In 1981 my husband and I moved to a lovely smaller town in central Iowa . There were about 25,000 people there. Crime was very low, drug usage was almost non-existent, and there were excellent service facilities (i.e. hospital, schools, parks) which were able to meet the needs of all.
One of the major employers in Marshalltown was a pork packing plant. There was a lot of worker turnover there because of the poor working conditions, but the wages offered were high enough to attract the workers they needed.
Unfortunately, the packing plant discovered another source of labor that would work for far less wages and benefits. They began hiring itinerant illegal aliens and saving a bundle. When word of this practice got out and about, the town was overrun with illegal aliens hoping that they, too, could get jobs. They packed into houses in the older sections of town.
If that's where it would have ended, even though it was illegal, no one would have said much, but when this huge illegal population took over the town bringing in numbers greater than the local population, the quality of our lives started to spiral downward.
A homeowner who had spent their whole life buying and fixing up their property could find the value smashed to little of nothing when an illegal “flophouse” popped up beside them. We had that happen to us. Our elderly neighbor moved away. Supposedly it was a legal Hispanic family that had bought the property and who were moving in. Wrong! Instead of moving in what we would think of as normal furniture, they brought in numerous mattresses. These were stood against the walls all over the house. Illegal workers were in and out all day working the different shifts. When they were there they would plop a mattress on the floor and sleep. We estimated that there must be at least 40 people using the house at one point with only one bathroom. There were also many cars parked illegally on both sides of our very busy street near this house which restricted the flow of traffic.
The wonderful service facilities in town no longer accommodated all the population. The schools were bursting at the seams which necessitated a bond issue and ended up costing taxpayers a bundle. It became impossible to get an appointment at the medical clinic we'd used for 20 years. The post office swarmed with illegals sending their money back to their home country instead of spending it within the community. The streets were over-crowded, and many of the drivers now had no licenses or insurance.
Our daughter went to get gas in her car one evening. She came back home in tears. An illegal driving a junk pick-up had lost a tire which then hit her vehicle and smashed in the entire driver's side door. Although he had produced an insurance card, it later proved to be fraudulent. By that time he had disappeared. She filed a small-claims suit, but since the man was never located, she ended up paying the bills herself.
It was just one more reason in her book to hate these interlopers. She is a tall, willowy blonde. From the time she was 14 or 15, she had to deal with groups of foreign men ogling her, staring her up and down, and listening to their raucous Spanish comments when we went to local places like grocery stores. She felt totally humiliated and degraded at being treated this way.
Today there are no jobs left in town for common workers any more. Illegals hold down all of the jobs that teenagers used to do, including fast food and the venerable teen summer job in Iowa, detasseling corn. Jobs listed in the newspapers, such as those for receptionists or teaching assistants, now read “bilingual applicants only” which leaves the local people out.
Crime escalated. People I knew started getting beaten and robbed just walking down once-peaceful residential streets. Drugs were pouring in. A man from our church who was a police officer was assaulted so badly that he ended up retiring from the force. Teenaged girls were becoming pregnant by good-looking, smooth talking men who then left them to return to their wives in other countries. Their own girls started having babies by at least age 14. I worked in the high school, and every illegal girl I ever worked with was pregnant at least once before she dropped out of high school and went on welfare.
One evening these people decided to hold a fiesta in an open area a few blocks from our house. Over 800 people showed up for a loud, disorderly, alcoholic fest. The two police officers on duty could do nothing to control the mob, and the local taxpayers howled with wrath and fear over the uncontrolled mob.
Local residents were constantly being admonished to “embrace multi-culturality”. Most of them disagreed. We had liked the way our town was, and we resented how these people who didn't even have a right to be there had basically taken everything over just by sheer numbers. We hated what they had turned our town into.
People we knew started giving up and moving away. Most didn't really care where they went as long as it was an area free of illegals and the problems they had destroyed our town with. After the group moved in next door to us, we followed our friends and put our house up for sale before it was completely devalued. Even so, we were only able to get a fraction of what the house was worth. It was a devastating thing for us. We had worked all of our lives to pay for our home, and we owned it full and clear. It cost us a whole lot to move and to buy a home elsewhere, and my husband who had retired after 40 years of work is working again by necessity.
After moving away we watched news reports of INS raids on the packing plant in our old town. Newscasters shed huge crocodile tears over a handful of illegal workers being deported away from their families. Hey, people, the families were illegals, too, and should have been deported along with their family members, not vice versa.
We hardly know anyone there any more. Thousands of people moved into our town, but the population is still right at 25,000. That shows how many of the local populace has been forced out of their homes.
And then to hear one presidential hopeful tell us, “Illegal immigration isn't a crime.” Isn't that what illegal means?
