Thursday, July 8, 2010

I don't have a strong opinion...

...on the whole immigration debate (wh-what?), but articles like this one in today's Times have me scratching my head a little:

In 1986, when he was 14, Ramiro Cariño (above) slipped across the Mexican border and made his way to New York. He moved in with an older sister on 187th Street in Belmont, the neighborhood known as the Little Italy of the Bronx.
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Mr. Cariño, who survived his early years in the neighborhood by scavenging bottles and, at times, food from garbage cans, started his own enterprise last fall: El Sureño, a small food store and Mexican restaurant.
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Mr. Cariño is hedging his bets. With three children in public school, he has not given up his day job cooking at a deli elsewhere in the Bronx. He works there from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., then returns to his restaurant and cooks until 10 p.m.

He works from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.? That's a 16-hour day! (When does he have time to blog?) How many people do you know who work that much? I can't think of anyone. What's more, I feel like every Mexican I've ever seen was just as hard a worker as Mr. Carino (sorry, I don't have that little squiggly line on my keyboard).

So what is everyone so afraid of? What seems to be the problem with immigration?

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