kurtsprincess
Active Member
I think your POVs are sincere, syrenn, but they are short-sighted. American agriculture rides high on the American taxpayer, the barely-legal imported worker (who is escorted out after the harvest) and the illegal immigrant. We cannot buy food at the prices our parents did and expect that illegal immigration will ever end. Just as no other fraud that pays huge dividends ends on its own.
Yes, Haitian children work the sugar cane harvest in Florida. It may be convenient not to know this but that does not make it any less true. And Mexican children also do stoop labor in California and other states....what do you think gave Che Guevara his popularity in the US? None of this is news...it's just the reality most Americans don't want to face.
We prefer to worry about whether to buy leather seats for our SUVs and feel deprived if we cannot. Very few of us know what it's like to face real hunger or fear for our lives from criminals, but Mexicans do. This horrendous pressure on Mexico's poor must be eased or the folks will continue to flee here. And let me be 100% clear -- Americans have to allow their standard of living to slip a little to bring Mexico's up. The ONLY alternative is the lawlessness and suffering we see now in many American communities. In my mind, that's a result that costs everyone too dearly.
I think it's supremely hypocritical to say "end illegal immigration" but refuse to deal with the factors that cause it.
What if the borders were secured and illegals could not come to America? Perhaps they would take that desire, energy and quest for a better life and effect change in their own countries. I think that helping illegals does nothing more than keep them imprisoned in their own poverty. When their backs are against the wall regarding corruption and danger in their own country, instead of standing up and fighting for a better society, they run.
I would rather help them rid their country of corruption than to lower our standards for legal immigration.