April 11, 2006 -- "BY LATE afternoon, the teeming masses gathered around City Hall, their bodies stretching nearly all the way up to Canal Street, with more coming all the time.
Clutching homemade placards and bilingual toddlers - many of whom spoke better English than their parents - they came out to protest. But, thankfully, not to whine.
Because the folks who jammed peacefully into the corners of downtown Manhattan yesterday represent a dirty little secret that for many years has fueled this town.
These are the Mexican guys who clean your tables. The Caribbean women who watch your kids. The Irishwomen who pour your drinks.
am happy to report that after living in the shadows for so long the masses came out yesterday - wrapped in American flags.
They are here illegally. We don't like it. But they are a fact of life.
"We come for work. We are not criminals," read one of the signs flapping in the breeze.
"I didn't show up for my job today. I lost $100," Teofilo Iniguez, a laborer from New Jersey, said a bit too cheerfully.
But the protest was worth it, Iniguez said, because, "I'm gonna get better benefits later. Maybe I get better money."
Tens of thousands of men and women blew off work or took their kids out of school. After years of living in the shadows, they showed their faces - for a chance to seek the right to do many of the jobs American-born citizens take for granted will be performed by other people.
As Americans, we are divided. As the child of immigrants who came to this country - legally - I don't like it one bit that folks should have a free ride. We can't let just anyone into this country.
But, like it or not, I realize this city would collapse without the services of this underground economy.
Many of yesterday's protesters are simply striving to do the jobs most of us don't want."
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Ah yes, the age-old canard that since skinflint employers make a bundle by hiring illegals, it would simply kill them to pay a decent wage. CLUE to Ms Peyser: If you have a good business you can afford to pay your workers a fair salary. If you don't have a good business, someone else will step in and take it, and your customers away. To hide behind the ridiculous assertion that some businesses only last because they break the law is condoning every illegal business up to and including organized crime.
Before America got greedy people were happy to make a good living from their businesses, but now everyone wants t be rich overnight and cut as many corners as possible. Cutting illegal corners has ALWAYS been, well, illegal. Hiring illegal immigrants is just ONE way to make more money, and to stop this practice because it is simply too difficult would be akin to the IRS throwing in the towel and saying, oh gee, there are just too many tax cheats and the economy would fail if we made everybody pay what they really owe.
Bullswaddle.
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