Greedy corporations caught in Mother's Day plot to profit from immigrants
By ONANTZIN News
2011-05-11
Los Angeles, CA -- Reporters at the LA Times have uncovered a clandestine operation run by greedy American corporations, which paid human smugglers (also known as "Coyotes") to pick up arriving immigrants on the US side of the border and drop them off, unbeknownst to the immigrants, in random states across the US. Their goal, the LA Times reported, was to create immigrant communities all over the US and generate billions in profits from a double Mother's Day - one celebrated by Americans the second Sunday of May, and the second one celebrated by Latino immigrants on May 10th.
The investigation, which spanned a period of 3 years, found that over the past 15 years, 12 major American corporations paid the smugglers hefty sums and ordered them to take the vulnerable, newly arrived, immigrants into a random state in the US, regardless of the distance from the border. Once there, the smugglers would tell the immigrants that they had arrived in Los Angeles, Phoenix, or Chicago and drop them off, leaving them to find their way and settle in on their own. One immigrant, who was interviewed by the LA Times, had been living in Providence, Rhode Island since he came to the US illegally 10 years ago; he told reporters that he initially thought he had arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, only to discover that his smuggler had taken him all the way to New England.
The LA Times estimates that over the past 15 years, 80% of the immigrants who made the journey into the US did not have a set destination or someone to guide them once they got here. These were the immigrants that the corporations targeted; and yesterday, these same immigrants found themselves celebrating Mother's Day in states like Rhode Island, Maine, Virginia, Tennessee, Michigan, New York and others. According to the 2010 US Census, every single state now has not just one, but several immigrant communities, thanks in part to the actions of these ruthless corporations.
The operation was proving to be a huge success for these corporations, with nationwide profits from the May 10 Mother's Day up to 60% of those generated by the normal Mother's Day celebrated by Americans. Compare that to 15 years ago, when May 10th Mother's Day profits were a miniscule 5% of those generated by the American Mother's Day. Their gravy bus was definitely jamming, but it crashed to a halt with the release of the LA Times report, and now these corporations are faced with tough questions ahead of them.
In Washington DC, Republican House Speaker John Boehner condemned the actions of the greedy corporations and called for investigations with the intent to find and punish those responsible. Already, Republicans have to deal with the unintended consequences, as predominantly red states face the threat of turning blue in the future, due to their growing population of Latinos. Democrats on the other hand, were less hostile to the findings, presumably because they think they'll gain in the long run, once these immigrants have families and give the democrats a new set of voters to support them. They seem to be ignorant to the fact, however, that second generation Latinos are choosing more and more to be independent instead of throwing away their vote on the ineffective Democrats.
As to the reaction from the Latino community, most immigrant Latinos said they are happy in the cities where they ended up, pointing out that cities like Los Angeles and Chicago are overcrowded anyway. Some Latinos were even happy to know that once their kids go to college in a different state, they'll have access to authentic Latino food; they'll just have to find out where the nearest immigrant community is.