Back around the mid-90s, I was helping a friend move. He had a lot of stuff, including a big, wooden armoire that weighed a ton. Someone suggested that we hire a couple of day laborers (I believe “Let’s go get some Mexicans” was the phrase he used). I had no idea how to go about this, but he did so we let him conduct the hiring process.

He had a pickup truck, which turned out to be instrumental in making it happen. The three of us pulled up in front of a group of people looking for work. One of us held up two fingers, and the first two to hop in the back of the truck got the job. That was it. No second interview, no checking of references, no stringing the applicant along while people meet with upper management to confirm that the project is actually funded.

It was a bit of a crapshoot whether the people we hired would be any good, but it was hard to beat the price. Ten bucks an hour was the going rate at the time, and I was making four to five times that to do little more than sit on my ass all day. We lucked out. The two guys did what we thought was a two hour-job in less than one. We still paid them for two hours because we weren’t complete dicks.

Should we have checked our privilege and was this exploitation? Fuck if I know. It was the 90s and privilege was not something you really checked. If you were less of a capacious asshole than people in the 80s, you were way ahead of the game. At least that’s what I told myself. As for exploiting these guys, in a sense it was. I’m guessing they were undocumented and as such, they were getting dicked on their hourly rate. With immigration laws in place, inequality was baked in.

I remember having a disagreement with my father around that time. In his view, people who came to this country illegally were criminals because they had broken the law. That only makes sense if you believe that laws actually reflect what is right and wrong. To me, that’s bullshit,

Sure, there are some laws you don’t want to break because doing so is demonstrably wrong. Rape, murder, armed robbery and the like are to be avoided. Then there are other laws such as drug possession and being here illegally. You can argue that those laws need to be on the books, but it’s no big whoop if you break them and don’t get caught.

There is no right or wrong behind why I am a US citizen. I did nothing to earn my citizenship. I was simply born in the United States, in California specifically. This was land that used to belong to Mexico. If the guy with the pickup truck was correct in his assumption that the people we hired were Mexican, shouldn’t they be grandfathered in with legal status since we stole half their country?

Our immigration policy has never made a lot of sense. But at least back then, it was less common for those lucky enough to be here legally to demonize who were not. Most of us shrugged at the absurdity of the situation and did our best to get on with life. Granted, it’s a lot easier to do that when you’re on the cushy side of the injustice gap.

I wonder what changed. Was it the cartels? Sure, those fuckers are scary but it’s not like the majority of people who come here have any affiliation with them. When it comes to those willing to earn discount wages to move some gringo’s furniture around, it’s a safe bet they aren’t in a cartel.

I haven’t had the need to employ day laborers recently. I wonder if it is safe for them to be out there now. I live in a sanctuary city, but we do have a local ICE headquarters and I have no idea what they are up to. These days, undocumented immigrants don’t just have to worry about being sent back where they come from. Now they risk being shipped to some gulag in El Salvador or South Sudan. All without being able to plead their case, because due process is so pre-January 20th.

Maybe America is just going through an ugly and hateful phase, and we will eventually outgrow it. I have faith that will happen but no faith it will happen anytime soon.