This. The US has had programs In the past to try to improve the situation in central and South American countries. However, the current administration has expressed the desire to minimize foreign aid
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This.
I know so many grooms who rode the GPs back in their home country. I also know a lot of A/AA circuit grooms that are undocumented, that make better paychecks than I do in corporate America. While I’d say as a whole industry - yes we have a lot of gaps and we underpay a lot of workers… The groom industry, especially in places like Wellington & CA are alive, thriving, and generally very well compensated.
We joke they have a “mafia”, but I’ve seen people who underpay and mistreat grooms take their grooms to larger A/AA shows on the West Coast and their grooms leave mid show to go work for someone else that pays and treats them better.
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For what it’s worth, it doesn’t appear as if the aid was doing much if anything, yeah? I think @Annie10 has it right - that corruption goes all the way to the top.
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I understand this. It goes much deeper. Think about it… if we really and truly wanted to make things better it would be an all-out war - on our border. Way too close to home.
I am an immigrant. I was technically “illegal” for a while… working as a groom/rider. All I can say is, it is much much harder than it sounds to “just do some paperwork and become legal”. It also costs a fortune. I feel for these people and their families 
It was a long process for me, and I know the process is even harder if you are South American (I’m European).
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The xenophobia of it all is crazy. I’m always picking up little tricks from the good grooms I know, and it is wild how often other people are amazed by some little hack I start doing that their OWN GROOM showed it to me.
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When I sold saddles, they were also who I talked to the most. At horse shows, they’d find me and tell me a horse was sore, a saddle wasn’t fitting, etc. I’d walk into the barn and they’d show me where billets were falling apart and things their riders didn’t even know about or consider.
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It is no better trying to gain citizenship in any civilized country. We are not unique in that it is hard, and expensive. It’s supposed to be.
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Exactly - and if you stay on the good side of the West Coast groom mafia and rarely call in a favor, when you are truly in a tight spot they can really make things happen. Their network is no joke.
I once had a buyer schedule a trial for a sale pony that was overdue for a clip and awful about it, I basically needed her clipped that afternoon if she was going to look decent for the trial. My regular clipper wasn’t around, I can’t clip for shit, and my vet couldn’t come by with dorm. I went to another barn on the property to ask my friend’s groom what he thought I should do and he was like, “I have to head home but I got you.” Maybe twenty minutes later two of his friends show up, clip the pony together without dorm (!) in no time at all, and it’s a beautiful clip job. They also attempted to really undercharge me and I was like “hahah not happening I will be paying you twice that.”
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God love you, timetorush. Thank you for your good work, and please continue to weigh in here.
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Do not forget that, it is being also discussed, laws may change past those applying to illegal immigrants, where only those born in the US and from fully US citizen parents are considered legal citizens.
Since that may impact politicians families, offspring …
The US is only one more law away to deny citizenship even if you went thru all legal work to enter, to stay and became a citizen eventually.
When it comes to work around animals, especially horses, it is a lifestyle also.
Many barn employees I know would rather work around horses, even at low pay, than anywhere else, even for more money.
It is up to the employer to hire the right kind of people for the job, not just the cheapest, be a decent, ethical employer and treat employees like the asset they are, paying well and helping keep their environment as safe and comfortable to work in as possible.
Without getting into the politics of this, all can be said is the old “beware of unintended consequences”.
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I don’t know the reason in THIS case, but, in general, the US expects green-card-holders to apply for US citizenship as soon as they become eligible (typically when they turn 21, or after 5 years). Any green-card-holders who don’t apply for citizenship when able are treated as second class non-citizens by the immigration service.
I’ve been a green-card-holder for 65 years. My first green card was really green, and valid “permanently”. Sometime in the 70s they introduced a new version of the “green” card (more yellow than green) that was at least partially machine-readable. They wanted to get the older style cards out of the system, so in the late 70s they found excuses to tell people they need to get new cards. For my sister and me, they said we needed new cards because the pictures were taken before we were 18, and were no longer good for identification (which was a valid concern, the pictures were taken when I was 5 and my sister was 3, BUT we had both been in an out of the US multiple times after we were 18 without any concerns). For my father, they said the card was “delamnating”, which it wasn’t.
In each case, it was triggered when entering the US. The immigration people told us we needed to get a new green card before the next time we entered the US, and put a stamp in our passports.
My sister was, at the time, working in London, and had come back to the US for a few days at Christmas. She didn’t have time to start the process before her return flight, so planned to apply for the new card when she was back for several weeks on the spring. When she came back in the spring they saw the stamp in her passport and LITERALLY took her into a back room and interrogated her for over an hour. They let her into the US, but they took away her (British) passport, and would not give it back untl she produced evidence that she had applied for the new card.
So, when they told me I needed to get a new card, I went to the INS (as it was then) office to apply. They put a DIFFERENT stamp in my passport, good for a year, which allowed me to go in and out of the country (which I did several times). After a year I still didn’t have a new card, so I had to go into the INS office again, to get a second stamp. I DID get a “new” card before the second stamp expired. When I asked why it took so long they said the the New York office had lost my files!
As far as I remember, my father did not have anycomplications.
The (then) new card is cream colored, with a very faint green tone on the back, with machine readable text. It is still a PERMANENT card, with no expiration date. It says “PERSON IDENTIFIED BY THIS CARD IS ENTITLED TO RESIDE PERMANENTLY AND WORK IN THE US”.
Some time before 1995 they introduced yet another new card, this time with a 10 year expiration date. You have to go in for an interview to renew it.
When my sister married in 1995 she changed her name, and so needed to get a new green card, which she has to renew it every 10 years. I didn’t change my name when I married, so I am still using my early 1980s green card.
But it does cause some confusion. When I started working for a new company in 2001, HR kept asking for the expiration date on my green card, and I kept telling them there wasn’t one. I think we went back and forth about 5 tmes before they figured it out.
When crossing the Canadian/US border in Buffalo a few years ago, the machine reader in the “toll booth” like border crossing couldn’t read my card, and we had to park, go into a building, and wait about 1/2 an hour for someone in authority to approve it. On the other hand, entering the US through Dulles airport in Sept 2024, the only comment was “we don’t see many of these cards”.
(Not much of a contribution to the subject of ICE and the horse world, but addresses the tangent about green cards.)
Another rant about INS/ICE. My father died in 2008 and I was executrix. I contacted ICE about how to turn in his green card, and they didn’t want it. I would have thought they would have been anxious to collect the green cards of dead people, which might otherwise make it onto the black market.
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Wow. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
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Wow, thank for sharing!
Basically her paperwork was not in order so she was denied return to USA.
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It is not easy or quick to get the green card and citizenship does not quickly follow, especially in the non skilled labor category plus there are limits on how many applicants from each region are accepted. Last I was told, maybe10 years ago, Latino groom had been waiting 7 years and expected to wait 5-8 years more. Also aware of two college educated trainers working as assistants with excellent references and work history, no criminal record were declined visa renewals, they were Canadian, had US lawyers, appealed and were declined and shownthe door.
The press seems to think immigrants can just walk to the local courthouse. The reality is part of the problem. Unless they are nuclear scientists or brain surgeons from more exotic regions of course. Regular working class fellow North Americans, not so much.
The only solution horse owners can actually help with, IMO, is to pay the your own help more and be willing to pay more for boarding your horse. That will not solve the larger, more complicated issues politically entwined issues but will help you get and keep adequate staffing for your boarding barn.
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An informative article about just this.
https://www.bgjattorneys.com/blog/2024/02/4-misconceptions-about-applying-for-a-green-card-in-ohio/?
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Just wanted to say how much I loathe the term “unskilled” labor. It’s certainly not easy labor, and it’s certainly necessary labor. It just rubs me the wrong way. Many of these workers are extremely skilled and often “jack of all trades” types out of necessity.
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Of course it’s necessary. And it can even be physically hard/demanding. But running the handle end of a shovel does not require skill (example).
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this!
Seriously how many times here have there been complaints about barn workers and how they aren’t good enough to be doing x,y,z at the barn. So which is it? They don’t need to be skilled or they do, can’t have it both ways. Even if your worker is just cleaning stalls they need to have enough technique not to waste bedding, be comfortable being in a stall with a horse and not get hurt, etc
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