Pardon me while I get a little defensive for our state.
You know who we see moving here in Texas? Californians. They marvel at the low (read: realistic) cost of housing. They like the lack of state income taxes. They buy a house here, enroll their kid into our schools, and then get busy complaining.
Not enough services. Our schools are rated too low. Texas is made up of a bunch of hicks. (That last one's pretty general, and, to a great extent, true. But we hear the complaint a lot.)
Funny thing, though. You Californians and other immigrants to our state seem to be complaining about our state at the end of a conversation that started with "Where's the nearest U-Haul dealership? I need to turn in my moving van."
I can't blame you for fleeing Cali. If it weren't for Miami, you guys would have "top five crappiest towns in the U.S." locked up.
As for schools, I have often wondered how anyone could miss that 1254 miles of our 2000 mile border with Mexico is the Rio Grande River. In my personal experience, the Rio Grande averages about a foot or two deep, most places. So we get a few international immigrants, too. It is estimated that we have 70,000 undocumented aliens in the Texas school system. In the college system, most of the 12,000 aliens in Texas receiving in-state tuition are illegal.
We educate about 700,000 ESL kids a year, at an average cost of around $7500 per kid per year. Count the zeros. That's a good five billion bucks. Which we come a lot closer to paying than the folks in California do.
Hey, your revenue is welcome. And if you'll give it a shot, you might just find that you like our redneck ways. But if you're running down your new home as soon as you get here, that's just foolish.
You incoming folks have already run up the number of digits on our license plates to seven, just like you had it back home. Maybe that'll feel more homey to you.
Labels: economy, education, Gripes, Texas, The people you meet sometimes
posted by Matt G @ 5:44 PM
25 Comments:
I'm with you. We're getting plenty of left coast immigrants too. Look, you left there to find something better. Don't go change better into the place you just left.
Two years ago I was talking to the owner of Napa Auto Parts Stores. He had sold his stores in CA and moved to Texas. He was happy with the move, the city, the schools and a better life for his families.
Count on friction with the newcomers. Have lived with it in Colorado ski towns; townies vs ranchers vs newcomers. Keeps things lively.
New Hampshire has the same problem with Massachusetts residents who flee across the state line. They call them "Massholes."
I was born and raised in California. I have lived in NC and VA for 14 of the last 20 years. I am doing my best to counteract the typical Cali "let's make it more socialistic" attitude wherever I go. Though in NC it's more the people from NJ.
I am always griping that we need to have a test before we let folks move here. Hate it when they settle in and then start bitching about our culture. We see that a lot in San Antonio (which is, frankly, a pretty self-loathing city to begin with).
I am reminded that, when I was a pre-adolescent, newspaper columnist Roddy Stinson proposed seceding from the union and then declaring war upon California. Maybe we should've run with that.
Heheheh. Texas singer Brian Burns wrote and recorded a GREAT song about this very phenomenon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPQHghD3Ddw
You don’t like our drivin’, you don’t like our roads,
you make fun of the way we talk, make fun of our clothes,
but you clog up our highways, been pourin’ in for years;
if you don’t like the way we do it, what are you doin’ here?
We'll be there soon but we're coming from Jersey and, believe it or not, we haven't got a single bad thing to say about Texas! We've been a few times to recon this illustrious country masquerading as a state and having fallen deeply in love with it, we're on our way. We're already a bit redneck'ish, though; we like guns, I drive a big pick-up truck, meat is a favorite on our table and damn, that Shiner beer is good!
p.s. No kids, no complaints on schools.
I just flashed a visual of Texas (of ALL places!) being overrun with whiny, entitled Califruitcakes. My head nearly exploded.
Some of us recent transplants appreciate our new home for NOT being our previous home and we have no intention of fouling our new nest. Texas is awesome, and this year maybe we can catch up with Arizona on 2A freedoms!
Although I don't live in New Hampshire, I see this in some of the people I know that fled Massachusetts because of all the factors you mention. They get to New Hampshire and find out that the schools aren't quite as good, that the city or town they live in doesn't pick up the trash every week, that the volunteer fire or ambulance squad doesn't respond as quickly as the paid one back from where they came, and so on. Then they start to agitate for more services, but apparently are too dumb to see the connection between more "free" services and higher taxes.
Just like in the seventies, except then it was New Yorkers and other yankees. Remember the bumper sticker: "Love New York? Take I-30 East"?
License plates, like:
LRN2SWM, ARIZBAY, UGOHOME, etc.
"That's right; you're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway!" Surely, Lyle meant to leave your politics at home.
tweaker
Sounds like the same complaints that you hear in Colorado. The people flee California and then immediately start trying to turn their new state into the same thing they just left. Isn't there an old saying about insanity and repeating the same thing over and over?
I'm just glad they're not stopping here in NM. ;)
Tell 'em to keep on driving. If they go far enough on 10, they'll get to Florida, eventually. :D
Typical Kalifornians... they come in, try to take over, then bitch and moan about the 'lack' of things... My sentiment- If you don't LIKE it, LEAVE! Life was good BEFORE you got here, and it will be good AFTER you're gone!
Remember, the only person we have to make happy is the one that greets us in the morning in the mirror!
Hrmph. After a long day..the notion occurs that states threatened with californication might consider extending the period go gain residency (for voting, in-state tuition, any sort of governmental benefits) out to around 5 years or so...with exceptions granted to anyone who can garner the signatures of 500 registered voters ;)
Could be I'm a bit cranky this evening, though...
Here in Colorado we have opinions both about Texan and Californian visitors.
A friend who is a fly-fishing guide once summarized them thus:
"Texans just want to have a good time. But the Californians want you to be like them."
Arizona being between you and them, we are all too familiar with this phenomenon. On the other hand, some of the immigrants will come to like and support the old West, so it's not all bad.
I guess they've about finished Californicating Colorado and Oregon...
Most of those aren't Real Californians, they're just liberal opportunists. Real Californians wouldn't move to Texas if you paid them. Very few "Californians" are actually from California.
These are people who moved here to California from somewhere else (MA, FL, OH, IL, WI) because the money was SO good, like when we had the dot.com Boom - or they got laid at Berkeley/UCLA when they went here to college, so they didn't go home like they should-have. It's a gold-rush kind of money-grubbing thing/people.
They move-out as soon as things turn down, or because they got a better job-offer in Texas. They always leave in their wake a trail of me-too'ist destruction because they are selfish first. They're NIMBY's to begin with and GIMMEE's to the core.
They don't have roots anywhere and typically land middle-management jobs where they exploit the space between productive workers and the Executive Team.
They are parasites who thrive by growing their bureaucracy and staffing, not by producing product or adding to the bottom line. They ruined the stability of California real-estate by driving up costs and demanding bigger and bigger houses be built at greater and greater commute distances - and then left and defaulted when they couldn't afford to pay the CA bill.
White collar workers living out in Hoboken farm-country and commuting 2+ hrs. round trip to jobs in the Urban centers define the housing markets of Sacramento, Modesto, Stockton and Merced. Merced is actually a nice little town and the gateway to the Sierras - but it's a farm/rural town with little else to recommend it.
Don't worry, if Texas hits an economic bump they'll move on to greener pastures - they're feed-lot animals after all and depend on green pastures like nothing else, but they leave a lot of smelly residue behind.
I assisted someone with their move back to California recently. I would have done so for free. Good riddance.
Hate Texas and Texans? TYA.
I think it's a shame that people come here and don't just join right in. A great example of a fabulous newly-minted Texan is our own Christina LMT http://lucrativepain.blogspot.com/ -- she just up and moved here one day and it's like she's been part of our family all along, isn't it? :)
If someone can't join in the fun and be a good neighbor, I'd just as soon they keep on truckin' right out the other side of the state.
All this is said as one of the people who could honestly sport a bumper sticker boasting "I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could."
Yee haw!
The only think about Texas I dislike is the lack of open carry. When I lived in issouri as long as you weren't in KC or StL, you would see rifle racks with rifles and shotguns in them everywhere, many people just carrying in a belt holster. It was even common to see young kids 9-14 years old walking down to the creek with their fishing poles and .22 rifles. The only things the majority of the deputy's did was to make sure the rifles were unloaded as they walked and that they were going down to the bluff before they started shooting. And this was just 10 years ago. That is my ONLY complaint about living in Texas.
Mark, open carry with long guns is just fine in Texas.
But if you're running down your new home as soon as you get here, that's just foolish.
That seems to be the only way some folks on the left know how to do things. They just can't leave a good thing alone.
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