January 9, 2019

Juno, Lyft and Uber Drivers

The President of our country is not curious and he is a racist. I could be wrong but from a data point, that is what it appears to me. I am making a big judgment here that the majority of NYC Juno, Lyft and Uber drivers are not big Trump fans because the majority of them are not white men.

I was going to speak at Greg Coleman’s class at NYU a few weeks ago and took a car to get there. The driver made an impact on me. His car was super clean. He asked me how my day was going and then respectfully let me do my thing. Classical music played in the background. He was a good driver, cautious defensive but not aggressive.

The drive ended and as I was getting out of the car I thanked him and noted that I really enjoyed the music. He looked at me and in an extremely broken Middle Eastern accent, he said “Happy Holidays” almost in a question because he wasn’t quite sure if that is what you were supposed to say. I smiled and wished him Happy Holidays too.

As I walked to the class, I wondered about him. He was well-dressed, polished and appeared to just have arrived with enough money to have a nice car and look good but he was driving a car to make cash. Was he a doctor where he came from? A professor? A business person? Whatever it is, I assumed he came here for a better life and that he needed to leave where he came from. Most people who come here don’t just leave a country that they love where their roots are, they leave for a reason.

My guess is that man is going to make the very best of his life here. He makes an impact on the US economy, maybe he raises his kids here who feel so indebted to the US that they go on to do great things here. Who knows but I do know that the chances that he will give back in ways we don’t know about is much higher than doing nothing or doing something bad.

I know of two people, married with three girls who all have graduated from UPenn. One of the couple comes from Morroco and the other from Iran. Their parents brought them here for different reasons when they were in their teens. They love this country deeply as they have seen how their home countries did not work for their families. How much they love the US still resonates with me. They literally thank their lucky stars every single day that they live here and were able to raise their kids here.

The wall that Trump wants to buil is so utterly ridiculous. We should work with other countries to create environments where people want to stay but the reality is there will always be people who want to migrate to the US. We should embrace them. They are good for our economy and for future generations. In some ways they are happier to be here than people who have lived here for generations.

It is time to shut down this wall nonsense down.

Was he a doctor where he came from? A professor? A business person?One of our nannys (in the early to mid 90’s) was a Pediatrician in Russia before coming here. Until I got older myself (she was about 50 at the time I think) I could never understand why she didn’t become a Doctor here! (Hah when older everything is harder!) We doubted she was a doctor when she told us that, so we asked a friend who was a Russian born Gastroenterologist what he thought. He asked her some questions in Russian (she spoke only broken english) and say ‘yep she is a Doctor’. He runs a big practice now with a surgi center. Not sure what the former nanny is doing. Was great having an experience Physician even foreign trained to take care of the kids. She didn’t tell us that either when we hired her.The woman who now cleans our house and some of my offices was a lawyer in Brazil she told us. Couldn’t earn a living there so she came here. Now cleaning houses.The best thing about the immigrants I have met is how they hustle and are willing to cut any and all deals to keep busy. For example the cleaning lady charges us say $150 to clean our house each time. She employs a bunch of other brazilian girls to do the actual cleaning (although she does clean if we have a complaint). Most likely they are illegals I am guessing. Anyway I needed a shared office cleaned but not everyday at a commercial property. So I just said to her ‘I will give you $70 per month to go in and make sure it’s in good shape for the tenants’ empty trash and what not. She says ‘ok no problem Mr. Larry I will do that for you’. Also she comes and cleans my office bathroom at no charge (office to messy and full of things to actually have a cleaning person). The hustle is tremendous.Lawn services around here use people from Mexico to cut lawns and do snow. The owner told me many of them ended up having to go back to Mexico after immigration policies changed. Now he is short staffed.Here is the thing though. We aren’t that far from very very poor Camden NJ. Instead of having cheap lawn service we should be paying more and the pay should rise enough to hire and pay some of the people living in Camden NJ who are out of work. But they can’t compete with the under the table economy that has developed from illegal labor.

Comments (Archived):

LE Jan 9, 2019

Was he a doctor where he came from? A professor? A business person?One of our nannys (in the early to mid 90’s) was a Pediatrician in Russia before coming here. Until I got older myself (she was about 50 at the time I think) I could never understand why she didn’t become a Doctor here! (Hah when older everything is harder!) We doubted she was a doctor when she told us that, so we asked a friend who was a Russian born Gastroenterologist what he thought. He asked her some questions in Russian (she spoke only broken english) and say ‘yep she is a Doctor’. He runs a big practice now with a surgi center. Not sure what the former nanny is doing. Was great having an experience Physician even foreign trained to take care of the kids. She didn’t tell us that either when we hired her.The woman who now cleans our house and some of my offices was a lawyer in Brazil she told us. Couldn’t earn a living there so she came here. Now cleaning houses.The best thing about the immigrants I have met is how they hustle and are willing to cut any and all deals to keep busy. For example the cleaning lady charges us say $150 to clean our house each time. She employs a bunch of other brazilian girls to do the actual cleaning (although she does clean if we have a complaint). Most likely they are illegals I am guessing. Anyway I needed a shared office cleaned but not everyday at a commercial property. So I just said to her ‘I will give you $70 per month to go in and make sure it’s in good shape for the tenants’ empty trash and what not. She says ‘ok no problem Mr. Larry I will do that for you’. Also she comes and cleans my office bathroom at no charge (office to messy and full of things to actually have a cleaning person). The hustle is tremendous.Lawn services around here use people from Mexico to cut lawns and do snow. The owner told me many of them ended up having to go back to Mexico after immigration policies changed. Now he is short staffed.Here is the thing though. We aren’t that far from very very poor Camden NJ. Instead of having cheap lawn service we should be paying more and the pay should rise enough to hire and pay some of the people living in Camden NJ who are out of work. But they can’t compete with the under the table economy that has developed from illegal labor.
JLM Jan 10, 2019

.Those of us closer to the problem on the border are not quite as sanguine. We are experiencing massive criminal activity from ultra-violent cartel drug importation — 17 killed and burned yesterday in Nuevo Laredo — sex trafficking, child slavery trafficking, illegal alien criminal activity, terror activity, and, only then, massive illegal alien flows.MS-13 bought an apartment complex in Austin for goodness sake.The border is a zone of extensive crime and violence.The recent “family” detention issues have resulted in illegal alien families being released into our communities — pretending to be awaiting a court proceeding in which only 3% of applicants are granted asylum — putting incredible pressure on the social safety net.Our schools have to educate “persons” within the school district whether they are legal or illegal. If a child arrives for school, they get a desk and an education. Period. We pay for our schools with ever increasing property taxes.Where walls have been implemented — San Diego, El Paso, Tucson, Yuma — illegal alien apprehensions are down 95. This data indicates — to those who do the research to understand it — that walls do, in fact, work.I care not a whit about the politics, but the solution is not to do nothing. We are being inundated here while clueless, uninformed liberals are telling us that what we are seeing with our own eyes, what is being reported in our newspapers is a pipe dream.Believe the people who live here. A wall will work wonders.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…