I am going to start this post right out of the gate with a peeve (no pets allowed). Immigration policy that is giving a hand up to obesity.

Now, the title and the peeve might throw some of you off but I think the two may go hand in hand. This is something that will need to be built up instead of just throwing it out there. This is going to be an exercise on how it all began so follow me. Walk this way. Whatever, lets go.

Now, my mom was overweight - grant it she gave birth to 6 kids (although we still tell the 6th child he was adopted 8)), and was active - the woman just couldn't shed the weight. I know she tried, I was there. I watched her pick up and throw away fad diets so many times. The money she spent on that crap, and the food she subjected herself too was staggering. There was a lot of Yogurt and cottage cheese in my house, both of which I couldn't stomach. But I do remember she made it a point to have fresh fruits and vegetables on hand and were included in most of our meals. We rarely, if ever, ate pre-cooked, chemically laced crap from out of a can. I recall her telling me that if she couldn't pronounce it - we couldn't eat it - I often wished she couldn't pronounce "liver", or "Lima beans".

This was in the early 80's. She taught us all to look at the ingredients, and at times they weren't listed so you had to go by the images on the cover. When you look at food and how pretty it was on the package, she would describe the process of cooking the meal, and how to get it in the can and how long the shelf life would be if it were home cooked. I could go on - but there was madness to her method.

About me and the thought process which be: While my wife goes off to work, I get to work from home, this wasn't by choice. As with many Americans, my company shut its doors 14 months ago and laid 128 of us off. Imagine a company you spend 12 years with - gone in minutes. Well, not gone in minutes, but a heads up would have been nice.

Working from home - I decided I would take this opportunity to write my book on "How To Survive In Prison". First, lets get something straight:

1. My crime was that I was young and an idiot and did something stoopid -
2. I paid my dues-
3. I had never been on unemployment before and I only used it for 2 months before getting my online job.

Now that that's on the table - I have zero skeletons in my wardrobe.

Working from home - it's amazing the time I have to work, take a break - get dinner started - its fantastic. I know that some people cannot afford to work from home as their careers do not allow for it. But as a writer and programmer I got really lucky. I worked many a 12 hour shift where I was gone basically 14 hours because of my commute - and still add in additional time for breakfast and dinner only to have to do it all again the next day.

So my typical day now that I'm home - I get make breakfast for all, pack lunches, put the kids on the bus and get to work right downstairs. I do make a habit of showering and getting dressed as it sets my mind to function on my job - like I'm in my little cubicle. But the best part is cooking -

I LOVE cooking - I love preparing meals and making sure my family is healthy. I now get to shop and compare items. Pick fresh produce and see what the costs truly are. I have noticed in the past 10 months that the cost of carrots has risen, yet this should be a time when the prices have gone down. Why are fruits and vegetable prices rising so drastically. So, to make my point I head over to the canned tomato area - sure enough these prices are rising as well (I also shop with others who buy these products - that's another hub).

So now we have one of the points in my hub, the rising cost of fresh produce.

Dirty dishes are something I would rather not talk about...for right now I have just laid the foundation of my theory. The end of the home cooked meal because of bad immigration policy.

Next point:

Laziness and obesity. What gets me are the people that shouldn't be overweight. I get the glandular thing, I get that often it is hereditary - but I can't understand how a 10 year old can weigh 150 pounds - but then you look at the parents and you see the lazy Krusty Kreme glossy eyes and know that healthy food and proper nutrition just aren't on the menu. I think what is on the menu is laziness.

Lets not start the argument that fresh produce is too expensive either. A bag of "name brand" chips is more expensive than a 2 pound bag of carrots. For now. Lets also not start the lie that there is no time in the day to cook a real meal, or that you are too tired - thats a copout and the beginning of one of my other hubs.

Lets get back to how we have been conditioned with the utilization of the greatest kitchen appliance since the can-opener, the Ding-ding. Whats a Ding-ding you ask? That's the large box on your counter that makes a funny noise when your packaged dinner is done being heated - otherwise known as the microwave.

Think I am running off on a tangent, nope- not even close. Lets put the points together. You ask me: "So you believe that rising food costs have attributed to weight gain and laziness for a lot of Americans? What about immigration - WTF are you talking about".

Watch this - you will be amazed when the bulb starts to light up over your head - then you'll be pissed off.

Immigration -

At one point illegal immigration was helping our agricultural community in processing the fruits and vegetables needed to sustain our lives. This labor was really cheap. But not to the people working the orchards or farms picking our produce. This money was good and Western Union makes millions forwarding this money every day back to their home country.The labor was very cheap hence the produce was affordable. I believe it costs more mechanically to process and ship the produce than it does to pick it.

One argument is that illegal immigration takes jobs away from Americans - true but aren't these jobs most Americans wouldn't take? Isn't it easier to live off the governments tit (welfare) for years than to work a solid 8 hours. I know this is going to open a shit storm of controversy about welfare and why people need it - I admit - we all need a hand up (or bailout) when we are down, but not for years, and not for generations.

Lets get back to the immigration argument.

So now the government has cracked down on illegal immigrants and the companies that hire them. All this to appease the people who cry foul because undocumented aliens are taking our jobs. Moronic. This is the country everyone should be coming to as my great-great grandparents did in 1891 from Russia. The thought of a better life in the new world. Unless you are Native American, we are all immigrants.

So what can a farmer do? He shuts down a portion of land that he can't afford to grow in due to not having the labor to work it. He shuts down a few acres and then gets farm subsidies like most corporate farms do. Now the price of our produce is about to rise as this region doesn't produce the amount it should and we are stuck paying the tax tab on the subsidy. Aargh!

This is not the only farm. There are literally hundreds of thousands of acres that need to be worked in order to reign in our food costs. Here we go.

Now the price of produce climbs. What does that mean to those of you who don't buy this for your families anyway? Well, you are the worst off because of it. When the manufacture/producer of your frozen ding-ding dinner has to cut costs, whats the first thing he trims out? You guessed it, the actual products that make up the meal. So when you bitch about your vegetable stir fry only having 4 little pieces of broccoli - now you know why.

Now, the producer of the ding-ding meal can't tell you he has not included some of the gourmet, great looking produce as pictured, so what does he do? He adds in fillers to beef up the weight of the package and increases the sauce content. If you have an old frozen meal in your freezer from say, a year ago, and a like product from this week - you'll notice a few things. The fat content has risen, as did the salt and calories. I found this out when a friend had a broken freezer and I agreed to help him clean it (bad idea by the way). I got to looking at the junk he was eating and noticed that two of the same products were different in caloric and fat count. I asked him and he said he had some meals in there from a while ago as he likes to stock up. Bingo.

So now that you are ingesting more fats and calories from these products, you'll see that these meals are lacking in the product that often is in the title. So when our food costs go up because of lack of supply you now know why it happened. When your ass gets bigger and you are still eating the same ding-ding meal and didn't know why this was happening - now you know.

What can we do? My idea is to allow those that wish to come here to work an easier way of entering the country. It starts right at the border. Instead of the work visa that take stimes to get, a person purchases a work visa at the border. They are identified by pictures, fingerprints and DNA samples. This ID card is then imprinted with the data necessary to ID who they are and also contains a small tracking chip like our passports do. Didn't know that did you? That our passports have small RFID chips in them? They do - don't sweat it.

So we encode their ID cards with an RFID chip which allows us to always know where they are in our country. If they happen to get picked up without it the are deported. Simple, quick and clean. This allows a couple of things:

• We get our produce back down to levels we can afford
• People of other countries can come here to work and build up their economies. You think that this is bad? Nope, this means less aid we send to their countries and remember, these people are buying goods in our country to support themselves while they are here.
• The amount we pay farmers in subsidies also decreases.
• Your ding-ding dinner will actually contain the ingredients as pictured on the box.
• Our government receives on the spot payment for processing of real work visas. Lets say we decide to charge $250 for a work visa. Isn't that better than some poor soul paying a smuggler thousands to get across the border only to possibly die, prostituted, enslaved, or simply get caught by border authorities and sent back?

So that is how I put it all together. I admit a little winded but the groundwork for any argument or idea has to contain all apsects and corners covered.