Actually, one link with rant, one rant suggested in real life.
Immigration
This cute chick is not insulting America as thoroughly and viciously as people seem to be thinking she is. Listen to what she says. She is here, possibly as a student or even as the kind of cheap skilled labor some employers want these days, to make a US dollar, because, as she says, the minimum daily wage she was getting back in Mexico was what many people in big US cities think the minimum hourly wage needs to be raised to. She's homesick. She's been cursed and insulted. She made this video to throw the ugly thoughts back to those who dumped them on her. And she's right. If we think people are "immigrating" to where we are, whether they're sneaking in from a foreign country or commuting in from the other side of town, because they're infatuated with us, we are stupid. People usually change their addresses for reasons having to do with money. Large amounts of money.
And so? Mexico has relatively little cash but, as the girl says, more of other things. Escucha con atencion, chiquita. I understand your situation very well. Even in El Norte here, some of us have inherited houses and land in towns where it's hard to earn an honest penny. For years I went to Washington to make money while claiming the place where I live now as home. That by itself is not an insult to the US, nor is it an insult to Washington. Our nation's capital was actually built to be a place where people came to do jobs, and the original idea was that they'd be paid better for whatever they did at home; a place where nobody felt at home, where everybody missed the better food and prettier scenery and friendlier neighbors they left at home. There's nothing wrong with feeling that way, although there's a stage, typically when people have been in the place where they're working for about a month, called "culture shock," in which the emotional feelings can be overwhelming. We have a whole genre of songs about it.
"I want to go home! I want to go home!
OH HOW I WANT TO GO HOME!"
So, con suerte you can find a pub where a lot of people who miss the same place are hanging out, and organize a car pool to go home on weekends.
But if the place where you're hustling for money doesn't have enough jobs to go around, such that people resent your even being there? Dejalo. Leave it. You dislike them, they dislike you. This is not likely to end well. Vuelvete. Go home.
The people who are making the girl's original video viral are saying, "White women who look at this should lose all sympathy for immigrants." Rubbish. I think, although I hope not to have any nieces in her situation, the mixed group I call The Nephews should only be or marry girls as pretty, brave, fluent in a foreign language, and clearheaded as that one is. I think most of us could use a little more sympathy for immigrants. Enough that we stop encouraging them to come here and tell it like it is. Wages are higher here--so are expenses. Legitimate jobs are hard to get when you're the age that girl appears to be and even harder after age thirty. Our students go to universities and earn advanced degrees and then go back to bussing tables until a job related to those degrees opens up, which may or may not happen before the "You're forty years old, you have an advanced degree, your work experience consists of bussing tables, and you think we'd consider hiring you?" stage of life. Such jobs as are available tend to be offered to beautiful young people who speak perfect English, as distinct from ordinary-looking ones who speak what is just barely noticeable as the dialect of an unglamorous neighborhood. When the ordinary kids who have trouble switching from the slang they speak with friends to the perfect English the immigrant speaks on the job find out that the girl who got the job they wanted is an immigrant...I say they need more sympathy for immigrants. But nobody planning to immigrate should expect that they're going to have any.
Vuelvete, sobrina. With your looks and your English anyone who fails to offer you a job in the tourism industry is an idiot. You will find rich Mexican men who appreciate your linguistic skills and rich American men who appreciate Mexico's attractions. Choose one. There's no reason why you should have to worry about jobs. Follow your dreams, do work you love in a place you love, and stay pretty.
Philosophy
A local lurker asks: If people are responsible for the effects of poison sprays on their neighbors, whether or not they know what effects their poisons are having, where do we draw the line? If you bring someone into your home on a hot day, and the person perspires profusely while hanging out with you in the kitchen, and then when you go out into the sitting room the air conditioning has finally had its effect, and the person becomes chilled, and the person has no resistance and goes into pneumonia, are you responsible for the person's pneumonia?
I'd say no. People have some control over their reactions to heat and chill. By the time we're old enough to be vulnerable to pneumonia, we know when to take a cold or hot drink, put on or take off clothing, step outside, or even assert our right to go home if the heat or chill feels unbearable. Anyway we all cope with more extreme temperatures, outdoors,, as effects of nature that are nobody's fault, and when we lose the ability to cope with them we're probably ready to leave this world. It's possible to think of scenarios where one person could force another person to be exposed to extreme enough temperatures to give the victim pneumonia, but those scenarios don't happen often in real life.
If you are a recovering alcoholic, and your buddies just like to get drunk on certain nights, and instead of going to Bible study groups or taking flower arranging courses they take you out to the club where they expect you to be the designated driver while they get drunk, and one night you decide to get drunk with them and take a cab home...are they responsible for your re-starting that whole process of hangover and addiction and nutrient deficiency and so on and so forth?
I'd say no. That alcohol did not seep into your body out of the air. Unless someone picked up a funnel and poured it into you, which is the sort of thing some drinking buddies think is funny, you had a free choice what to drink while your friends were getting drunk. You could have had a V8, unless your glyphosate reactions make that worse than the alcohol was, in which case you could have had soda pop. I can see how being in the club where you have memories of drinking alcohol would have made it harder for you to choose to drink things a designated driver ought to drink, but still, you did have a choice in the matter. (You still do. Don't blame your friends for not being where you are. Own your choices. Say, "Friends, I made myself very sick when I was out with you, and I can't ask you to take responsibility for my actions. I am just going to have to stay in and watch television while youall go out and party." There is some possibility that they are real friends and will agree to tell the bartender at the club not to sell you anything that contains alcohol.)
What's wrong with using poison sprays outdoors is that, whether or not other people have any idea how much harm breathing poison spray vapors is doing to them, they have no control over what you choose to put into the atmosphere. They might hold their breath for a short time; then they'd lose consciousness and start breathing again. They have the right to be where they are. They have the right to demand that you not poison the air they have no choice about breathing. And that's not even to mention all the poor dumb animals who have no idea what's killing them, sometimes horribly. Spraying poison into the air is just plain wrong, because nobody else has any choice about breathing.
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