Posted on 06/23/2009 7:19:32 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
Reporting from Mecca, Calif. -- An hour before dawn in the camp of last resort. Dozens of men and a few women are asleep in the beds of pickup trucks, in the back seats of cars or on flattened cardboard boxes in the dirt behind the Toro Loco market. The air is cool, but the terrible sun is close at hand. Martin Zavala is wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a Scooby-Doo pillow, a pack of Marlboros under his neck. Thieves prowl at night and will snatch what is not secured. Drunks and meth-addled tweakers tease the dozing grape pickers, poking them with knives or guns. Zavala, his brother and four friends positioned their vehicles to form a protective perimeter -- modern-day covered wagons on a wild frontier.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Sorry! No sympathy here. Collecting three or four unemployment checks under different names?....Just a taxpayer rip off to me!....
Obamas fault!!
I get to do that for four years.
I make no apologies to the L.A. Times for not caring about illegals being exploited in the U.S. or for buying grapes for two bucks a pound or less. Go back to Mexico.
No sympathy here either....let ‘em all go back home
I get to do that for four years.
Unfortunately, you'll be saying that for the rest of your life.
Not being able to afford to house, clothe, feed, educate, employ, and provide health coverage for everyone in the solar system makes you a RACIST!!
Flog them and throw them over the border.
Bastards.
Honest legal immigrants are welcome.
These scum are not.
Why are we paying unemployment to illegal aliens in the first place?
End this madmess. We are destroying our country for cheap grapes?
Government agencies are working with not only illegal aliens, but those who are committing unemployment fraud? What isn't wrong with this picture?
Maybe just in Texas, but our grapes seem to come from Chile.
barbra ann
The shadow government subverts the rule of law to push the code of liberal policy in unelected, unaccountable government offices.
Wow!! Does anyone else feel like this is "Grapes of Wrath" Part Deaux......
It’s a novel for sure.....
I’ve been to Mecca, CA recently (April). It is basically a Mexican town with a US Post Office and county sheriff’s office. Does not look prosperous, but it is busy. It appears to me that minimum wage would be sufficient to get by there, even buy or rent a livable place if you weren’t sending most of it back to the homeland. On the same trip I visited Oxnard, and that of course is very comfortable oceanside agricultural community that seems to be mostly Mexican (or Mexican-American?). People dressed very nicely and driving nice cars. I’m thinking minimum wage adds up if the whole family is settled and contributing. But maybe if you are legal the state benefits are generous.
Such a pleasant sight in the morning, watching these heroic exploited workers exhibit their ever-present good manners and good hygienic habits.
Disgusting.
ping
We need a bounty on illegals, $100 alive $500 dead!
Live ones cost too much to deport.
Hey, this guy could be a democrat. "It's for the children."
Martin Zavala is wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a Scooby-Doo pillow, a pack of Marlboros under his neck.
So how much does Martin pay for a pack of 'boros in Kaliforny nowadays?
I don't smoke, so I'm not sure, but probably about $6.00 a pack.
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