Quote:Yeah, I hear ya.  There will always be the "underground" market.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't hit up the low hanging fruit.  Why there aren't stiff penalties on New Mexican restaurants that hire illegals is beyond me...

 

When I was in college I worked at a restaurant called Guarduno's as a waiter.  The kitchen staff had at least 3 people that weren't documented.  1 was from Cuba and the other 2 were from Mexico that I knew of.  They were all working as dishwashers, which nobody wants to do.  But man, it's obvious that the owners were getting a good deal by not having to pay payroll taxes, FICA or any other expense.  It was all under the table, straight cash.

 

Yeah, there will always be cracks in the system, but it doesn't mean you ignore the easy fixes.  

 

Oh and El Paso has changed quite a bit from the 90's....  Just to say.  I visited there for my wife's 1st cousin who just graduated in May.  The city looks alot different in 2015 compared to what it looked like in '94 when last I went for a soccer tournament out there.  It's not the Hell Hole that I remember it to be.

 

Juarez is absolutely a stones throw from El Paso, there is obviously going to be some influence from people coming across the border.  There's no way to really stop it.  But I wouldn't say that the El Paso is overrun and deteriorating from it.  Like I said, the city looks much improved now as opposed to back when I used to go there over the summer for soccer tourneys in the 90's.  It's still hotter than all get out, and I would never live there...  But hey, to each their own.  I-10, the main highway and all the surrounding commercial and residential areas are actually pretty well maintained and look newly developed.  The old industrial corridor that used to surround I-10 is no longer the eye sore it used to be.  Matter of fact, I couldn't see it at all.  And we spent 3 days driving around the city.  

 

Kind of a small world.  I was friends in high school with the brother of the owner of Garduno's.  They were our neighbors in Alameda and I used to know the family very well.  The owner's daughter is a few years younger than me, and I remember that she was definitely a hottie.

 

I had the same experience working at a different restaurant, only it was not only the dishwasher, but also some of the cooks.  I don't know if they were illegals or not, but they could not speak English.  Language wasn't an issue since pretty much everybody that worked there was bilingual.

 

Regarding El Paso, I haven't been back there since the mid 80's when we used to go down for the weekend to party in Juarez.  I never thought that it was a bad place at all.

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