Pesos being accepted in the USA

Luis G

Luis G

<i><b>Problemator</b></i>
Staff member
The collateral furor around the immigration debate shows signs of soaring into the irrational. Proof of that is the overreaction to a marketing campaign by a Southwest pizza chain.

As a wintertime promotion, Dallas-based Pizza Patron advertised that through February it would accept pesos at its cash registers. The chain serves a heavily Hispanic clientele _ its staff and menus are bilingual. And the reasoning was that its Mexican-American and Mexican-immigrant customers might be returning from the holidays with pesos in amounts too small to be worth exchanging, but sufficient to pay for a couple of pizzas.

See a need and meet it _ seems like good, old-fashioned American capitalism. Others saw darker forces at work. The company was swamped by calls and e-mails, some supportive, but others death threats and hate messages _ some of the milder being "Quit catering to the damn illegal Mexicans" and "If you want to accept the pesos, go to Mexico."

Since businesses in border towns have long accepted pesos, the reaction was something of a surprise. One explanation is that sensitivities have been heightened by the immigration debate, and another that some of Pizza Patron's outlets are far from the border in places where pesos are a novelty.

If anybody found the whole deal quintessentially American _ an entrepreneur of Lebanese-Italian descent from Columbus, Ohio, selling an Italian staple with Latin flourishes to customers of Mexican origin _ it went unremarked in the news accounts.

We Americans are said not to be terribly self-aware, and maybe there's something to this. Admit it: Every traveler has been in a shop whose signs he can't read helplessly and hopelessly asking the owner, whose language he doesn't speak, "Do you take American dollars?"
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http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/18547
 
Re: Pesos being accepted in USA

I saw that original article, and ignored it because pesos can be exchanged at the local bank just like any other legal currency. Whoever was prtesting needs to do one of two things...

1. Get a life. They obviously have too much time on their hands if this is the best they can come up with...

or...

2. Get a job. Whether they need work or not. They have too much time on their hands if this is the best they can come up with...
 
Hell...in some border towns, American stores accept CAN$ at the register (sometimes at par if they're trying to get more cross-border shoppers). I know that many stores up here take the greenback just fine..though your change will come in more colourful bills :)

Welcome to NAFTA :D
 
IMO, it's just like the TV programming, ...It seems on TV they slip in more
and more stuff that used to be unethical.
Here, there's just more slippage on a constant downward slope to taking
America out of America.
 
Why not?
I wish I could find a place around here to unload the rest of this Canucky money...it's either that or piss of Prof by giving it to his kids again :laugh3:
 
tonksy said:
Why not?
I wish I could find a place around here to unload the rest of this Canucky money...it's either that or piss of Prof by giving it to his kids again :laugh3:
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you could just spend it when you get here.


Or, better yet, make some jewelery out of it. After all, it's not a federal offense to damage canadian money outside of Canada.
 
I saw the original article too and noticed they charge extra to accept pesos, because they have to pay a fee to get them switched over. Basically, they're doing the "casa de cambio" work for them.

Besides, the illegals usually aren't coming here with many pesos anyway. If they had a lot of pesos, they wouldn't be illegally immigrating here, now would they? And when they do illegally immigrate and pick strawberries and oranges and lettuce, they're paid under the table in cash in US Dollars... which are accepted by every taco truck in the San Joaquin Valley.
 
MrBishop said:
Hell...in some border towns, American stores accept CAN$ at the register (sometimes at par if they're trying to get more cross-border shoppers). I know that many stores up here take the greenback just fine..though your change will come in more colourful bills :)

Welcome to NAFTA :D
Click to expand...

That's what's happening here . . . the Canadian Snowbirds who winter at the beach bring a LOT of business to the off-season, but they have a hard time finding places to accept or even exchange their currency.

Some numbnuts wrote a letter to the local paper bitching about the Snowbirds always trying to pass $CDN in their (the letter-writer's) restaurant. A torrent of support for the 'Birds and cries of "They are more than welcome to spend their money in our shop" ensued.

Yay for them, say I. :cool:
 
catocom said:
Here, there's just more slippage on a constant downward slope to taking America out of America.
Click to expand...

That was my first take but then I realized, it's more unAmerican to force a business owner to take dollars only. Ever heard of the barter system?
 
I'm not for forcing anything there.
I do wonder who does their taxes though.:nerd:

I'm all about the bartering thing. It just Still pisses me off that the
people using the foreign moneys don't take the proper route, and
exchange at the banks.
You know, go through the preset channels.
 
Some businesses take Canadian Tire money here. Take a handful of coins, and a good hunk of those are American (and sometimes some other countries' coinage too). No big deal.

A body should be able to trade their good or service for whatever they want. (within legal reason, of course)
 
Most places in the world take the American dollar. It is the currency of preference.

As far as this pizza joint...he charges a surcharge to take the peso & is offering a service (it's kind of silly to convert 500 pesos to American after a trip to mamas house for the weekend) to his target clientele. He's taking a chance of the peso losing value & is getting all kinds of free advertising. Great business move.

If they find him laundering Mexican money, we shouldn't prosecute. We ought to point & laugh.
 
Not everywhere Gonz. Most places I've been, and one that didn't. Had to make my exchange before I left the base...
 
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