Los Kerik Spanglish Blues

I found it more than slightly ironic that Kerik accepted the DHS appointment without even thinking about the household nanny who just happened to be undocumented. In addition, she very conveniently happened to leave the US for Mejico two weeks ago or just about the time that Kerik got the DHS nod. The women’s existence never pierced his consciousness. She was just that nice Manuela or whatever to him.

The reality is that a number of undocumented women work as domestics and are horrifically exploited by the idiotic system we have in place. At the same time, au pairs are legally showing up here from Europe all of the time. Why didn’t Kerik hire an au pair? After all he was a cop and one would think he would think twice about hiring someone who is here without papers.

I suspect he just did not want to spend the money on an au pair. He took the easy way out and tapped into the informal system that exists to "introduce" and pass these domestics from one household to the next. This under the table system keeps the pipeline supplied with cheap domestic labor. The system allows Anglo families to get cheap help from women so that no one in the household has to actually deal with the children. I remember a former colleague whose daughter called the domestic Mom. She never really paid the women very much "She doesn't need the money and well I take care of her." The meager wage and its justification was about not paying the women a living wage so that she'd continue to be a "live-in." The reality was that my former colleague never really loved/cared about her daughter. Eventually, she abandoned the child by leaving her with the child’s grandmother while she swaned about Europe.

BTW, the recent gushing reviews of "Spanglish" along with Kerik's faux pas will once again bring this issue to the consciousness of the US for about 3 nano seconds. Just as quickly it will fade away. It will become an invisible and forgotten issue. This country cannot come to grips with how it exploits these desperately poor people. They are only faceless wisps and non-persons with “strange” names. They are non-persons who don’t exist and have even fewer rights than pieces of property in this country. The proof is that when we pop-up in the consciousness of this county -- the reaction generally is at best to ignore us and more typically annoyance about having to deal with us.

Yet, almost anytime that a person sits down to eat at home or in a restaurant -- the labor that picked/cultivated the foodstuffs or in the case of a restaurant the cooking/cleaning was probably done by a person who is working/living here without papers. The labor that fuels basic parts of this country's economy function is forgotten except at election time. Then the issue becomes a wedge issue for right-wing repuglicans to demonize their opponents for protecting "illegal aliens." I'm thinking here about the recent repulsive Oklahoma US senate campaign filled with idiotic Willie Horton-like images of shadowy gremlins sneaking across the border to steal jobs from hard-working US citizens. It is all very sad.

The question that will never be asked or ever addressed in le affair Kerik is a simple one. How did she meet and get hired by Kerik? She has to have been introduced to him by someone. I'll bet dollars to donuts that we will never find out. She's just a cypher and no one will care, but, somehow she was introduced to Kerik. The usual journalistic questions - who, what, when, where and how will be evaded and never raised. It is right out of a novel by Dickens.

Oh yes and a merry Christmas to you Mr. Scrooge.