The award for "most newsless story ever to hit the front page" of the P & C goes to--drum roll, please-- 2 Boys Drown in Summerville [in Sunday's edition]. Our judges decided that, even if the reporter neglected to get some facts, the editors guaranteed that any gathered ended in the circular file prior to its publication. Why would a news source do that?A horrible and preventable accident occurred. Two unsupervised preschoolers drowned late on a hot summer afternoon as a construction crew toiled on a new house.
Ask yourself:
- Why are the ages of the two boys unknown? "thought to be ages 4 and 5"
- Which worker brought them to the job site? "deputies think they were with someone working on the house"
- Why don't the deputies know?
- Why was their absence noticed? "Someone in the crew noticed the children were missing around 7 p.m."
- How many of the crew knew the boys were on the job site?
- How long had they been there, and was this the first time?
- Who was in charge of the work crew?
- Why did someone think the boys were in the water? "Deputies arrived and found a man standing in the water, probing the bottom with a long, narrow board."
- Who was the man in the water?
- Did anyone besides the deputies or EMS accompany the children to the hospital?
- How do deputies plan to find the children's parents? Or have they?
The headline on this posting is the only logical explanation. The P & C attempts to avoid mentioning the involvement of illegals in ANY situation, apparently with the idea that readers won't notice.
Still think illegals should be ignored?
**UPDATE**
Our fearless editors at the P & C have managed to print the names and ages of the children as of Monday's edition. They have added that both parents were at the job site. The State yesterday confirmed that the mother was from Mexico and did not speak English. [Boys Who Died in Water Pit Identified ]
Do you have any remaining doubts that the P & C is ignoring the ramifications of these being the children of illegals?
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4 comments:
Well, I sure learned a lot more from your back story. Thanks for the investigative gumshoeing, Clelia.
What ramifications? Not being snarky here, but I don't see how the parents' immigration status is relevant to the story. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to pick up the paper and read about a child who died because of adult carelessness or neglect. I haven't noticed headlines saying "U.S. Citizens' Child Drowns in Pit", or "U.S. Citizens' Child Died in Hot Car".
My point was that when illegals are employed, virtually all protections for them AND any children they might bring to the job site--those codified in U.S. labor law over the last 100 or so years--do not apply. The employer, whose name apparently is a big secret, took advantage of their desperation for money under any circumstances. Why were children at the job site? Under legal circumstances they wouldn't be there. Unlike the Dorchester authorities, I don't absolve the mother. It's not the same as the Heyward case but not far from it. To me it's like saying what can you expect of Mexicans? The worst kind of prejudice.
I'll agree with at least part of the comments of both Clisby and Babbie.
Therein rests the heart of this dilemma. As a country we don't want to address the problem of illegals, but then we don't want to extend basic rights to them when they are here either. The only people who seem to be profiting are the “illegal” employers. No benefits, low wages and totally off the books makes these workers the equivalent of modern day slaves even if they are “free” to move. Really, how “free” are they?
This is really about pure greed among the employers. It's not about border security, patriotism or family values. How could it be? As long as these issues aren't addressed in the context of their exploitation, these people will continue to suffer. They will continue to be exploited at a very high price to them directly and to the rest of us only slightly less directly.
You could call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I can still logically allude to a biblical tradition based on tribal rules that were once universal among our ancestors, at least among the tribes that survived. It said that if a people would not provide for the care and safety of the "strangers within their gates" then they would put at risk the moral education and safety of their own. From the beginning of civilization it has been enshrined within the world's oldest religions a rule that said a good people and a just society should be measured by their willingness to extend reasonable protections and care to the stranger within, if only to guarantee that the rights of the locals should never be taken for granted. By protecting the stranger, a just society would be protecting itself. It’s a simple rule and it has made sense for thousands of years.
Just how secure are our most basic rights and civil protections if we would so easily deny them to someone else who isn’t a citizen, here legally or not? I’m not suggesting that we give them the right to vote, but if they are allowed to be taken advantage of or endangered simply because they are not here legally, then really how safe are any of us?
While we allow a few employers to feed their greed at the expense of others, we are also seeing the rights of legal residents and citizens eroded. If a work site is unsafe for a citizen, logic and the law should say that it is equally unsafe for a non-citizen. I’d like to know who the employer is and why an unsafe working condition is allowed. In this case it’s the status of the worker that seems to be dictating what questions are asked or answered. That’s not good.
The unanswered questions of the original article almost said that because illegals were involved the usual questions were not important. Why? It would appear this newspaper chooses to look the other way when workers, especially illegal workers, are exploited. To some employers who continue to profit, avoidance of the obvious is not an accident. It’s not even an unintended consequence. Why else would minimum wage floors and workplace safety be held to such low standards for the rest of us for so long?
It's a tragedy that any child of any parent should have to pay the price for this irresponsibility of which our free press is also a party, if only by their acquiescence. No worker should be subjected to unsafe work environments, not ever. In order to guarantee own protection, illegal workers, and their children, should be no less protected. Cultural and legal traditions on which America is based require nothing less.
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