- Joined
- Dec 2, 2015
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- 16,568
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- California Caliphate
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- Independent
STUCK : INSIDE CALIFORNIA’S HOUSING CRISIS
“On a recent afternoon, holding a lit cigarette between his fingers, Hengbin Wu sat in an old desk chair and watched a Chinese TV series on YouTube in his two-bedroom apartment in Monterey Park. At any given time, the 58-year old shares the small space with up to nine other Chinese immigrants.
In the faint light coming through the window blinds, three beds, a nightstand and a locker were tightly arranged along the living room walls. A fourth bed was pushed up against a wall next to the kitchen, where a well-fed rat made two brief appearances.
[SNIP]
GETTING HERE
For people living in boarding houses, the journey starts in China, where impoverished, often rural people seeking financial opportunity promise to pay up to $60,000 to travel agencies, or in some cases “snakeheads” — the Chinese equivalent of Mexican “coyotes” — who help them get visas and transport them to the United States. Prices are determined by city of origination and how complicated the process is.
“Look at our life here, living neither like a human or a ghost!”
Lao Song, or Old Song, a tenant in Wu’s boarding house who is in his late 50s, recently lost a five-year appeal to his asylum case. He says his work authorization has not been updated in nearly four years.
******
This is just the Chinese and others from the Asian community.. We have greater populations of those south of the border In similar situations. These are the people we depend on to keep our products and services cheap, yet at the same time cry alligator tears about the condition of the poor.
By not enforcing our immigration laws, we are guilty of creating our own “Grapes of Wrath”.
Neither Human Nor Ghost: Chinese Immigrants Scrape By In San Gabriel Valley’s Boarding Houses
Welcome to the modern-day tenements of the San Gabriel Valley: home to thousands of Chinese immigrants who live as many as 13 to a unit, enduring rodents, insect infestations, leaks, mold and exposure to electrical wiring.
laist.com
“On a recent afternoon, holding a lit cigarette between his fingers, Hengbin Wu sat in an old desk chair and watched a Chinese TV series on YouTube in his two-bedroom apartment in Monterey Park. At any given time, the 58-year old shares the small space with up to nine other Chinese immigrants.
In the faint light coming through the window blinds, three beds, a nightstand and a locker were tightly arranged along the living room walls. A fourth bed was pushed up against a wall next to the kitchen, where a well-fed rat made two brief appearances.
[SNIP]
GETTING HERE
For people living in boarding houses, the journey starts in China, where impoverished, often rural people seeking financial opportunity promise to pay up to $60,000 to travel agencies, or in some cases “snakeheads” — the Chinese equivalent of Mexican “coyotes” — who help them get visas and transport them to the United States. Prices are determined by city of origination and how complicated the process is.
“Look at our life here, living neither like a human or a ghost!”
Lao Song, or Old Song, a tenant in Wu’s boarding house who is in his late 50s, recently lost a five-year appeal to his asylum case. He says his work authorization has not been updated in nearly four years.
******
This is just the Chinese and others from the Asian community.. We have greater populations of those south of the border In similar situations. These are the people we depend on to keep our products and services cheap, yet at the same time cry alligator tears about the condition of the poor.
By not enforcing our immigration laws, we are guilty of creating our own “Grapes of Wrath”.
