Racial remarks spark reprimand of Nevada official

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Racial remarks spark reprimand of Nevada official
updated 2 hours 20 minutes ago 2011-03-27T02:00:02

PAHRUMP, Nev. — Commissioners in central Nevada's Nye County have voted unanimously to reprimand the county assessor, after she sent emails to the sheriff questioning the citizenship of workers building a new county jail.

Assessor Shirley Matson asked for an investigation of the workers' citizenship or work visa status in a March 11 email to Sheriff Tony DeMeo, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

She wrote that her staff and the public "can plainly see that the construction employees are all Mexican/Latino non-English speaking and I'm getting complaints."

That email was among many between Matson and the sheriff, sent after Matson was elected to a four-year term in November. The sheriff told Matson her remarks were blatantly racist and her request was unconstitutional.





Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42289646/ns/us_news/

[tpsbmam]

1. K&R for a great response from the sheriff! nt

[47of74]

3. If only there were more Sheriffs like him.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. Sorry, but I'm guessing she was right.

a couple of years ago I worked on a new building for Cisco in Silicon Valley. There were upwards of 200 workers at any time on that site and I doubt that more than about 30 of us spoke English. Now, I don't know what the citizen requirements are in this country but I would be willing to guess that if you have v
been here long enough to attain citizenship, you would probably have aquired at least a smattering of English. Hell, I have aquired simple Spanish just by living in California. To be clear, my Spanish sucks but it was often better than the English of many of my co workers. Is it racist to point out that many of these workers were likley here without documentation? It is what it is.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are a plethora of employers out there that hire undocumented workers at substandard wages and treat them like shit in the name of profit while denying U.S. citezens jobs because they would have to comply with U.S. labor laws. There is also no doubt in my mind that most of these undocumented workers are the hardest working motherfuckers I have ever met but that does not excuse the flagrent violation of U.S. labor laws being used to drive down our wages instead of bringing their standards of living up.

You want to solve the undocumented worker problem in his country? Start putting the people who hire them to skirt our labor laws in jail. That's not racist, that is reality.

[47of74]

4. Read on a little bit in that article..

To the parts where it's said that no one else has gotten complaints from the public. To the parts where she named a person who complained to her, who said that he never complained to her and that she flagged him down to ask "...why were all the Mexicans working over there.."

[tpsbmam]

6. How did she *know* that they were non-English speaking?

Nowhere in the article does it say that she or any other the other people she claims complained actually had any contact with any of the workers. Nowhere. So she's assuming they're "non-English speaking" based on what? Maybe people heard them speaking Spanish to each other. Hellllooooo....people speaking to each other in their native tongue does NOT mean they don't speak English.

She looked at them, saw Latino and saw illegal. As the sheriff said, "They look Hispanic, so they must be illegal. Do you see where that could be seen as a bigoted statement? It's bigoted to me." Me too.

[savalez]

7. You guessed wrong.

Knowing english or looking Hispanic has nothing to do with being legally employed.

She's wrong and so are you.

[Skittles]

8. I know a lot of Hispanic folk who speak Spanish to each other

they'll speak English perfectly fine when I talk to them - LOL, I doubt this racist gal ever really spoke to them

[24601]

9. Yes, English fluency is a naturalization requirement. My uncle-in-law

recently became a citizen. Being from England, he had only minor problems understanding the President's English - and he passed. Many other did not. Of course if they are citizens from birth, there is no language requirement.

[alp227]

5. Mathson also referred to "anchor babies":

"These young girls will spread their legs to anyone to get an anchor baby growing in their bellies so they can illegally cross the border and suck up the U.S. citizen tax base resource everywhere they go in the U.S." (h/t Drudge ReTort)