A headline like this...

...will send me on a rant.

Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, "will do anything short of shooting them" to keep illegal immigrants out of the United States.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/mo-brooks-illegal-immigrants_n_897210.html

I'm waiting for El Vikingo to show up. He's been working on the roof of my van which is a real bitch because there are areas where it has rusted through. The Viking is not an expert body worker and he made that known from the get go. So what he did was take my van to the welder's shop and there he got some pretty good advice and the use of the welder's tools. In this mosquito-infested heat he's labored away for 100 to 150 pesos a day. That's 8 to 12 bucks. A DAY.

The Viking needs a cell phone and a car so he can do this work. Gasoline is around $3 a gallon. He drives a Volkswagen which is economical. (I wish I had that Volkswagen. The front passenger seat is gone which allows whoever is in the back seat to stretch out their legs, like cabs in Mexico City. And he's glued fur to the dash - a real Viking!).  At his house he pays for electricity, water, propane. Food isn't all that cheap unless you're living on tortillas and beans or eating at a taco stand. Some tools are less expensive here but most are more. And don't even think about buying electronics which is why so many people ask us to bring TVs, laptops and MP3 players from the States.

The Americans and Canadians go positively apeshit if you pay more than 150 pesos a day or if you leave a good tip at a restaurant. "You'll spoil them," they say which is condescending in itself but what they're really saying is "you'll spoil it for us." They'll lose their cheap labor pool.

Yes, the cost of living is less here compared to the U.S. but could you live on 10 to 15 dollars a day?

Back to that quote. These are PEOPLE crossing the border - not illegals. They risk everything and now they have to face murderous drug smugglers. They are not taking away jobs unless you're willing to work picking fruit or as a day laborer or fast food worker. I imagine my old database manager job would be safe and that IT programmer's...oh wait, his job is being done by someone from Pakistan. And damn, most transcription work's been outsourced to India or the Philippines. Why aren't we more pissed off about that??

So Rep. Brooks needs to get his head out of his ass. People in positions of power need to be careful about the words they use. Haven't we seen enough of what putting someone in the crosshairs will do?