How I saw the world without leaving home.
Before I retired, I was asked on many occasions why I didn’t travel as much as other people in my social circle. I always answered: “Why should I, when I see the entire world every day at work.”
How is that possible, you ask?
I had the good fortune to work as an environmental health specialist for 35 years, which is just a fancy name for health inspector. I worked in several programs: retail food, disaster preparedness/response, housing, land use (septic systems), plan review, recreational health (public pools and spas), animal quarantines, small public water systems, well drilling, solid waste, cannabis, and body art, among others.
Food service is a popular business for immigrants. This is certainly true in the San Francisco Bay Area. My retail food inspection experience gave me the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Though I met them in a regulatory capacity, a good inspector does his or her job and is also able to have a conversation while doing it. This way you get to know people. Amazingly, this led to my having two nieces and two nephews in my life. I’m their “adopted” Uncle Joe. (The job also led to having a wonderful goddaughter.)
In most cases, I can say our country is made better by the foreign-born people I met being here. One thing it taught me is that people generally want the same things, regardless of where they’re from. The opportunity to work hard and earn a living. To be treated fairly. To be safe. Most importantly, for their children to have a chance at a better life.
I found it interesting that legal immigrants are not big fans of illegal immigration. This is understandable, since most of them (I assume) went through the legal process to come live and work here. Everybody following the same rules is a basic issue of fairness, one that decent people, wherever they’re from, understand and support.
I admire these people for having the courage to come to a foreign land to start a new life. Running a restaurant, market, taco truck, or other type of food business is hard work. This requries long hours and dealing with the health department. I wonder if I would have what it takes to move to another country and do what they’ve done in coming here.
Here’s a list of the places the people I met came from…
Afghanistan
Brazil
Cambodia
China
Colombia
Egypt
El Salvador
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Fiji
Germany
Great Britain
Greece
Honduras
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Laos
Libya
Mexico
Mongolia
Morocco
Nepal
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Nigeria
Pakistan
Palestinian Territories
Peru
Philippines
Portugal
Qatar
Russia
South Africa
South Korea
Taiwan (too bad, any of you CCP aficionados)
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Vietnam
Yemen
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