"60 Minutes" Report Shows American Families Hiding in the Shadows

For many years the advocates for open borders and unfettered immigration (those whom I have come to refer to as “Immigration Anarchists”) have done everything they could to foster an image about how illegal aliens are suffering and hiding in the shadows in communities across our country.

Illegal aliens are indeed being exploited; their vulnerability to exploitation is what makes them such desirable employees to unscrupulous employers.  However, they are hardly hiding in the shadows.  You can find illegal aliens on street corners in many American cities soliciting illegal employment.  In fact, many communities have provided areas where these illegal aliens cannot avoid detection but the hot sun in summer and rain and snow when the weather turns inclement.  These illegal aliens are not hiding in the shadows but congregating in the shade!

Sunday, July 29, 2012 the CBS News Program 60 Minutes aired a truly disturbing and disheartening report that they entitled, “Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars.”

The people living in cars are not illegal aliens but United States citizens and their children who became homeless as a result of the economic crisis some economists still refer to as a recession but should probably more accurately be called a depression!  It is certainly depressing, and worse, to consider that conscientious American workers, in losing their jobs, have lost their homes and even their ability to pay for a room in a motel and have taken to living in their cars and concealing this from authorities out of fear that those authorities might well take their children from them!  These American families and their children are now living in the “shadows!”

The report noted that it is estimated that nearly 25% of all American children are now living below the poverty line, yet no one has jumped up and taken the President to task for proposing that providing at least one million illegal alien “DREAMERS” with employment authorization will create unfair competition for these unemployed Americans who can no longer support themselves, let alone their children!  Once given employment authorization, these illegal aliens would have as much right to a job as do Americans and lawful immigrants!  They would be eligible to get Social Security cards and driver's licenses under whatever name they claimed was theirs!

Here is an edited excerpt from the transcript of CBS News Correspondent Scott Pelley's report in which he interviewed two teenagers and their dad:

The Great Recession began December 2007 — 1,700 mornings ago.

If you were rushing to work this morning, in Seminole County, Florida, it's not likely you'd notice the truck or hear the children getting ready for school.

Arielle Metzger: In the clear bin, we have dirty laundry. In that one, there are tools that we might need.

Scott Pelley: All these bank bags are storage of this and that.

Arielle Metzger: Like shampoo….

Austin Metzger: And over here is food.

Arielle Metzger: Food.

Pelley: So, you're really not heating up food so much. You're eating out of cans?

Arielle Metzger: Yup.

This is the home of the Metzger family. Arielle, 15, her brother Austin, 13. Their mother died when they were very young. Their dad, Tom, is a carpenter. And, he's been looking for work ever since Florida's construction industry collapsed. When foreclosure took their house, he bought the truck on Craigslist with his last thousand dollars. Tom's a little camera shy – thought we ought to talk to the kids – and it didn't take long to see why.

Pelley: How long have you been living in this truck?

Arielle Metzger: About five months.

Pelley: When kids at school ask you where you live, what do you tell 'em?

Austin Metzger: When they see the truck they ask me if I live in it, and when I hesitate they kinda realize. And they say they won't tell anybody.

Arielle Metzger: Yeah it's not really that much an embarrassment. I mean, it's only life. You do what you need to do, right?

It's life for a lot of folks. The number of kids in poverty in America is pushing toward 25 percent. One out of four. Austin and Ariel usually get cleaned up for school at gas stations. They find its best to go to different ones every day so the managers don't get sore.

Before the bell, they blend in with more than 1,800 other homeless students in the Seminole County schools. At Casselberry School we met 15 kids who'd been living in cars. With their parent's permission, they told us you don't get much sleep – with your brothers and sisters in the backseat – but that wasn't the worst part.

Marquis Gines: We were really scared. So we would stay up all night sometimes and watch over my mom and keep her safe.

What can be said about the political “leaders” of our country who look down their noses at their fellow citizens and talk about the need to create the “American Dream” for aliens whose very presence in our country represents a violation of our immigration laws- laws that were enacted to protect American lives and protect American jobs?

It is time that politicians truly represent their constituents- Americans who live within their political jurisdictions.  That would certainly be the sort of representative democracy that should be a “No Brainer!”

Not only are far too many American workers no longer working, but our government's failures to honestly and effectively address the immigration crisis are not working either!