The year was 2005. I had just started law school and already couldn’t wait for it to be over. Despite being a crack law student with a bright future, I still needed to put beer on the table every week. To make ends meet, I took a job at a local restaurant as a server. Civil procedure by day, “would you like fries with that?” at night. While at first it felt a little demeaning for a Villanova college graduate studying law to be serving food, it didn’t matter. The money was good, and I got paid every day in cold, hard cash.
The restaurant was broken into two sectionsย – you had your “front of the house” staff, and in the back, you had your “back of the house”ย staff. The front of the house staff is what you would imagine – servers, hostesses, and bartenders. Theyย wereย mostly middle class kids trying to make a few bucks. Some of them were in school. Most were white.
In the back of the house no one spoke a lick of English – it was all Spanish. Apparently the guys in the back were here from Mexico illegally.
As a conservative, I’d always considered myself against illegal immigration. People should come to Americaย legally. If they come here illegally, they should have to leave. Simple enough, right?
Despite being a fancy and important law student, I quickly bonded with my fellow servers, whose upbringingsย were similar to mine. Theseย kids liked to party and hang out. I found them much easier to get along with than my fellow law students, who were often pruning about their LSAT scores, college scholarships, and bragging about how they were going to easily graduate in the top 5% of the class and make law review. I was just trying to get my law degree and start a practice – not set the academic world on fire. Can we talk about punk rock insteadย of debating “International Shoe?” Please? Pretty please? If I heard the phraseย “minimum contacts” in a casual conversation one more time I was going to punch someone.ย Read the rest of this entry »