Chaos in Florida

From the age of two or three, I grew up in a small, unincorporated little town called Lehigh Acres. I left at the age of 20 for Orlando, but periodically continued to visit my family back home. At the age of 28, I moved out of the state. All of my life the population of Lehigh was fairly steady, hovering around 30,000 to 35,000 people. At 33 years of age I returned home, and was amazed and dismayed at how much my hometown had metamorphosed.

The various local papers regularly contained, and still do, a litany of articles discussing murders, gang crime, drug arrests, and other things which were literally unheard of during my entire life growing up there. It was not long after my return that I also began to see the changes for myself, and working retail provided the perfect means to do so. At first I wondered what had happened, but the answer was short in coming. It is not an attractive answer, especially considering the politically correct times in which we presently live, but it is an obvious one. The unfortunate reality is that the minority population has escalated geometrically in this small community, which as of 6/17/05 stands at 65,000 inhabitants. The rising minority population and crime rate are linearly related. Only a simpleton would claim coincidence.

As evidence, I have crudely slapped together a small compilation of only a few days worth of local articles demonstrating my case. My intention is to open some eyes and bring attention to this ever-increasing problem, and to demonstrate the truly grim nature of things in what was once essentially a retirement community. This trend began long ago in our nation’s larger cities, and now is spreading out to smaller communities. If Lehigh Acres is indicative of what is happening all around our beloved country, then I honestly fear for what is to come in the future.

No one ought to complain without stating the cause and a solution. The two most prevalent causes are unfettered illegal immigration and welfare abuse. As a retail pharmacist, I see Hispanics, who do not speak a single word of English, come in with Medicaid cards multiple times every single day. There are a massively disproportionate number of them who are on Medicaid. In my honest judgment, I would have to say that off all of my Medicaid patients, 90 percent are Hispanic, and about one-third of them speak absolutely no English. I suspect that many of them have friends who work in the state Medicaid offices and push them through the system by steering them through the proper channels. A few months ago I actually had a woman tell me, through her granddaughter who was translating, that I needed to learn Spanish because, “So many of them are coming here now.” Let me make one thing perfectly clear, I am not prejudiced. I cannot, however, stand idly by while blatant abuses to our laws, and to our taxpayers, continue to occur at such an alarming rate. Last week over $1,000 was taken out of my paycheck. Where does my money go? It goes to pay for medical, educational, and other various expenses for people who are not crippled, sick, nor poor, and probably are not even U.S. citizens. How does the government allow this to happen? How can our politicians justify robbing people like me for these reasons? Why do we refuse to protect our borders, and stamp out welfare fraud? The answer is political correctness. It seems that no one in Washington has the courage to stand up for what is right because they fear that the media and others will vilify them as racists for doing so. As a result, I have to give away almost half of my yearly earnings for these abominations. It is sickening and maddening. Please, something must be done, and, for the love of God, it must be done now.

Sincerely disheartened,
Jean-Marc Bovee, Pharm.D.