One of the problems with expelling and deporting large numbers of immigrants is that suddenly there is nobody to do the jobs, often menial and poorly paid, that those same immigrants formerly did. In the UK market gardeners, soft fruit growers, discovered when suddenly there were no foreign students available to do the seasonal work that British folk didn’t want to pick fruit. They seem to be having the same problem in Florida, with a shortage of people wanting to wait tables and do cleaning work or agricultural work.
Governor Ron DeSantis suggests that they should change the laws regarding child labour and allow 14 year old to work nights if necessary. “What’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? That’s how it used to be when I was growing up.”
Opponents to this relaxation point out: “It’s important to remind people that teens can work. They can get that experience and some extra money if they need it. But there have to be protections in place to protect our most vulnerable, and if we pass this that’s absolutely not going to happen.”
There’s basically nothing wrong with teenagers working to earn a bit of money and even incidentally gain a few life-skills along the way. When I was 14 I used to babysit for a number of near neighbours. When I was a bit older I worked part-time in a shoe shop in the town centre. But it’s not the same as doing a full shift in then tourist or agriculture industry.
Here’s a link to an article about the Florida situation.
Even the pope has spoken out against the USA’s treatment of migrants. He has issued a rebuke of Donald Trump's mass deportation plan, stating that it removes the migrants of their inherent dignity as people and "will end badly."
Reminding them about Christian virtues and values, the pope wrote in a letter to US Bishops: “all the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa,".
Vice-President Vance, baptized and confirmed into the Catholic Church in 2019, interprets those values in his own way:
"As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens," Vance told Fox News. "That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept] — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world."
There you go. Maybe you just have to be the right kind of Christian!
Our youngest granddaughter has been infected with her older siblings’ dislike, nay, FEAR, of spiders to the extent that she sits cross-legged on her chair at the dinner table. This is because someone told her recently that there was a spider under the table and now she doesn’t want to put her feet on the floor … just in case! No amount of reassuring her that the floor is swept and mopped makes any difference. In her Digested Week in today’s Guardian Emma Brockes writes about the fear of bogeymen and the like:
“I haven’t had to sleep with the hall light on since the Blair Witch Project came out in 1999 – oh man, that was a bad one because my flatmate was away that weekend and after seeing the film, I felt the dank presence of something watching me from the corner of my room. This week a babysitter in Kansas tried to vanquish a child’s fear of monsters under the bed by showing them there was nothing there. Unfortunately, in this case a 27-year old man called Martin Villalobos Jr was hiding under the bed. After a scuffle that knocked over the child, he was arrested and charged with aggravated battery and child endangerment. A mere externalisation of what, at the moment, we know to be true: the monsters are real.”
Good grief!
Hopefully Granddaughter Number Four will grow out of her fear of spiders, or at least learn to keep it under control. I won’t tell her about the Kansas babysitting incident!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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