http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-stamp13oct13,0,3359585.story?track=mostviewed-homepage Food-Stamp Program Finally Speaks Their Language KMEX helps an effort to get Latino immigrants to apply for food stamps. An O.C. group takes it a step further and offers a class on how to do it. By Jennifer Delson, Times Staff Writer October 13, 2006 Though it goes against the conventional wisdom of anti-illegal immigration supporters, those who enroll the poor in the federal food stamp program say they've struggled for years to get immigrant Latino families signed up. Now a Spanish-language news report and television ad campaign have spurred thousands of immigrants in Orange County over the last several weeks to contact a nonprofit organization that offers a Spanish-language class called "Food Stamps in Four Hours." Ain't America great?
Yep! And I'm very proud to live in a nation that sees the value in sharing back with those that have helped us become the great nation we are! I'm glad to see my taxes go for this type of program as opposed to a teacup museum in Sparta.
sounds reall funny when you just blurt it out....teacup museum. what you don't know is that sparta, and allegheny county in general are economically depressed areas. there are very few jobs there. even the lowe's home improvement store in town, which was store number 2, closed a few years ago. there is some very minimal manufacturing, farming, and tourism, but the place is just poor. the only people up there with money are the ones who came from down here and built big-ass vacation places. now, anything the state can do to infuse some economic development in that poor little town is a good thing, in my view. teaching people how to get on food stamps in four hours is not a good thing, in my view. how about teaching them to apply for a job in four hours? how about teaching them some english in four hours so they can better function as a part of society. how about teaching them to apply for citizenship in four hours....i can think of lots of better ways to spend tax dollars on four-hour classes for hispanic immigrants than how to get on food stamps.
Now, I can agree with that....I'm just saying I'd rather teach people how to utilize our services than see them starve. Now, in Sparta we could teach them how to rent a U-Haul and move to Charlotte where there are jobs...not use my tax dollars to create a tea cup museum to prop up a dead economy. There are reasons that towns have negative growth and eventually die. That is part of a free market system and those are market forces at play. I have lots of friends from WVA who realized that coal mining wasn't going to give them or their kids the life they wanted so guess what....they left.
I can think of many other ways that I had rather have my tax dollars spent than four hour classes on how to rip off taxpayers. And no, I don't want people to starve but they came here and have children and if they can't feed themselves why have more children? Yes, maybe we need to provide U-Haul services to the hispanics as well. If these are LEGAL immigrants that is one thing, if they are ILLEGAL, that is an entirely different matter.
Those "market forces" are not as marketable as you seem to believe. The effects on the WV economy, for example, are related to taxes, education, legislation, and of course, culture. I have heard many of the older WV folks talk about having so many NC folks coming into their town in the 1950s due to the poor economy in NC. The government of NC has worked on that problem, which is not the case with the WV legislature. Look at the businesses who move to "right to work" states as opposed to those states who have strong union legislation ... which are not under the control of any market. :wink:
