How To Find My Client Id Number For Food Stamps: Fill & Download for Free

Back in 1999, my then husband began to threaten to harm our children. I set in motion actions with only one thought-to protect my children.January: I filed a complaint at his precinct (he was a police officer). They took away his guns-he had 10 (he told me 3) and enough ammunition to fight a battle (they told his brother in law that). He filed a complaint with them, saying he threatened to kill us. They told him “we know, he’s a psycho cop. But he’s ok. He loves his kids.” They had zero clue what went on in our home. His brother in law called Child Protection because he saw the police were not taking this seriously. Child protection came, saw it was a clean house with food in the cabinets and he was polite and calm. They never spoke to me or the kids. He told me if I said anything he will make our children orphans. I filed for an order of protection to get him out-his buddies faxed inletters swearing he was a nice guy, loves his kids-she was the bad one. I got denied. He refused to give me money for groceries, mortgage, utilities.February: I went to put the child on welfare and food stamps. Why are you staying there, they asked. Take your children and leave. I had two sons with asthma and they all had special needs. Why should WE leave? He was the menace-take him out!! So the welfare people called child protection on ME. That’s right-because I didn’t want to take my asthmatic and special needs children to a homeless shelter 3 trains away in the Bronx! My parents didn’t want anything to do with my problems. We went to their home for two days and they threw us. You married him and had his children-now live there. Child protection came to my home at 11:30 at night. They saw the children and me living in the basement. We had a clean home and food (I told them my parents bought them food sincevhe gave me no money). The next day I called my therapist in tears-they will take my children away from me! All because I won’t leave the house! I can’t understand it-we have no where to go or any money. Why should we leave? He’s the threat!! She calmed me down. She made calls all day. By the end of the day, they closed my case-she had the faxes on her desk because I trusted no one.March: I told my parents there was no more choices. I was getting a lawyer and divorcing him. My parents were horrified. They couldn’t believe he was starving his children. I showed them my temporary support which was running out. Their grandchildren were getting food stamps because their father wasn’t buying them food. My father called our rabbi to talk to him while we stayed in their house. Two hours later, the rabbi came to my father’s house. “It’s a terrible thing to see people change from human into something monstrous. I tried to talk to him about a man’s responsibility to his family.” “Rabbi, he doesn’t like you since Fort Dover, when he was in the hospital for a week and you saw him only once for 5 minutes.” “He told me. He spat on me for it.” My father and I lowered our heads in embarrassment. “I never advocate for divorce unless there is nothing left. Benny, I’ve known you for many years. Get your daughter a good lawyer, she’s going to need one.” I started to cry and the Rabbi put a business card in my father’s hands-it was my lawyer to be. My father and I went the next day and hired him. I told him everything that happened. My lawyer gave me his phone number-call him after 911 in an emergency. And get the children on as much welfare and food stamps as you can. I had to hire 3 servers at $200 a piece to wait at each exit of his precinct to serve him with the order to appear in court. On that day, I went to social services and gave the title of my home as a guarantee so the city can put a lien on my house against any financial support we got from welfare and food stamps. The children and me were finger printed and got ID cards that day. I got formal letters stating we were in need and were getting food stamps and money. The date was March 10-My then husband’s birthday. I chose the date. I wanted everything to have his birthday on it -the court papers, the welfare papers. It was my last happy birthday to him.April: when the Jewish community and our friends found out about the pending divorce, we were ostracized. I went to Jewish agencies for help. I had no money for Passover. I got a $25 food voucher from an agency that helped the poor and aged. I went to another place that gave me such bad smelling food my father was outraged. He made me take him and the food back. He screamed at them in Yiddish how shameful this was to a poor girl with children. The man shrugged and said “she’s your daughter, you take care of her.” My father said “if only I had back the charity money I gave to places like yours” He put the box on the floor at the man’s feet and he ordered it thrown away. I asked my brother for money, and he gave me $200. But he always reminded me I owed him the money and anytime he needed a favor, he reminded me of the money.May and June: I finally got approved to work at the Department of Education as a substitute. I accepted any job I could get, no matter where it was or what it was. Getting my money was harder. Sometimes I got my check in the mail. Sometimes I had to go back to the school. Sometimes it was at a district office. I had to drive to the payroll center to make sure all my checks were processed. Meanwhile, the city demanded I worked for their workfare program. No one gets welfare for nothing. I tried again and again to explain how subs worked. I had to wait for them to call me. I told my counselor she can call 65 Court Street to confirm how they call subs. I was told “no problem, you can go there and clean their toilets and wash floors.” Didn’t you want me off welfare? I can get hired by the Dept of Ed if I keep accepting jobs. If I’m washing floors somewhere else I won’t get hired. My counselor took it to mean I was too good to wash floors (if I had no prospects of a job I would have done it gladly). I was thrown off welfare.July-September: I had been going to court, but he kept putting it off. I couldn’t miss a single court date, but he could show up and say he’s not ready, no lawyer-he fires his lawyer right there in court once! I was getting worried because I needed to keep getting called in to work-30 straight days in any school and I could get hired. I had 20 days and they stopped calling me. It was frustrating as can be.October: the bank sent over two big guys to serve us with foreclosure papers on the house. The first met my husband who threw him bodily off the premises. I agreed to sign off on the papers if I could get 48 hours to pack our things and leave before they came to lock up the house. They saw what a bad spot I was in and that the idiot didn’t tell me the house was being foreclosed because he didn’t pay the bill in months. They gave me the 48 hours. I called a friend who had s vacant apartment. He didn’t clean it yet. I’ll clean it. I need it in 48 hours. He was ok with it. I called a moving company that specialized in last minute moving-especially in domestic situations. They sent over big guys in case he cane by to interfere. I threw clothes and toys in bags and boxes. I grabbed whatever I could that day. My father and I cried-my marriage was dead. I never told my father-this wasn’t a parole from prison, where I got timevoff for good behavior. It was a pardon-I was freed because of a terrible mistake that shouldn’t have happened. The next day I called Sub Central with my new address and phone number. We were trying to find you! I had to move suddenly. We have a job for you-and it could be permanent. Can you go there tomorrow? I cried with joy. Thanks to God-we had a safe place and I got a chance for a permanent job. It was the School I’m still working at-18 years later. I hung up and my children and I all hugged each other. I moved to this apartment with no job and borrowed money for the first months rent. I didn’t have anything for security. Now, I had a place and a job to take care of my children.November: Family court once again. The case had been moved to another judge who refused to delay the hearings. She asked him “what did you do to support your children?” “I’m having a problem with their mother-“ “that’s not what I asked you. Did you buy groceries? Pay the phone? Electricity? Gas? Mortgage?” All the answers were no. The judge turned to me. “What did you do to support your children? I turned over all my papers from welfare, food stamps, my pay stubs, and a joint bank book stuffed with grocery slips and utility payments. His lawyer turned pale. The judge went through everything very carefully. “So, your wife put your children on welfare and food stamps while you didn’t do a thing?” “She didn’t put the kids on welfare (chuckling).” The Judge has him look at the papers. Yes I did - and they were all dates on his birthday. “You put my children on welfare-on my birthday?” “Yes, the same day you were served to come to court.” The judge flipped back pages. “You mean to tell me that you have been screwing around all this time while you had no idea how your children were living? You’ve been putting this off from March to now?” She threw her hands on her table. “I’m done talking to you. Let me see your pay stubs.” She reviewed his stubs and was about to order support of $400 a month. I asked to see his stubs first. I pointed out to my lawyer 3 pension loans he took out which come out of his gross pay check, thus reducing the net check to look less. My attorney stood up and said “why should the children have to have their money reduced because of his pension loans? We request you add those amounts in.” The Judge looks over the stubs and screamed “you think you’re so smart huh. I had someone from Sanitation do this last week. Know what I did? I threw the book at him. Like I’m going to do to you.” She reworked the figures. $636 semi monthly-and give me a list of expenses you borrowed-moving, apartment, clothes-anything you had to borrow. He’s going to pay you back for 1999. Every penny!” My husband jumped up out of his chair and yelled “you can’t do that to me! We’re on the same team! All the judges love me.” “The other judges don’t know you-but don’t worry. I’ll make sure they do.” The bailiff had to stand behind him and keep his hands in idiot’s shoulders. My lawyer stood up “your honor, we realize this had been quite a shock to the defendant. We know how hard it is to support a sexy sport car instead of a family (he showed pictures of him in the car). How about if the defendant pays my client $50 semi monthly until his debt is paid?” The other lawyer said ”yes, please!” So the idiot wound up paying me $50 twice a month for two and a half years! These $50 checks were in addition to the child support the court ordered.December: I was formally hired by my School to work there full time. I paid back my father the money I borrowed. I caught up on my rent and paid security. My children were removed from welfare and food stamps. I bought my children clothes for the first time in nearly two years. We had a real holiday as a family that we didn’t have for so long. And their father told them that I was a bad mother because I took them away from him. It would be years before they saw the truth. I also got back into my house that had been locked up. He set fire to our wedding pictures, most of my old photos from School, books, whatever he could throw in. There was a huge black circle in the middle of the living room. I grabbed more of the children’s things, whatever I could salvage-and his grandmother’s silver items. He left all of them in the China cabinet. I took the Jewish books he left, anything I could throw in a box or bag. He broke my dishes in the kitchen sink. I took a few pots and pans I found. I took all the children’s pictures I found still hanging up. Oddly enough-he never opened my nightstand. I had, shall we say, personal items that a lonely woman keeps in a nightstand drawer. I decided to throw them out instead of bringing them home. I don’t know why. I stopped at the doorway. I looked inside for a last time. This horrible nightmare was finally ending. I knew I had more-the foreclosure sale, the divorce. But this prison that I loved because I raised my children in it, that I cared for, was finally closed. I saw the mezuzah still on the door post. I took it off-my father bought that for us. I gave it back to him.Yes I know-I wrote a novel. I did it with a time line and great detail for a reason. Any moron who says just leave without a plan or money or support is just that-a moron!!! It’s easy to say “just leave”. And go where?????? If parents turn you out, your family and friends shun you-where do you go? The only person who helped me was HIS sister and her husband. She kept my important documents safe and $300 of emergency money for me. It was her husband who filed the complaint back then saying he heard their father say we were better off dead-and because he was a cop, he would get a slap on the wrist. No one-NO ONE stood up for me. Even my parents told me openly they were ashamed of me. My father gave me money for the sake of his grandchildren. The next person who says just leave and has no plan or idea on how to accomplish that action should be slapped. Because they were never standing at that black pit as I did. Just leave. Why not just say “jump into that black hole?”Im sorry for writing a long answer. As you see, nearly 20 years later, I can recall it in great detail. Thank you for reading all the way through. If my story can help just one person-then it was all worth it.

“If I’d accidentally jostled the Baronet Pettur in the street while I was still barefoot and muddy, he could have horsewhipped me bloody, then called the constable to arrest me for being a public nuisance. The constable would have done it, too, with a smile and a nod.Let me try to say this more succinctly. In the Commonwealth, the gentry are people with power and money. In Vintas, the gentry have power and money and privilege. Many rules simply do not apply to them.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s FearIt’s important to understand just what “white privilege” is.Most of the people I know who think it’s nonsense, including many family members, understand the nature of privilege solely as a function of wealth.In other words, they’re not rich, and some non-white people are rich, therefore white privilege cannot exist.White privilege is not about wealth, or even power. It is about the extent to which social rules do or do not apply to a person.One of the things that keeps coming up, over and over, with the Mueller investigation and all these guys getting locked up for white collar crimes is that they just have no concept of how much trouble they are in. Manafort in particular is just absolutely oblivious, or at least was until a judge sentenced him to actual prison.Their entire lives, laws were for other people. They knew that the laws existed, but they were never enforced. Not if you had the right quirks of birth: the money, the connections, the status, and the race. Other people went to jail. Not them.That is privilege.There are a whole host of social rules that do not apply to me because I am white.I am far less likely to be stopped by the police.I am far less likely for those rare encounters to turn violent.I am far less likely to face incarceration.I am far less likely to be suspected of petty crimes such as shoplifting.Nobody ever asks me where I am really from. Nobody ever suggests to me that I should head back to Germany. Nobody ever looks at me and wonders if I’m a citizen or illegal immigrant purely based on the color of my skin.I’m a lily-white Midwesterner.Some rules give me an advantage.I can own a gun. I can carry it openly. And that makes me a Constitutional Patriotic Free Badass Dude of American Constitutional Patriotic Freedom.Not so much if you’re black.If I, a lily-white Midwesterner said, “It all goes down tonight. It’s going to be a huge blast. People will be talking about this for years,” what do you picture? Could be a party, right?Go back and say it with a Middle-Eastern accent.I’m more likely to be rented an apartment. I’m more likely to achieve upper management positions in corporations. I’m more likely to be paid higher than equally qualified candidates of non-white ethnicities. I’m more likely to get called back for a second interview. I’m more likely to get an interview.Nobody asks me to buy something or leave at Starbucks, and nobody would ever call the cops on me if I didn’t.Nobody would call the police because I was sleeping in the student lounge of the dorm I lived in.Because the rules my life operates on are fundamentally different than if I were not white.A person of color in my law class grew up in a wealthy upper middle-class family. He once told me how when he was in undergrad, he was pulled over while driving his parents’ car. Despite the fact that his ID had the same last name as his parents’ vehicle registration and his actually pointing that out to them, they arrested him and impounded the car on suspicion that it was a stolen vehicle. They could have called his parents and asked. They could have checked if there were any reports of a stolen vehicle. Literally anything. Instead, these police thoroughly believed that a black kid around 20 years old had no legitimate reason to be driving a luxury vehicle.In that interaction, his life operated on fundamentally different rules than if I were sitting in the driver’s seat.It’s not just white privilege, either. I’m a white dude on top of it. I am the apex predator of this food chain in this country.I recently went to a joint meeting of the American Inns of Court. It’s a professional/social legal organization, where legal professionals like lawyers and judges get together, have a nice dinner, and talk about ethics and professional development.The speaker was a transgender white woman that I had heard speak at the continuing legal education meeting prior.This person was a high-powered attorney that represented railroads and trucking associations, and was very good at her (then his) job. When she came out as transgender and transitioned, she lost many of her clients, and ultimately she ended up changing jobs entirely into transgender advocacy.She had written a piece for a large national publication after Trump was elected, and her editor told her that the publisher had decided not to run it. She demanded to meet with the publisher. This publisher was aware of her personal history as a transgender woman.And yet the publisher proceeded to explain to her the way the world works, starting with his military service, in a textbook example of mansplaining. He called her “hysterical.” And this woman recounted how it hit her as hard as a physical slap in the face for the first time in her life.She would never have been talked to like this when she was a man. Had never been talked to like this as a man.She recounted how when she was a man and went and ordered a ribeye at the butcher counter, she always got a nice, well-marbled cut of meat. And as a woman, ordering the exact same ribeye, would get shitty cuts of meat unless she pointed and specified exactly which steaks she wanted.She recounted how in situations where she would never have felt physically unsafe as a man, she now feels physically unsafe as a woman.She had to work with a speech therapist to learn how to talk like a woman, in order to pass as a woman in society. She was appalled to learn that not only did she have to consciously change the pitch of her voice, she had to change her actual speech patterns. She had to learn how to hedge. A man will say, “We should go see a movie.” A woman will say, “Do you think seeing a movie would be a good idea?” She had to learn how to exaggerate certain comments, and how to compliment people in different ways.She’s still practicing speaking like a woman to pass as a woman. She thinks there’s a whole group of church ladies who are pretty sure she’s just been a pack-a-day smoker for thirty years. She notes that most people don’t question if she’s a woman until she speaks.She is the exact same person she was before she transitioned. Her personality, her education, her intelligence, all of these are the same. She points out that the difference is that her body matches her brain now.And yet, her entire world is sideways and upside down in how it treats her.The very rules by which her life now operates are different, solely because of her gender.In my hometown, there is very much a good ol’ boys club that look out for each other. The old police chief that used to be there knew what high school house parties would be broken up and kids ticketed, and which ones didn’t. Certain cars that didn’t get pulled over.That former police chief is now facing felony charges after a long battle to cover up his actions in covering up the drug problem of the son a local person of prominence, because a drug problem would have negatively impacted that kid’s chance of getting into a good military program. It’s pretty apparent that the mayor was willfully ignorant about it and enabled the cover-up, and then tried to punish the police captain who exposed it by refusing to give him a fair contract when the police and fire commission elevated him to interim chief and wanted to make it permanent.Certain businesses are left alone. Others find it harder to get certain permits.That’s privilege where I grew up.Many members of my family support drug testing welfare recipients. They thoroughly believe that there are makers and then there are takers, and that they can’t be privileged because they sit here and struggle to make a mortgage payment while others live high on the hog on their tax dollars. It sure doesn’t feel like a privilege to struggle to make a living and tightening the belt yet another notch.One of my aunts got angry at me once because her family grew up poor, but she doesn’t think they ever went on food stamps or any kind of assistance. They went and picked up extra jobs. She reasoned that if her family could do it, why can’t these lazy people?It never even occurred to her that some people might not have that opportunity. In fact, when I pointed it out to her, she vehemently rejected the idea. Nothing will convince her otherwise.A college friend of mine believes that if black people just cooperated with the officials, they wouldn’t be mistreated. He looks at the ones that get hyped up in the media as a few isolated instances of bad actors, not the norm. Nothing will convince him otherwise.They believe this because nothing in their entire personal experience has ever been otherwise.They have never been hassled by the police for being of a certain skin color. They have never experienced a situation where even cooperating with the police would still result in unjust treatment. They have never experienced a situation where they were denied a job because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. They have never experienced a situation where they were arrested or saw someone else being arrested for doing literally the same thing as others around them, and for the sole reason of their immutable identity.Not only that, but they don’t personally and closely know anyone who has experienced those things firsthand, or even seen them occur firsthand.The people where I grew up, the family I have that believe this, they will never have to have “the talk” with their kid about how to avoid getting shot by a police officer or how to take extra care not to be “suspicious-looking.”They will never worry about whether they will survive getting pulled over.They will never worry about getting arrested for doing the exact same thing as everyone else.They will never worry about getting marginalized for an attribute that has nothing to do with the content of their character.And they very likely never will, because that’s the nature of privilege.These hidden social rules will never apply to them or those they interact with on a common and regular basis. They will live their entire lives by an entirely different set of hidden social rules, and nobody will ever likely come along that will truly make them aware of it. Even my attempt to explain this to someone back home just to get their reaction, I was told that I was wrong. That there must be more to these stories of people. Something they did, or said. There was utter disbelief that this notion of hidden rules could exist.Because their only frame of reference regarding the very concept of privilege is a measure of wealth and the right to bend certain social rules that come with wealth, they interpret this concept only as “these people mean that because I am white, I make more money.” And since they don’t, as best as they can tell, it only computes in their brains that the concept must be wrong.There is an astounding irony that many of these exact same people who struggle to understand the concept of privilege will complain about how rich people get to use all the tax loopholes and can afford high-powered lawyers so that they never see a jail cell for the same crimes that would land someone like them in prison, but still believe that people of color who make the same complaints about them must be lazy people making it all up and playing the race card.This is the great blindness of privilege: to most people, their current perception of reality is what they fundamentally assume everyone else’s reality must be.Look at the generational differences between my father’s generation, the tail end of the Baby Boomers, and my generation, the first of the Millenials.My father’s generation could feed a family of four and rent or even purchase a house on minimum wage. College was a path out of poverty, not into it.Thirty years ago, the average person my age was paying roughly 12-15% of their income on housing.Today? The average person my age pays between thirty-five and fifty percent of their income on housing. I’m lucky. We pay about 30% for our housing. And my wife gets a stipend from grad school that covers some of that. And we’re not even living in the big city, where an unheated 8’x8’ tool shed is going for $1,000 a month.College tuition at the exact same place I went to undergrad was $250 per semester. Today, it’s almost $4,500 a semester. Minimum wage was $3.10; adjusted for inflation today it would be $11.38.It was possible to purchase a brand new car for two thousand dollars, and a decent used one for $200. My wife and I just looked at a decent used Subaru with 160,000 miles on it. $8,500.My parents and those of their generation? Many of them simply cannot conceive of a reality where that is true. No experience remotely prepares them to accept that they happened to be born at a perfect time in history where certain advantages were simply inherent in they system for them, and that those advantages no longer exist for me and those in my generation.But it does not change the reality that the rules that govern the reality of my parents’ generation simply do not function the same way in mine.This is why it is important to understand the nature of privilege.White privilege is just a subset of privilege.And there is absolutely, unequivocally no doubt in my mind that it exists.Edit and Standard Disclaimer:Sigh… I should have realized writing about this would bring out a certain segment of the population. Every time I write about this kind of stuff, it brings out a certain segment of the population.So, here’s the commenting rules.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, etcetera and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.This kind of nonsense:will earn a special place in the annals of mockery while they howl at the void.I’m done with warnings. If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose an ounce of sleep over it. Being a special kind of dick like the one above might earn you a place in the Hall of Shame, so I suppose if you plan to be a dick, you might as well go full out and make it worthwhile.Debate responsibly.Second Edit: A number of people have brought up two good points.Perhaps majority privilege is a better term. If I, a lily-white Midwesterner, went to certain areas of the world where I would be in the minority, I would not have the privilege I do have.That’s a fair point, and it goes to the implicit biases that even I have, which cause me to treat the U.S. and the Midwest in particular as the center of the world.Still, the fact remains that I am privileged where I live, and it is because I am white.Regarding white guilt. Several commenters, some who were allowed to stay because they weren’t dicks about it, some who found themselves on the other side of the airlock because they were, were all upset because their key takeaway was that they ought to feel guilty about the whole having privilege thing.No.That’s not the point.As I explained to User-10958878137529597270:This is a common response, this fear that if you have privilege, you have to feel guilty about it.Privilege is not, in and of itself, a bad or shameful thing.I’m not embarrassed by the fact that I am a highly privileged person. I have been blessed to have a position in life where I am comfortable, well-educated, and have a great deal of opportunity. I am under no obligation to feel guilty about that, or to give that up because others do not have the same opportunity.That’s not the purpose of acknowledging what you have.What now? How does this change anything?By being aware of it.By realizing that not everyone has this.By advocating for others to have it.By not just trying to be nice to everyone, but being good to them.By actively working to grant others the same kind of life you enjoy for free.By using your place of privilege to make the world a little better.By being aware that you can make the world a little better.Being aware of the nature of the place of privilege you occupy does not require you to have to take responsibility for the sins of your forefathers. Being aware of the nature of privilege doesn’t mean you have done anything wrong.You’d be amazed at how much it changes things just to understand the nature of the advantage you have in life.

My experience is that it goes far beyond “anti - illegal immigration” with most people. For background, I married an undocumented immigrant in Aug 2001 when I was young and clueless and thought it would be easy to fix his status (long story but 9/11 actually bursted my bubble). In 2007 I graduated law school and became an immigration attorney. Advocating for legal changes has been a huge part of my life before immigration was such a part of mainstream conversation so I’ve had many conversations over the years.People often yell at me something like “what part of illegal do you not understand”? If I even try to explain my position they just say something like I believe in law and order or we already immigrate too many or just repeat but they’re illegal. I honestly rarely try to explain my position anymore, but for sake of discussion here are some thoughts.most of us are not “for” illegal immigration. There are some extremist that argue open borders, especially to anyone that has any indigenous blood from any tribe from Canada to South America which would thus include the vast majority of Anywhere south of our border. The vast majority of us see that as extreme (though not without merit in theory) and simply want legalization of the people who have been here for years and offer future visas that better reflect the needs of our work force.Why can’t we show compassion? We know that after Reagan’s amnesty there was 0 effort put to work or border enforcement so yes it didn’t stop anything afterwards. What we did do was make a bunch of laws in 1996 and 1997 that prevented people from getting their papers if they had already committed violations like multiple entries or false claims to citizenship at the border. In retrospect it was a bit silly to think this could be preventative - most people who come, especially when young, have zero reliable information about our laws from their side of the border and think they are just going to work a bit and save money to go back home. Usually they have no clue they are going to have kids or meet an American until they have already committed the error. There were a lot of discussions in Congress in the 90’s about how the problem would repeat if there was not enforcement. Instead until well after 9/11 most of our border efforts were focused on drugs so the people seeking work were just turned around and literally told better luck next time.Our economy has benefited from this labor for years. The most non-capitalist, pro-communist thing I hear is “we should kick them out and force unemployed Americans to take those jobs”. So private companies should be forced to take on workers who are not up to the job because the government says so? There are people who aren’t employable, and companies that need good workers to compete. Do you know how many employers I’ve met or heard about who literally go pick people up at the border or pay their smuggler fees? But no one is yelling in their face.But on the flip side, exploitation is a real problem. Hotel cleaning ladies told they earn money by the room but can keep their tips. Workers told they are subcontractors so overtime and workers comp don’t apply. Taking advantage of fake documents to clock people in and out under different names to avoid overtime. I truly believe there are business people thatbdon’t Want legalization because their exploited employees would walk away.But nothing changes the fact that we have a need - real need in our labor market for skilled or unskilled labor. My kids do not need competition in engineering, management, accounting, law, etc. The idea that we should only immigrate middle class educated people is crazy. Employment operates on a pyramid. There are far more jobs in the lower earning category. As education level, skill and earning capacity go up the jobs become fewer. This makes sense - you have fewer people qualified to be heart surgeons and chemical engineers or CEO’s. But if you bring more of those people over then what sense does that make - our children will simply have more competition? We have always needed immigration on the lower level of the pyramid more than the top. Don’t tell me about how other countries do it - they have different populations, economies, etc. Plus if you look even New Zealand allows construction workers and culinary folks to immigrate through work. Family based systems are always different. Those countries also provide better safety nets to their actual citizens. Just stop comparing apples and oranges.I’m also told “they” use more resources because they have families that crowd schools and hospitals. Well they didn’t used to. When drug money wasn’t making their home country a war zone and the border was more lax, the men or single women came and worked going back home a few times a year or for the winter. The moms stayed in Mexico with the kids. You can’t change what has happened, but you can make some change to the future. Decriminalize drugs and offer better work visa options, and many families will stay and have their children in Mexico, if that is what you want. Trust me I know a lot of moms that hate it here, and wish they could go back, but stay because of economics or safety.In addition to the above - let’s look a bit at economics. No one who works in fields, cleans hotel rooms, or works at Walmart can afford health care - legal or not. Their kids also need free lunches at school and maybe even food stamps. You really think that is their problem? Maybe we should all pay higher prices or maybe billionaires shouldn’t get paid billions of dollars and then tell their employees to work part time and apply for food stamps (Walmart). It’s easy to be mad at immigrants but our problems our way more complicated.And let’s talk about “we’ll it’s illegal”. Yes, it is criminal, all be it a misdemeanor, to cross the border illegally. It is not criminal to overstay a visa. That is simply a civil violation that results in expulsion from the country or cancellation of future visas. same goes for working without authorization. It has no criminal penalty. Only employers can be fined criminally if it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that they did it knowingly. There are some other criminal violations that happen - driving without a license, possession of a fake ID, for a portion, not filing taxes (although if the employer issues a W-2 people are more likely to file because the IRS has a system to issue tax ID numbers for undocumented people). But, you know what is criminal? Claiming you are separated to get government assistance, working for cash to avoid taxes or child support, under reporting your income, possessing drugs including Xanax that wasn’t prescribed to you, possessing a firearm while intoxicated, urinating in public (at least in my state). But these are all things that my or my colleagues’ US Citizen clients have been in trouble for. In fact, the other day our state LEA’s raided a pub for having illegal gambling machines. People were complaining that this was no big deal and they should find something better to do. What part of illegal do these people not understand?And let’s talk about the “legal way”. Up until the 1950’s you just showed up and proved your weren’t infirm. Not to complicated. As time went on we made more rules to the point where now it’s like hopscotch or twister. Some will make it and some will fall. But a whole lot of people that did it the “legal way” weren’t all that legal. We here the stories all the time of a fib here or a fib there or an “arranged marriage” here (not in the Eastern cultural sense). Many of those people have kids that will brag about their parents or grandparents legal way until I’m asking questions and laughing because not quite: People like Melania Trump - maybe she was legal, maybe not. IF she came on that tourist visa with any idea that she would stay and work for the long run then she violated the terms of her visitor visa because that is immigrant intent. All visitors must have non-immigrant intent. I have parents of US citizens that just want to go to their grandkids’ graduation who can’t get visitor visas because they could potentially overstay and fix their papers through their kids. The system literally forces retired people who may be happy to just visit their kids 4 or 6 months out of the year to immigrate. It forces people to apply for citizenship who may be happy to just have the flexibility to move back and forth from abroad on a Green Card.And let’s talk about citizenship. If Democrats really believed that they were going to win masses of new voters then they are blind to history. In my experience they simply are trying to appease those of us who are already constituents. The fact is over half the people that applied for amnesty in the 1980’s have never applied for citizenship despite being eligible. Latinos are the lowest voter block proportionally. They just don’t vote like other groups. It would be dumb, just plain dumb, to think that by offering some long term legalization plan that potentially allows for citizenship 10 years dowh the road that all those people would become voters - let alone Democratic voters. Take away the immigration issues and a lot of Latinos will vote Republican. For many their values line up that waySo when people scream to me that “they’re illegal” what don’t I get about it or I just want votes for the Democrats I just walk away. If you say your stance is that you are against illegal immigration, and you think the only way to stop it is a really scary mass deportation that breaks up families and shakes up communities but forever sends a signal - I will disagree but I will respect that you are honest and have an informed thought. But are you going to do this with all undocumented people - all countries, all types of out of status people? Or are you just going after those that snuck across the border and of those, just those from Latin America? Or are you going to look for all nationalities in all communities and all forms of undocumented folks?Unfortunately, the reason I look skeptically at most people who say “but I’m against illegal immigration” is that it is often code for racism and class prejudice (yes I’m looking at all the higher class Latinos who scream I’m not racist but my family was legal). Maybe the person saying that doesn’t understand their own prejudice, but they need to ask themselves why does this illegality upset them so much while other illegal action doesn’t? Why do they look at working class Latino communities and say “ICE just needs to go round them up” as if being poor, brown and Spanish speaking is evidence. Why when a Latino gets arrested, all the comments on social media are questioning their immigration status? I’ve had so many undocumented Asian, African, and even European undocumented immigrants over the years and yet Latinos are such a huge legal part of the US population, especially when you get closer to the Southwest, that yes it says something about you if you look at Latinos and suspect potential undocumented person. I can only deduct that “well I’m against illegal immigration” is code for I’m angry when I see these Spanish speaking brown people.So that is why I get angry - well that’s a wasted feeling but I do walk away - from people who say they are anti-illegal Immigration. Seriously even the people who come illegally don’t like it. I’ve met 2 out of the thousands I’ve met who just prefer to jump the border. Nearly all are desperate for a legal way, and many have tried to ask via the legal way. And maybe I should have mentioned this, there is no way for anyone south of the border to simply go to a US embassy and apply to come for a better life. Doesn’t exist - but it did when your grandparents did it legal so again apples and oranges.