Dear Mexican: I am a lifelong resident of Arizona and have worked side by side with illegals for 25 years as a bloquero. In all that time, I never knew one of them to be an aspiring American. In fact, their loyalties remain with their home states, they listen to mariachi and cumbia, and their trucks sport lots of Mexican flag bumper stickers. Most of all, they have kept our wages below the national average—just ask any construction worker. That’s supposed to be OK? Because they work dirt-cheap with no benefits? Wouldn’t opening the borders be a further reduction in quality of life for us American citizens who work beside these vatos? If I want to live in the Third World, I’ll move to Mexico. —Tucson Timmy
Dear Gabacho: Y’know, that’s been the same argument used against immigrant laborers since Samuel Gompers was agitating to keep “Mongolians” from reaching our Pacific shores and railing about hordes of southeast Europeans destroying the gains that his American Federation of Labor had made for the American working man. “The workers of America have felt most keenly the pernicious results of the establishment of foreign standards of work, wages and conduct in American industries and commerce,” the union pioneer wrote in a 1916 issue of the American Federationist. “Foreign standards of wages do not permit American standards of life. Foreign labor has driven American workers out of many trades, callings, and communities, and the influence of those lower standards has permeated widely”—wait a minute, how did Glenn Beck manage to sneak himself back in time? The great irony, of course, is that immigrant labor is the most bountiful spigot in the modern-day labor movement and always has been. Simply put, Timmy: American workers need cheap labor, legal or not, to spur them into class consciousness and better their lot—or do you think Old Man Rockefeller simply allowed the eighthour work day to happen out of the goodness of his raisin heart? Oh, and your concerns about your unassimilated colleagues?
Again, Gompers: “Of course the children of immigrants go to school, and after a few years they become Americanized. But how about the grown-up persons, the adults? Who makes an effort to Americanize them? The labor organization.” Instead of whining about non-assimilating illegals, maybe you should help them become Americans? If you don’t, then you have no right to chillar.
Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans seem to always have four different ATM cards and have to use each and every one of them when visiting the machine despite the fact that there are seven people backed up in line behind them? — All the Merrier
Dear ATM: Just getting ready for the weekend, amigo! One fund to feed the family, otra, to wire money back to the motherland, a couple of bucks for booze, and the largest pot to use for padrino purposes at multiple weddings, baptisms, First Communions, confirmations and quinceañera—pinche fecund Mexican loins…
Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, facebook.com/garellano, youtube.com/askamexicano, find him on, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!
Speaking of Dear Mexican:
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Guest Mexican: Ex-Congressman Tom Tancredo
Rather than me punk ustedes with a prank, I give you the cruelest joke of all—ex-congressman and eternal Know-Nothing Tom Tancredo!
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White Girl Fiesta, Questioning the 14th Amendment & Hot Girls on Mexican TV
I’m a (poor) white girl myself, but I have to ask: What’s the deal with all the rich white girls playing such a big role in Fiesta? Why is it always rich white girls who get crowned?
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Mexicans are Neither Cold nor Short
Dear Mexican: I live in a Northeastern city, and a game I play with myself during the cold, wintry months is counting how many Mexicans I see without a heavy coat or appropriate outer garment.
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Also: Why the bedsheet dresses?
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The three anti-Mexi slurs you used are so 1950s—the only people who use those words nowadays are old gabachos and Alabamans.
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