A story like this should outrage every Tennessean. A Smyrna based landscaping company called Vanderbilt Landscaping (no relation to the University) has been accused of bringing in workers from Mexico on work visas, then confiscating their passports and forcing them to live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. This isn’t about “the free hand of the market”, its about abusing a broken system to maximize profit at the expense of defenseless people. Think about that. These are people being abused and exploited because they are desperate, and had the misfortune of being born into unimaginable poverty.
The Country on our Southern border is on fire, folks. The mostly rural North has been decimated first by unfair trade agreements which wiped out the family farms, and then by a brutal war between powerful drug cartels. The people that live there, (and it has only been a handful of generations since that included my family) have no bootstraps with which to lift themselves up. They scrape together enough money to pay for the privilege of coming here to work and earn money to help their families, only to face this IN OUR COUNTRY:
There were 15 people living here, no air-conditioning, one bathroom, no beds. The workers built their own beds.
As Americans, and as Tennesseans, we must demand that this company forfeit any contracts it has with the State Government. I do not want to be a party to this. Do you?
Thanks to John Lamb for heads up, and to Southern Beale who is as angry about this as I.
Should we send peacekeepers to their country to protect the downtrodden?
No, Ex. Lets send less blood money over there by legalizing harmless drugs. Better than peacekeepers.
Amen!