Good Luck Getting Your Roof Done

We had our roof replaced some months ago. The gutter guys had screwed it up, the shingles they installed didn't match and it looked awful. When the roofers ripped off the old shingles, they found that some of the plywood underneath was bad, so it was a good thing overall.

The crew itself was Hispanic. At the end of the job, when we paid the balance to the contractor, we complimented him on the efficiency and cleanliness of his crew. See, after the gutters were done (three times, because they screwed it up twice), we were finding and picking up nails for months. The roofers picked up everything and went around the house a couple of times with magnetic brooms.

We then got into a discussion about the ethnicity of the crew. The contractor said that he had started his business with the intent of providing jobs for Americans. But what he found was that he was constantly getting calls from his workers who were taking an unscheduled day off. The excuses were along the lines of "my car broke down," "I'm a little hung over," "I need to meet with my parole officer" or their partner would call to say that so-and-so was in the hospital after ODing or was in jail. He could almost never field a full crew and he was constantly arranging for rides or picking up guys whose cars had broken down or weren't registered anymore. There were lots of workers' comp claims. And when the crew was there, some worked slowly because they were hung over and most of the time, they took 90 minutes or more for lunch. One day jobs almost always took more than a day. And when they finished, the homeowners' yards were a mess with nails scattered everywhere. Quite often, some of the jobs needed to be redone.

One of his workers was from Central America. He was also his best worker. One fine day, that worker told the contractor that he could put together his own crew if the contractor wanted. The contractor did. What the contractor then found was that the Central American guy had a crew that showed up on time, every day. They had their own transportation. They brought their own lunches and took a short break. They worked carefully (the injury rate sank to almost zero) and diligently. One day jobs took one day. When they finished, they cleaned up after themselves. The rework rate also sank to near zero, he said that he couldn't remember the last time he had to send men out to fix bad work.

Were they all legal? I don't know. But will they be rounded up in Trump's immigrant dragnet? Signs point to yes. To arrest and detain eleven million people, which is what Reichfuhrer Miller wants to do, lots of untrained goobers are going to be tasked/hired to do the work. Even if the error rate is only one-half of a percent, that'll be over fifty thousand legal residents, both naturalized and native-born, who will be detained and possibly deported.

Which brings me to this: If you are not white, it would probably behoove you to cary proof of citizenship with you. It may be too late to get a passport card, which leaves a passport, a copy of your naturalization papers or a copy of your birth certificate (and they should be certified). And commit to memory the number of some sort of legal assistance resource and know where the originals are. Because some cracker with a bent-shitcan attitude might destroy your documents out of sheer MAGA-inspired meanness.

Hope you don't have a taste for lettuce and other crops that are picked by hand. Those are going to largely rot in the fields once the roundup begins. Which will be a roundup that will of a scale of the German roundup of Jews and other groups and may only be slightly more humane.

All you good little Americans, all 73 million of you, will have much to be proud of.