Thread: The question we all ask,

Mk, I live in NY, enough said. We'll never get any support from our senators. Living in the suburbs on Long Island, there is such a difference in which neighborhood you live in. The people in the communities, where the houses are newer, and bigger, don't have the illegals buying houses on their blocks. Just 5 blocks away, in an older area, with smaller houses, well, that's a different story. And even though many of the people see the illegals riding their bikes all over town, they just don't seem to realize how it still affects them overall. I visited old friends in Charlottesville VA awhile ago, they live in an expensivive subdivision. They had no idea what I was talking about. I had to point out some illegals in the inner city while we were riding around. I try to open people's eyes, but some just don't want to see, or don't want to deal with it.

First off welcome to the great state of Oklahoma MK! 73 miles south? hmm Duncan? Ardmore? Ada?

Now let me tell you how it used to be around here. I was born and raised in OKC, growing up through the 60's & 70's. During that time the only Spanish we heard was either in a language class or on some static laden far off radio station you might pick up on AM.

I started doing construction work at 16, at that time here in OKC there were very very few hispanics, they were usually confined to three different trades, concrete work, roofing, and landscaping, and these were usually transient workers that would do a job or two and then you would never see them again but 99% of the jobs were done by American craftsmen. During the S&L fiasco of the mid 80's Oklahoma was in a depression, you couldn't find a construction job anywhere so we ended up moving to Dallas. Wow, what a culture shock for me. We had lined up a job to do and we arrived early on a Monday morning, when we get there we notice a fire out behind the house, there had to be at least 20 guys out there cooking their breakfast on this open fire. I had never seen anything like it, it was like going to a foreign country. I would say that 85-90% of the people doing the work there were Spanish speaking.

I returned to OKC in late 1990 and things were still mostly like they were before we left though there were a few more hispanics around but absolutely nothing like Texas was. Slowly their population increased, then after we had the major tornado there was a very heavy influx of them. Today, what used to be 99% American workforce in the construction trades has become almost 60% hispanic! Prices for jobs have stayed almost stagnant for ten years while the builders' prices have increased by probably 30-40% maybe more.

Neighborhoods that were 95% white in the 70's are now 80% hispanics. SW 29th street now has more signs in Spanish than are in English. This no longer feels like home, while we may not have the problems that California or Texas has there is definitely a pronounced change in the ethnic makeup of our great state.

The law goes into effect November 1st, and I'm not sure that it will change a thing. I sure don't see a heavy exodus out of the state yet.