Unappreciative Citizens Depreciates the Land

     Walking down Madison Avenue, last week, I spotted an everyday occurrence: a Latin American guy pushing a food delivery cart on the sidewalk.  

     It occurred to me that Central and Southern Americans do so much for our nation.  Yet, the folks who use their labor are unappreciative, stingy, and oftentimes arrogant.  They might treat their babysitter, tailor, or postal worker better than their "laborers".  As such, they're no better than the robber-barons of the Gilded Age who paid their servants a mere pittance and had them sleep 3 in a room.  How little we've come--especially touting ourselves as Land of Free and Brave!
     As a teenager, I mowed our lawn.  Several years later, you couldn't find a Caucasian person willing to push their own lawnmower.  Instead, they underpaid some Mexican labors to   do it... and those laborers usually worked for an overpaid Caucasian guy.  

     Brown-skinned Food Delivery bikers brave the weather for the convenience of higher-paid city-dwellers.  At laundromats, guess what nationality is usually maintaining the facility?  Which demographic is often the nanny for well-to-do families?
     I worked for several years at an Italian-owned Long Island catering hall.  All the maintenance, laundry and kitchen staff were Latin American.  The owners bought 2 houses nearby and had much of their staff sleep there--in shifts!  Everyone was crammed in, doing they duties/sleeping/cooking in shifts.  So medieval.  
     Nearly any restaurant kitchen DEPENDS on (often illegal, non-Green Card) Latin American labor!

     When renovations occurred in my family home, a Mercedes-driving white guy at the showroom was paid, 

but Mexican guys did the work.  

     If one of them gets hurt while working, their "temporary" boss anonymously drops them off at a hospital ER room... knowing that they don't have insurance or ID... and not caring.  
     Moving into my current apartment, my European Superintendent had similar laborers "freshen things up".

     When I brought my American-made car for its many repair appointments, lesser-paid Latin guys prepped it and cleaned it; white mechanics repaired it (or tried to).  

     Last winter, Lewis and I visited our wealthy friend in upstate NY, and at his local Car Wash, a Mexican guy did the grunt work in the frigid air... for a $2.00 tip per car.  (The same that a parking valet gets for doing much less effort).

     Driving around suburbia, police ignore the Latin guys riding in the backs of Lawn Service trucks (an illegal act), but focus on middle-class speeders or those not wearing a seatbelt.  Cops also ignore the places--in nearly every community--where profiting Contractors pick up gangs of available "day laborers".  

     It's the same way they ignore the illegal multiple-person subletting that goes on in Flushing, Queens.  (All of those details are described in my Life Story blog entries, circa 2012:  

https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2012/11/0-false-18-pt-18-pt-0-0-false-false.html

     For most of my adult life, nearly every Cleaning Woman I've encountered (or heard about) has been Latina, regardless of whether it was for an office, retail store, or private home.
     What a shame that the last decade hasn't improved much.  Now, our President declared it a "top priority" to build walls to keep them out.  It seems rather ironic, but it might be a wake-up call to comfortably-unmotivated Americans.  

     Funny, those same Americans "buy into" the Nike slogan, "Just Do It"... which is what they tell their Latin laborers.