By Job Lopez
Other Voices
In regards to the pathetic letter of Tom Anderson (Los AltosTown Crier May 22), Mr. Anderson’s criticism is nothing new. It’s unfortunate and sadly a repetition of the same attitude observed through the history of this country towards immigrants especially in the late 1800s, and in the first half of the 1900s against Chinese, Irish, Germans,Italians,etc. One of the sad and unacceptable aspects of this is that Mr. Anderson and people like him have not learned from history and shamefully fail to see and value the great contributions that immigrants have provided,are providing and will provide to the overall greatness of these United States of America. No person mature enough, informed enough and human enough can deny this.
Many are ready to criticize any superficial issue that does not conform to their selfish lifestyle like the presence of the day laborers, even though they know that these people are needed in their communities and by themselves at times.This kind of attitude shows nothing other than their hypocrisy, intolerance and selfishness. The day laborers are not using “the city streets for business purposes” as Mr.Anderson writes. They are using the streets as the last desperate resource to find honest and hard humble work to make a few dollars to merely survive and support their families.
The issue here is not to overlook the law and have more sympathy for the day laborers.The fact is that not all the laws are necessarily good or morally right. When a law prevents a person from exercising his or her universal and natural survival rights, such as the search for honest work to survive, that “law” is in violation of those rights that. any human being has regardless of anything else. When this happens, no one has a moral obligation to obey such a “law”.
For the cities of Los Altos and Mountain View to support a Day Laborer Center is not to provide an oasis, but to do social justice supporting in a civilized way a place where those workers can meet employers and negotiate possible employment in a dignified environment. Both cities have the moral obligation to support the Day Workers Center in accordance with their status as part of an affluent society, and taking into consideration that they need to meet many of their residents daily needs which are the use of the services that only day laborers can provide.
The Day Workers Center in itself is not an attraction for more laborers as Mr Anderson implies. It is rather the demand for their services that attracts them here, as it was, for example, the demand for Chinese laborers in the 1800s to build the California railroad tracks.
Mr. Anderson should know that it is places like Los Altos which benefit a great deal on a daily basis from the labor of those “illegal aliens” as he calls them They are the ones who provide the care for gardens, landscape, construction, house cleaning, babysitting and elderly care. .I suggest to Mr. Anderson that instead “of finding a gadfly lawyer to sue the city for allowing illegal aliens to do what legal citizens can’t do,” he asks his gadfly lawyer to sue all of the Los Altos residents, perhaps including himself, for having gardens, yards and homes which need to be maintained and cleaned; for needing home repairs, and home remodeling and construction jobs which only those “illegal aliens” are able to do and perform because there is no one else around to do it. How about that?
Job Lopez,.a Mountain View resident, is co-founderof Saint Joseph the Worker Center and member of its Board of Directors from January,1996 to April,2000.
