My Summer Job

So I’ve accepted a seasonal job for this summer, which I hope will be quite interesting and fulfilling. If not, at least it’s full time so it pays the bills…but I think it has a lot of potential to interest me. I’ll be a migrant tutor for the Indiana Department of Education Language Minority and Migrant Programs (say that three times fast). Basically, I’ll be tutoring students anywhere from kindergarten to age 21 who are in families classified as migrants. For the purposes of the state of Indiana, that means that their family has moved in the last three years in search of agricultural work.

So, I could be doing anything from helping an eight-year-old catch up in reading, math, or learning English after having moved four times the previous year, to helping a high school student get an extra credit, to helping a 21-year-old working full time get his or her GED. The program is not compulsory, so I will probably have students who mostly want to learn.

I’m excited to get to use my Spanish some more and to help a community of children that gets the short end of the stick in the educational world. I’m also a little anxious about how I will deal with the irregular schedule, lots of driving, and emotionally handling the poor living conditions of many families. I’ll keep you updated…..

My Immigration Reform
(Or, my brilliant master plan that would decrease illegal immigration and increase legal immigration....)

Everyone is talking about immigration reform now, so I’ll add my two cents. I’m not all of one mind about this, but I’m certainly opinionated. On the one hand, I tend to be a “bleeding heart liberal” (I learned that phrase from a professor last fall, and I like it because it fits my tendency to empathize with people affected by unfair social conditions…). I sympathize for people who are doing whatever it takes to survive. On the other hand, having gone through the immigration process with Jeff, and having spent much time, effort, and money on it, it seems somewhat unfair for others to skirt around it. On the other hand, we have had a tough time with it, being white, literate (college educated!), people raised in this culture, with family and friends who have gone through the process as resources. I can’t imagine how a stack of immigration documents looks to a person from rural Mexico with a 5th grade education, unfamiliar with the culture and knowing no English except perhaps how to say hello and how to ask for directions. See how I go back and forth on this?

However, for reasons I will get to soon, I think that it is in everyone’s best interests that immigration happens legally. Illegal immigration leaves those immigrants open to abuses because they are reluctant to turn to authorities or to use public services for fear of being deported. So, the pragmatist in me says, “Well, how would you solve the problem?” Here’s what I think:

Most attention in immigration issues is focused on the immigrants themselves – do we use INS to catch and deport them, ignore them, give them guest workers permits, grant amnesty? I don’t think that’s the root of the problem though – it’s like trying to cure a disease by treating the symptoms, rather than the source of the infection. Furthermore, deportation won’t work. These people come because they are desperate to survive. If they are desperate enough to literally risk their lives crossing the desert to get here, one deportation won’t stop them. And why do they come here? Because there are jobs and people willing to hire them.

I think if we really want to stop illegal immigration, we need to hit the source – companies that hire illegal immigrants. There are many companies that hire illegal immigrants in order to be able to save money – because they aren’t reported, they can pay them below minimum wage and deny them benefits, such as health care. I’ve read reports that some not only hire illegal immigrants, but are even involved in trafficking to keep their pool of cheap labor full. What I think would work is legislation that places heavy fines on companies that knowing hire illegal immigrants, assuming it is enforced. Ideally, the company would have to pay at least as much in reparations to total as much additional salary they would be required to pay American workers, plus a penalty fine on top of it. The company would have to be affected financially. The money could go to some worthy social service or toward hiring more USCIS workers to process immigration paperwork in a more timely manner.

Granted, I’m sure there are some places that hire illegal immigrants unknowingly because they don’t know to check paperwork and others that are hiring them out of some altruistic desire to give these people jobs. I’d bet, though, that the majority just want cheap workers. Knowing they’d pay expensive fines, companies would stop hiring illegal immigrants. That would leave blue-collar jobs open to unemployed Americans, who according to some people, actually want the jobs that illegal immigrants take. I’m sure they’d take some, at least. Then what about the other jobs that aren’t filled? Well, big business have big lobbyists in Washington, so if they needed more workers, they could pressure Congress to allow more immigrants into the country per year and/or make the paperwork more user-friendly so as to allow more to come. They’d probably have more success than all the social groups that try for immigration reform, solely because they are rich and have the power. So I’m relying on the amoral/immoral/money-grubbing companies to do “the right thing” for me? Well yeah, because I think it would work.

Of course this is all a pipe dream because my proposed legislation would never pass…as I said in the last paragraph, the big companies have the big lobbyists, and they don’t want to pay. It’s sad that it seems nowadays that congressional representatives listen more to lobbyists than to their constituents. But for what it’s worth, I think it just might work.

Quotable

"The order is think first, then speak."
~Glenn Gilbert

Poor bunnies! (Ha ha ha!)

Ok, so I'm stealing this image from Angi's blog, and I've seen it before, but it made me crack up again! (To read my serious thoughts on commercial Easter, see my first posting, in the March archives.) However, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess!

By the way, one of my students surprised me yesterday by giving me a big chocolate Easter bunny. I then was inspired to take a formal poll on who in the room ate the head first. It was most of us....

Simon

Here are some pictures of Simon that we took over at Yolonda's the other day. (For those of you who don't already know, we will probably be adopting Simon from Yolonda and Michael, since they are moving into a place where they can't have him after they get married, and we are moving to a place where we can...and we want a cat!

Personality Type

According to a personality test,

Your Type is INFJ
Strength of the preferences:
Introverted 11%
Intuitive 25%
Feeling 12%
Judging 100%

You are:
slightly expressed introvert
moderately expressed intuitive personality
slightly expressed feeling personality
very expressed judging personality

Hmm, sorry if I judged you! I read a fuller description of this personality type here, and I'm not sure it totally fits me, but since it puts me in the same category as Gandhi, I guess I won't argue.

Yay!

We have an approved offer on the house! (531 S. 3rd St. in Goshen). The house inspections will likely be done this week or early next week, so we will have a good idea on whether the deal will go through or not.....

House!

Whee!

We made an offer on this house:


We should know by tomorrow whether it is accepted. It's quite exciting!

That's all for now. Tally ho!

House Hunting

We've been getting more intentional about looking for a house. We've looked at a lot more recently, found a lender that we think we'll use, and even perhaps found "the one". (Will update if it comes true....) It's kind of an exciting process, to think of really being able to own our own home, to be able to do whatever we want inside, to repaint or rewallpaper if we want, to put as many holes as we want in the walls, without having to spackle (or use toothpaste, a la college), to be able to make a garden in our yard (heck, after our current apartment, to even have a yard)....

I can't seem to decide if it's more overwhelming than I thought or less. I expected it to be a big deal and a lot of work to go through the home buying process, and it is, sometimes to a point that exhausts me. At other times, the adventure is interesting enough to not make it feel like so much work.

Well, onward ho! I'll keep this updated (hopefully), if anything comes up. For now, I'm going home and am looking forward to watching Two Towers tonight with Angi and Micah!

GED-ing

Today was the first session of the Spanish GED class that I'm co-teaching. It went pretty well, I think. We passed out materials and Daniel did a short lesson, and they took a pretest in math so that they can make a study plan. Hopefully if I have to talk in Spanish four hours a week my Spanish will actually mejora.

Jeff is at the South Bend Film Festival with Angi, so I'm going to go hang out with my fam.