Maybe someone needs to check Prof. Attiah’s citizenship status…
A New York Times reader (and you know what that usually means…) writes to “The Ethicist”…
“About a year ago, a very nice family moved into the rental home next door. We have shared food and invited them to our pool in the summer, and we always exchange greetings from yard to yard. About six months ago, the father’s auto-shop location apparently became unavailable. He and his mechanics now work on cars in their yard and driveway. At times, 15 cars line their driveway and fill the front yard, in obvious states of repair — hoods up, engines removed. This “shade tree” business practice is illegal in our city, and the number of cars and the manner in which they are parked violates city codes. We and our neighbors worry it’s driving down the property value of adjacent homes, and we plan to sell within a few years.
I’m uncomfortable raising this with the family because I doubt they can do much without losing income. Moving to a new garage would obviously be costly. And if I talk to them and the outcome is unsatisfactory, I’d be the obvious culprit for any report to the city. Our friendly terms would disappear.
I’m also reluctant to report because the family is from Venezuela. (They mentioned having green cards, though I never asked.) I’m afraid that even a code violation could draw attention from ICE, which has an aggressive, unpleasant presence in my city. Thoughts?”
Yeah, I have some thoughts:
Ethics Alarms 
Note: In Venezuela (also Colombia and likely most of Latin America) there are no covenants that separate commercial zones from residential zones. So you can make your house a business and no one will be able to say anything. Yes, you can try to complain or even to sue (noise, parking restrictions apply), but then the neighbor will know it is you complaining, and that opens up a world of trouble. Law does not exist really in ways comparable to USA and Europe). The upper classes in Latin America live in “gate communities” that have private security and established and enforced covenants.
Yep. That’s the goal of internationalists: turn the U.S. into a shithole.
In Miami in the ’70s, our Puerto Rican auto mechanic neighbor ran his dragster at the races on Saturday nights. He’d arrive back from the drag strip and unload at about 1:00 A.M. “Clank, clank, clank.” But the best part was, he’d rebuild his engines in the living room. Oil and grease everywhere. Eventually, they moved out.
Cubans also park their cars and their boats all over their yards and build walls around their yards. It’s a property theft thing. Yards aren’t for beautiful green spaces; they are for protecting your vehicles and boats from thieves.
Many years ago someone in my middle class neighborhood complained to the local police that I had my stock car parked in the driveway. It wasn’t beat up, it wasn’t a mess, it simply sat there during the week with a cover over it until I hauled it away for races. I always worked on it in my garage with the doors closed and didn’t create much noise other than starting it once in a while for quick function checks and those were always done mid day. The police told me that there was an ordinance that I had to always park it inside the closed garage or part it on the car trailer in the driveway, I kept my trailer elsewhere because it was too big for my driveway. The ordinance was if the vehicle didn’t have a license plate it couldn’t be parked in a drive way like I was doing; however, if I registered and licensed it I could park it anywhere I parked any other street legal car and they couldn’t do anything about it.
And that is why immigrants need to assimilate into the culture of their new country. To not do so is rude and insulting. The habits and practices of their former country are the reason they came to the US. To allow them to continue in that culture is to make the US the very thing they fled from. That is an attack on US culture and US citizens.
Plus, who cares if it costs money to rent a business? Why do they get to skip the cost of the business, while all the US citizens are forced to pay for business real estate for their auto shop? Why do US citizens always get the short stick in our own country?
“Why do US citizens always get the short stick in our own country?”
Because smugly sanctimonious, Messiah Complex infused White Lefties truly believe that minorities are utterly incapable of advancing in a RAYcist society without the former’s ham fist on the scale.
In that pursuit, they are forever chasing that Gosh I’m Nice/Look At Me/I’m Dialed In endorphin jolt.
PWS
And that is why immigrants need to assimilate into the culture of their new country. To not do so is rude and insulting. The habits and practices of their former country are the reason they came to the US. To allow them to continue in that culture is to make the US the very thing they fled from. That is an attack on US culture and US citizens.
Immigration — mass immigration — is encouraged and allowed not to build up the citizenry of USA, or create model citizens, but in service to business and corporations for cheap(er) labor purposes. Business people, the business mind, is a lower-level mind. They would sell your grandmother and undermine nation’s principles to make more money. The military class is similar, but maybe a step up, and they do not care about principles of freedom nor can they perform as civilization planners.
My view? The COUNTRY has been “sold out” because this class or people has more power (vast power) and there is certainly a lack of intellectual leadership.
The New Immigrants did not come to join the American Project, they came for personal advantage (I have insight here because I talk to Latinos who lived years and years in USA and told me their stories). No one asks them to “become Americans” and they have infinite ways and means to maintain connections with their own nationhood.
It was a terrible mistake to open the gates to mass immigration ESPECIALLY FROM the illiterate, impoverished global south. Now they are established, and now they exert their will over the polity will. The disgusting Bad Bunny spectacle is a sad omen of what cones next.
Demographics is Destiny:
https://youtu.be/G6FuWd4wNd8?si=x8qpcIJuXzLJWuzh
What a fucking moron, of course you report it.
The left’s propaganda and violence have effectively done their job on this imbecile.
“The left’s propaganda and violence have effectively done their job on this imbecile.”
But, but, but, but, but, Steve…there ARE no crimes on stolen lands…
PWS
Where is the police department? If there are laws prohibiting this behavior, and it is being done in public view, then there sold be some “self-initiated” intervention by the local police.
Such intervention was common where I came from: “yard-car intervention”. Violations observed, documented notice given, when issue not resolved at that point, the tow truck was called and the violator faced the judge.
This is broken windows stuff. If the municipality lets this slide, it will just spread. Zoning enforcement is more civil than criminal, though. An enforcement officer would cite these guys as the first step, then fines.
But you already know that.
1A freedom of association on my part choosing to live in a neighborhood that is lower income to avoid the HOA/ordinance Karens. While we do have county ordinances, things really do have to look like a true 3rd world cesspool before something is done. Only my neighbor across the street has objected to my perpetual firewood project in my front yard citing property value reduction to which she was told by our county representative at the neighborhood watch meeting, “you should probably shut up and mind your own business. You live in a low income area, property values can’t get much lower”. While things might not be pretty everyone is super chill and friendly other than for this granny Karen.
I disagree with the moron missive.
I would argue that while legal, merely slapping this guy with a report to law enforcement is an unethical use of the law because it is also an abdication to maintain and build neighborly relations as they were described. The law is there as an authoritative avenue to restore broken relationships and in this case meeting with the offending party and discussing concerns that the other neighbors have helps preserve the peace and encourage a society to thrive relationally.
From your host: There’s nothing especially useful or remarkable in the latest Comment Bombing from long-banned Ethics Alarm harasser “A Friend,” but instead of immediately spamming his latest, I thought I’d commemorate his first illicit comment of 2026.