del, i think you're taking the issue too personally. you need to look at the bigger picture.
I thought I was.
this sounds bad, i really don't want to seem negative, but because you or people you've known have had a few bad experiences with illegal immigrants does not make them all bad people. as with any major group of people, there are always a few bad seeds.
Of course, I take this particularly to heart. I live this every single day. WAS living this every single day as a child. I saw and still see what happens. It hasn't been a 'few' bad experiences, it's been many. Some life threatening.
Yes, there are definitely some wonderful people out there. I currently adore my mother's new next door neighbor. He's a young guy, brought his family (his wife looks dangerously underage) to this little house. I think he washes dishes somewhere. But he works hard, keeps up his house and looks after my mother like she's his mother. His wife however, we don't see much of, she stays home all the time with the kids and so far as we can tell, never goes out anywhere.
Heh, and y'all are going to find this funny - one of my uncles by marriage used to be
a coyote. If you guys know what that is.
looking specifically at mexico, you said yourself you've seen first hand how serious the conditions are there. the sad part is that things aren't all that great HERE, but there is some truth to what RT said: this place is like disneyland to some people. do you really think that people are in mexico right now saying "gee i can't support my family, let's leave everything we've worked for, the lives we've built, our friends and family, and go to america!" ok, maybe there are some people willing to do that, but for someone to leave, illegally, it takes a LOT.
Many people are willing to do this BECAUSE they don't have anything (Ennis: Don't have nuthin', don't need nuthin'). It's easier for them to pick up and leave. Harder on their families, but easier in other ways.
this argument reminds me of the abortion debate. pro-lifers act like women have abortions for fun. having an abortion is one of the hardest choices a woman would ever have to make! are there people that take advantage of it? yes. but a very tiny percentage do. because of that tiny percentage, do we want to make abortions illegal for ALL women? regardless of how desperately they need one?
Good analogy. However, the argument could also state:
The more we have of sex education and contraceptives, the less we would have a need for abortion, so after a while, abortion CAN be strictly regulated because so few women would need it.
The more we cut back on Immigration and make things difficult for illegal aliens, the less crime would be committed by them. Yes, only the bad apples commit crimes, but since they're not supposed to be here in the first place, their crimes could have easily been prevented by not allowing any of them in the country at all.
Remember the boat people of Cuba? We welcomed them to the U.S. fleeing Castro's regimie. How were we to know that Castro had emptied his prisons and sent convicted felons/thieves and murderers to our country?
We found out when our citizens started suffering from their crimes. We started being a bit more stringent after that. But that is cold comfort to the families of the people who were murdered by them.
the reason so many of these issues overlap is because people try to demonize the victims of these types of oppression, when all you do is put a human face to it, and everything's suddenly changed.
Sometimes.
Sometimes the human face gets put on it, but the attitude does not change.
as far as people not having children, i can't really comment further on that. the issue of access to contraceptives has been brought up, and i agree i think people who have children without means to support them is STUPID, people do it regardless for a number of reasons.
Makes life hard. Perhaps if life becomes very hard for them and their children, they'll think twice about having more. If other people keep funding programs to keep their children fed, they might not.
I have a cousin who's a crack addict. She happens to be a 40 year old crack addict because her mother kept sending her money and taking her to the hospital and bailing her out of jail. Had her mother instituted a program of tough love 20 years ago, perhaps now she would be a RECOVERING crack addict.
Sometimes people have to hit bottom to learn.
In Mexico, back in the day, there was no welfare/social programs. The only social programs to help the destitute were church charities. If you got unemployed, you pretty much starved. It made for great incentive to keep working no matter what, take any job you could.
I remember as a child shopping in downtown - Victoria was it? - with my relatives. There was man fallen over the sidewalk. People had to step over him.
Was he dead? Drunk? Sick? I didn't know. But what I did realize, was that no one was going to come for him. He would have to get up/recover by himself.
That made quite an impression on me as a child.
