terrible the journey, no matter the consequences, it's STILL better HERE than THERE. We know it. They know it. And they are willing to chance everything including their own LIFE to get that opportunity. It’s what America was founded on — coming to the Land of Opportunity, the Land of Milk and Honey. It’s the place where so many of you plant your fat keisters expecting the government to pay you to not work and then you resent those who would come here and do the jobs you won’t for the pay that you think you’re better than?

Like the Jews who fled Germany in the 1930s that we turned BACK at the Statue of Liberty; sent home to horror and death, we send these migrants back to violence and death and slavery. Grief? Sadness? Imagine having your child taken from you, not knowing where she is, what happened to him, or if you'll see them again. Imagine being kept away from your toddler so long that your own child no longer recognizes you. Trump dismisses that grief and expects you to, as well. Because he knows that YOU are just as culpable as he is.

It's time for President Trump to be held to account for his own actions, for his own words, for his own presidency. And it's likewise long past time for America to face the fact that immigrants come here because WE can't live the life we've become accustomed to without them. And we don’t want to.

(Alan Vervaeke is a veteran and father happily living in Gilford.)