Much Ado About Pesos
You might recall last summer's extensive coverage of the immigration-debate hotbed otherwise known as Geno's Steaks in Philadelphia. There, owner Joey Vento enforced an English-only cheesesteak ordering policy, which was greeted with much consternation from local newspapers' editorial pages. Soon, the Associated Press caught wind of a ripe little microcosm of the immigration debate and before we knew it, Joey Vento was in "The Situation Room." And pretty much everywhere else he could be booked.
Enter 2007 and Pizza Patron, a Texas chain restaurant that "caters heavily to Latinos," according to the Dallas Morning News, which will accept both pesos and American dollars for a trial period ending in February. Pizza Patron President Antonio Swad told the Morning News that many of the company's patrons come back from Mexico with extra pesos. "We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos," he said.
To the naked eye, this appears a relatively benign piece of news. Not so. Based on the amount of attention this story is generating, it appears this is huge news. That's largely because the company is getting loads of angry e-mails from an large faction of people who see the exchange of pizza for pesos as an affront to immigration laws. Swad told NPR: "People are linking it to patriotism, people are linking taking pesos for a hot pizza to illegal immigration ... and it's really nothing of the sort. It's an opportunity to practice business in the most competitive way we know in a very competitive business."
Regardless, Fox News viewers are being asked to offer their views on this apparent controversy: "Do you think an American eatery should accept a foreign currency?" asks Fox Fan Speakout. The first response from a Fox fan offers a dose of common sense: "'How is this any different from NYS establishments accepting Canadian currency at a fixed conversion rate, or Canadian stores accepting American currency? It is done all the time in border areas. This is much ado about nothing.' — Susan"