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Danny’s Gone
Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made a bunch. It’s the ones that start small and seem insignificant that sneak up on you over time that are the ones that have the biggest consequence. The mistakes that lead to other people getting hurt are hard to confront. But the most pain comes when a mistake ends up hurting a child. I’ve done that.
I’m not writing about this to cleanse my soul (I wish it were that easy). I’m hoping that readers see this story and learn from my errors. I think my mistake has been made a few million times the past decade or so. It’s just time to discuss the consequences of our actions.
About ten years ago I was in need of a big hole. I have enough property to always need something. This time it was a drainage ditch and a dry well. I knew that there were workers looking for jobs in a nearby town. I’d heard about it from neighbors who had gone to a corner in Ossining, NY where day workers from south of the border came in the mornings. I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Sure enough, there were workers. Construction trucks were picking up guys. When I drove up a half dozen came up to me. They all talked a fast Spanish, they all wanted a job. For no particular reason I chose one. His name was Caesar. Two days later what I wanted done had been accomplished. A nice job at that. I paid cash for the work. It was $80 a day, plus I provided food.
I drove him back to where he lived at night; a not so nice apartment that he shared with eight others. I didn’t think much of it at the time.
He had my telephone number and called a few weeks later and said, “I need work”.
I understood that this was a cry for help from a guy who was having trouble getting food money. I had a ton of things that had been left undone. So I said, “Yes”.
So it became a few days a week. That lasted awhile. I introduced him to others. Everyone needed work done. It turned out that Caesar had many skills. He was a good mason and could lay up stonewalls. He was a painter, gardener, a decent mechanic and a pretty good rough and finish carpenter. He was from Quenca, Ecuador (small city outside of Quito). He had a wife, Ruth, and a daughter who was then three years old. He left his family to come to America.
We talked while we worked, I spoke “Spanglish” he spoke broken English, we understood each other perfectly. He, of course, was here illegally. He had made the long trip from Ecuador to NY via the Texas border. He came to the US because (his words) there were no jobs an no future in his home country. We became friends of a sort.
After a year or so, Caesar had saved up some money. He sent $10,000 (via Citi) back to Ecuador. This was the payoff money to the Coyotes who would transport his wife to the Texas border. She made the trip in the back of a box truck. She was raped on the way.
She was dumped, (with 20 others) in the brush country outside of Brownsville, Texas. She walked to the lights of the city and took a bus to NY. Thousands of “Ruth’s” made this trip.
Not too long after she made the long journey she was pregnant. This may have been the result of two devout Catholics and a long separation. But it was also a defensive move on their part. They knew that a child born in America would automatically become a citizen. They believed that if they were the parents of a American child they would never be deported. A common belief that has led to many children being born to illegal workers.
They named their son Danny. A healthy and happy child. Life was good for the family during the early part of the decade. There was steady work for both of them. Housekeeping for Ruth, Caesar worked construction. In 2003 they had a combined income of $60,000. A number that made them “rich” compared to the world they had come from. They were living the same dream that millions of immigrants had when they came to the US over the years. The difference, of course, was that they were illegal and had no right to be here. They bought fake Social Security cards (easy to get back then).
They lived in an area that was exploding in population of men and women who had come from Ecuador. Word travelled back to Cuenca that work and money was available. Over the course of just five years the illegal population exploded in the towns of Ossining, Peekskill and Mt. Kisco. Bodega’s and restaurants popped up.
Danny grew up fast. I saw to it that he had the medical attention he needed and later pulled a string or two to get him into the local schools. There were birthdays and holidays that I contributed to. He came to my home and I taught him to swim. Unlike his parents, he took to the water and swam like a rat. He called me, “Grandfather”. I was okay with that.
Danny was as much an American boy as any you could find. He spoke English perfectly (much to his parents chagrin). He liked American football, he didn’t play soccer. He loved basketball. He did fine in school. He made many friends. He was invited to the birthday parties of his classmates. He was a very happy kid.
Around 2005 my feelings on what was happening began to change. What had started innocently enough was now morphing into something that was no longer innocent. It was clearly a population explosion that would end up with a bad result. I slowly changed my views. I saw the risks that were developing for all that were involved. This change of heart was influenced by people who knew I was helping a family out. Some made it clear that I should not be helping the “Browns”.
I tried to make things right. I hired a lawyer and sponsored Ruth to become a US citizen. Her application was accepted in 2005. The formal notice that she was “in line” to become legal was a source of a great celebration. Six years later her application had still not gone anywhere. Not one single applicant from Ecuador was given immigration status (Green card) in all those years.
I saw to it that Ruth kept a record of all of her income. She paid taxes on what she made, the same as anyone would do. I thought this was important. It would prove that she was playing by the rules. I thought that the tax records would support her request for citizenship. It never mattered at all.
I no longer hired Caesar. I wanted him “on the books”. So he found work where no one asked questions about his legal status. If he had a SS card (illegal or not) there was plenty of work to be had. Somehow that quasi-legal status made it “right”.
Things fell apart for this family starting in 2008. The recession killed the construction industry. With that went the jobs the illegal’s had come for. The unemployment rate for the illegals went from functionally zero to at least 50%. Caesar was only able to find “pickup” work a few days a week.
I saw what was happening. I urged them to go back to Ecuador. I offered them the money to buy plane tickets. They wanted none of that. They stuck it out in the hope (like so many others) that the US economy would turn around. It never did.
Around 2010 there was a new challenge emerging. The local police began targeting the illegals. They stopped the cars they drove in to work. The cops were clearly profiling (they swore they were not). ICE (Immigration, Customs Enforcement) raided a few businesses that hired these workers. Jobs disappeared as a result. To make things worse the illegals were subject to random attacks. One was beat to death while in the custody of the police. A once happy immigrant community was scared to walk the streets.
Ruth, Caesar and Danny stuck it out as long as they could. But Caesar was stopped by the police and was given a summons to appear in court.
I was gone last week. When I got back there was a message on the phone from Danny. He was leaving the next day. He was crying. He wanted to see me before he left. When I got back I went to his home. He was already gone.
Think what it must be like for a ten-year old boy who is American as any of us to be forced out of the country. Think what a strange life he faces in a country that bears no resemblance to what he grew up with. He will not fit in. He doesn't speak Spanish fluently. His parents are back in a place that they know. They are also back in a place that has no opportunity for them and their son.
I know in my heart that I’m partially responsible for Danny’s plight. There is not much I can do about it. I will find him someday. I’ll try to make this right. But the damage has already been done. There is a ten-year old American boy whose life has been ripped apart. That’s a fact that is very hard for me to come to grip with.
**********************************
There is little to celebrate this Labor Day. There are so many Americans who have no work or are doing jobs for little pay and no upside. The illegal workers who came here in the good times are leaving in droves. In 2007 there were 12mm in the country. The endless recession has reduced that number to 8mm in just a few years. The depression we are living through has hurt many families. The ones that are on the bottom of the rung are paying the biggest price. Families like Danny’s have been hurt the most.
I know that many readers will think that my participation in this story was all wrong. That Danny and I deserve the pain we have. I expect a fair bit of criticism for this. Trust me, no words you can write would make feel worse than I do. I think of Danny all the time. I pray that this American child is safe.
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You can run but you can't hide.
I predict that "Wall Street" is going to become a phrase similar to "Child Molester".
It's going to evoke EMOTION....and it not in a good way.
Good luck....you might need it.
+ plus 1 billion internets.
the "good times" were 100% fake and the federal reserve is to blame -- not you -- for taking advantage of the human weakness that ceasar shares with us all.
the "good times" were 100% fake and the federal reserve is to blame --
Precisely !. No Greenspan- it was Rational Exuberance.
No. Bernanke- printing money has a cost. A terrible cost.
Then there's the Making Work Pay plan to reward workers with an extra bone...some extra cash.
Making Work Pay! Think what those words mean.
Work Doesn't Pay when left to the devices of our kindly CEOs, masters, overlords, strawbosses and other euphemism for the privileged, whose can't see beyond the benefits of slavery.
A continent loaded with untapped resources, few inhabitants, NO GUNS, having temperate climate and surrounded by 2 enormous oceans...would set to drooling any prize fighter.
What the hell, I got mine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT3X1Z5z9P0
Sad story, but giving a hand and helping is always right from my perspective. From the outside I I would rather question american politics in general. People should stand up and start to demand their rights, but it seems the pressure isn't yet big enough and politicians have plenty of time profiling themselves..
Bruce, you are not the bad guy here. In fact, I admire and support your actions. Most illegal immigrants are fleeing tyranny, oppression and poverty in their home countries; they undertake huge risks to be in the US. I think they should be admired and praised, not villified. Immigration laws are an immoral restriction on the human right to travel. Danny may be in a worse situation now, but at least he was able to live 10 yrs in a relatively prosperous place. He may well be able to leverage his knowledge of English into a well-paying profession at some stage; there is hope for him in the long term. Much better than being born into povery, with no hope of escape.
10 years ago when I was a student, one of my best friends was a Irak guy who spoke our language perfectly and was a mastermind in computer programming.
Thanks to him, I never had anything against immigrants. If they adopted, had skills they had every right to be here.
And there wheren't a lot of immigrants either so nobody had a problem with it.
These last 5 years, the immigrants come here to our city with busses. The record was 19000 Bulgarians and 24000 Roma Gipsy's in 1 month. Our city has a native population of 160.000 people. After that another 40.000 came in. The result: It's becomeing dangerous because thousands and thousands of immigrants can't find work, don't speak the language and our city can't accomodate so many people.
Now I'm against the immigrants because we can't walk in our city anymore in the dark. Brake ins are very common as is theft.
Our police force isn't up to the job against it and they also start targetting these immigrants.
I don't like it at all. I think something needs to be done and people need to be send back as there are just to many.
If unemployment stays as high, this shit is going to turn bad. Really bad.
And by now saying they need to go, isn't a racist remark. It's showing that you care about your country and city and don't want it to see it become a ghetto.
Don't you just love the Schengen Agreement? (sarcasm).
Where about in the EU are you Sudden Debt? (I vaguely remember you being Dutch).
I once thought that dislike of Gypsies was just racism but now that I've traveled all around Eastern Europe (my wife is from Slovakia), well, let's just say I have a different perspective now. Numbers like that in your home town....shit, there goes the neighborhood, sorry to hear it. Anyone who thinks I'm racist needs to stop drinking their soy latte, hit the streets in Eastern Europe and learn a thing or two (and lose a wallet or two) about Cigani culture that's very, very different to their own.
I gots me some knives and now I gots me some wallets.. Bitchez
It's a horrible situation. It's what happens when society doesn't think through its actions. I grew up in a place in Britain where people were dirt poor. I had to sleep on a mattress that that had belonged to my grandfather when he was a boy. I wore hand-me-downs. The damp reached all over our house, in big black stains, and we had broken windows because we couldn't afford to mend them, and bare walls and floorboards all over out home. Some Christmases, we had no money for presents or one decent meal. The things people like Bruce take for granted - we didn't have.
Then when I'm 18, the government decides to open our borders up. Millions of people can move here. I don't hate foreigners, so I think - why not? And the TV says they'll bring economic opportunities. The business pages in the newspaper are all for it. It's dynamism.
What happened? It turns out that over the next 15 years, about five million immigrants come into a country of 60 million. Most stay. And bring their wives, and kids. And they all work for peanuts. Not just break-even pay, but the kind of money that means they live six to a small apartment, and the rest of us are subsidising their healthcare and their kid's education. Often, they come first in the line for government services, because they 'deserve' it. They have more need.
We got poorer. Much poorer. With more poor people than ever to work for big companies, the average working guy has a more 'hire n fire' employer than ever. Lots of them get laid off en-masse, and replaced the next day by cheaper immigrants. It happens in whole factories.
No-one who was already here - no-one with a family, and rent to pay - can keep up with third world labour rates. In fact, 90% of all new jobs were taken by immigrants. The government itself says so. So, it turns out that the government has done a good job of bringing the third world here. Of reducing the people in my community to even worse poverty than we faced before.
Housing? You can't buy or rent a home on a normal wage. Maybe one 20 year old in ten will go on to own their own home, now. Homeless has exploded.
Education? Even fewer working class kids go to college, or get good jobs. Well, if you're a big business - the kind that can afford to lobby the government, and shape the law - why would you need to help working class kids get a step on the ladder, when there are a million other people who'll do the job for less? Workers are more replaceable than ever. They're just tools.
And crime? Now, when I hear about a crime back home - or anywhere else - chances are it's an immigrant. I took a flick through the online law court reports one day - about 50% of the arraigned people aren’t British.
Are immigrants evil? No. They have the same body, and brain, and all the rest of it. But they weren't raised the same way. Lots of them come from countries where crime was the only way to get by. Or they think drink driving is ok. Or selling heroin. Or being 'a little rough' with girls. Or using children for sex. Because they came from broken countries, they brought their countries with them, in a way. It's funny that people wouldn't expect that.
In fact, according to British government statistics, always buried deep on websites so no-one notices, recent immigrants commit about half of all the crime in the country. Violence has exploded in our schools and towns. And rape. Which just makes me angrier, because not only do we suffer the rage we feel when we see women hurt - we have to put up with asswipe 'don't hurt women' campaigns all over the media, that keep targeting all men instead of immigrant men.
[Look at me, you media fuckers: I'm British. I don't rape women. I don't think it's cool. I'm not such a cunt that you have to tell me not to. Tell the people who are committing the crimes. Tell the fucking Caribbeans and Albanians who control the prostitution rings, or the Pakistanis who run the child brothels. Tell the eastern Europeans who smuggle women in as sex slaves. Stop acting like the rests of us are doing it, or one day when you try to hand me a 'don't hurt women' flyer in a city centre, I will break your bloody jaw.]
That's what you get, when poor, angry immigrants are fighting to survive in a country that isn't their own, surrounded by a foreign culture, and they moved for money - not because they loved my country.
Bruce K is like a god to me. His insight is almost always spot on. And I know I'm going to get flamed for this. I just don't care. I'm tired of keeping my mouth shut because people think 'Hey, he's anti-immigration, let's scream at him! Caps Lock engaged!'. I'm tired of 'ignorance through strength' and propaganda, and always being told 'up is down', and that disagreeing with immmigration makes me a nazi baby killing monster. I'm tired of being told - hey, if you hate something bad, YOU'RE wrong.
I know Bruce doesn't spout that crap. And what he typed here - it's brave. But Bruce - lots of people live with the same poverty, and fear, that Danny and his parents went through. That's what poverty and powerlessness is. Lots of them were your neighbours long before Danny's family came to the USA. Lots of them have worse lives now, because of immigrant families like Danny's, hired for a handful of dollars a day by people like you.
Bad as you feel - you can escape that pain. They've lived it for decades, and it's going to get much, much worse for them.
Damn good post Ping. Decades ago, I naively waved the flag for a borderless world, intermingled, multicultural society. But facts / empirical observation must always trump faith / theory. Simple fact is that decades later, the open society is a goddamn disaster. Every nation that signed up to it ended up the same as Britain.
I'm by no means a hardcore nationalist, quite the opposite. Very liberal. However, it now appears abundantly clear that some degree of nationalism and border control is required to create a minimal level of pride for and unity in a nation, thereby underpinning functional and peaceful society. This is pragmatic reality, the opposite of dogma. When people don't care for the nest, they shit in the nest.
Time for the dominant philosophy to admit that it is wrong.
+100
+ a bunch SD.
LEGAL IMMIGRATION is they key.
I have wondered for years whether or not all the Muslims in Europe are going to be a bigger problems than OUR illegals here. Still wondering...
Do you mean giving a hand and helping, like this guy? http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/1070318/
20% of my employee are LEGAL immigrants . I've called the policewhen contractors brought illegal workers to my place of business. Doing the RIGHT thing is expensive, both financially as well as morally.F U Bruce for being a poster child for the law of unintended co sequences. Both you and Danny are going o burn in hell for your greed. Ihope u like it.
Regardless of how you feel about immigration; you cannot alter the basic math:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PpaoZE8oXk
Danny burn in hell? For greed? Danny? The 10-year-old boy who had nothing to do with how he got here?? Danny's father, maybe. But Danny??
I once wrote a magazine article about illegals and the people who hired them. As one landscaper put it: "My mother's folks came here from Italy and my father's people were from Germany and Russia. They got on a boat and came here and no one asked for a damn green card. You think I'm not gonna hire someone because he's from another country and speaks funny, you're out of your fucking mind."
It's more than just cheap labor. A LOT of people remember where they came from and how they got here.
I'll bet you're the life of the fucking party.