By Bob Ray Sanders bobray@ star-telegram.com
The phone call at home Sunday evening didn't begin with "Hello" or "How are you doing?"
Instead, the caller blurted out, "I've had a change of heart. I've seen the light."
I instantly recognized the voice, and I knew he was not talking about a sudden religious conversion but for the life of me couldn't imagine what he meant.
Mark [not his real name] is my most conservative friend who argues with me about many issues, so he could have been referring to a number of issues.
"It couldn't be the death penalty," I thought, knowing that to my astonishment he had changed his mind on that controversial subject a few years ago.
So I asked what he was talking about.
"I think all illegal immigrants should stay here," he said. "They should not be deported."
I thought he was being facetious because just a few weeks ago, after my column about needed comprehensive immigration reform and passage of the DREAM Act, he went on a tirade about how all illegal immigrants should be rounded up and sent back to wherever they came from.
They were hurting our economy, he said.
At that time, he gave me a dissertation on the word "illegal," and how I should not be encouraging or rewarding people who broke the law.
Mark assured me he was serious about his latest stance on immigration and proceeded on a rant about all the "lazy" Americans who were unwilling to work, making it not only desirable but necessary to hire undocumented workers.
"It's a sad state we're living in right now," he said. "[Americans] will be sitting in front of their TVs in air-conditioning b----ing about Mexicans taking their jobs and about how they're having their unemployment stopped. ... They're hypocrites. They're not going to work."
All the time I'm wondering -- what brought on this epiphany?
Mark, who runs a sizable ranch in southwest Tarrant County, had 1,800 bales of hay that he urgently needed to get into a barn before it rained.
Sudden rain showers had popped up in the area. He'd been watching the radar screen and praying that he could get the hay put up before the rain got there.
He started calling around to hire some hands but was turned down by everyone he contacted, including former high school friends and young extended family members.
No one wanted to work in the 106-degree temperature, he said, even though he was offering to pay $1 a bale. It's been a long time since I've baled hay (at a nickel a bale), but that seemed like a pretty good one-day job offer.
"We have become a nation of lazy slobs," he declared.
"If you run all the Mexicans out of here, somebody will have to do the job."
The Onion explained it this way:
According to a Los Angeles Times survey published Tuesday,
an
increasing number of Americans believe undocumented immigrants pose a
threat to their favored spot on the couch, with many expressing concern
that illegal aliens are "actively plotting" to take their seat as early
as the next time they get up to go to the kitchen or bathroom
We have lots of Hispanics in Florida from both Cuba and Mexico. They are hard working people.
The Republicans know this because they employ these workers. Then these same conservatives try to exploit them for political gain in an election by suggesting the illegals they are hiring should be deported.
None of these 'illegals' would be here if they could not find jobs.
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