Here is an excerpt. Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org
Soon after we began the hike, we saw an ATV trying to climb a series of rugged rock steps. The driver had to get out of his vehicle and tie it to a tree so that it wouldn’t tip over backwards as he maneuvered up the steps. He pushed a button to raise the ATV’s body and then yanked, tugged, and pushed it over the rocks. Then he was on his merry way. A few minutes later, we stopped to rest and have a snack. A small dog was chasing after the ATV, and we thought it belonged to the driver. A woman walked by and asked us if we had seen a dog; a couple down the trail had lost theirs. We met her again hiking back to the trail head. She was from Mexico, near Monterrey, and had come to the United States with her parents when she was young. They had settled in the mining town of Price, Utah, where her father had worked in the coal mines. He only got work in non-union pits, so when he retired he had little savings. In poor health, he and his wife returned to Mexico, where they have friends and where it is cheaper to live. They had never learned much English, so they were happy to return to their homeland. Their daughter spoke English very well. She had moved to Moab a dozen years ago, and she now held two jobs, one at the local hospital and another at a Mexican restaurant.
Immigrant-bashing is a staple of right-wing rhetoric in the United States, and it has increased during the current economic meltdown. I wonder what Glenn Beck and all the other haters would say to this woman and her parents. The good Mormons of Utah (Beck, by the way, is a Mormon) were happy to use up the bodies of the parents of our fellow hiker. It didn’t matter one bit that they couldn’t speak English. And somehow they managed to survive in a hostile and stark environment for many years without benefit of English fluency. Her father reminded me of my great-uncle, Alberto Benigni, who never mastered English but somehow managed to work in the mines from age nine to sixty-five. The children of immigrants always learn the new language. The hypocrisy of the xenophobes is shown when they denounce the teaching of English as a second language in our schools. Sink of swim, they say. Believe me, it will be the nation that sinks if we don’t encourage immigration. If the pasty-faced former alcoholic Beck and the dope-addled Rush Limbaugh are characteristic of the native stock, we are in a whole lot of trouble. We need more Mexicans, Indians, Chinese, Russians, you name it. We should take heed of what Karl Marx said, in a different context to be sure, about the English potters. He said that their health would have been still worse—from their wretched employment in potteries—had they not married people from healthier districts. During the final years of my teaching at the University of Pittsburgh campus in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, long after the steelworkers had died, retired, or left the region in despair, and no longer sent their ambitious kids to college, I was never more happy than when I had immigrant students. While the "American" students spent their time drinking and attending fraternity affairs, the foreigners were busy studying.