KatyD
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posted on July 18, 2001 10:54:31 AM
"Our goal is to legalize migrant flows between our two countries."(Mexican President Vicente Fox)
Of course he means FROM Mexico TO the US. Surely large number of US citizens aren't trying to sneak into Mexico in search of better living conditions.
After initial support for a "general amnesty" program for illegal immigrants, Bush seems to have backpedaled a bit lately and is now pushing some kind of "guest worker" (HA!) program with Mexico. Of course the real beneficiaries would be the large American corporations and growers who will then be able to "legally" exploit immigrants at slave labor wages. And why does Bush seem so cozy with Mexican President Vicente Fox, a wealthy ex-Coca Cola Mexican distributor? The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here are President Fox's views on what the U.S. ought to do for Mexico. What's in it for us? Whatcha'all think?
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/mexico/20010717-2346-foxvisit.html
KatyD
(spelling, punctuation)
[ edited by KatyD on Jul 18, 2001 10:56 AM ]
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jamesoblivion
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posted on July 18, 2001 10:56:59 AM
The truth? I have ten different opinions on this. I still haven't settled.
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kraftdinner
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:10:20 AM
A "guest worker" that can become naturalized? Why don't they want to say the word?
10 james? 
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KatyD
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:13:55 AM
Yes, I know James. I have many conflicting opinions too. But remember, you live in a "border" state too, and President Fox is including Canadians in his open border agenda too.
KatyD
(punctuation)
[ edited by KatyD on Jul 18, 2001 11:15 AM ]
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jamesoblivion
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:20:53 AM
Well, more like eight. 
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mark090
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:24:28 AM
Local Grower Corporation and businesses won't put up with it. If illegal immigrants become legal then they will have to pay them minimum wage, benefits, Social Security and Medicare and Unemployment taxes. It is preferable to keep them illegal and on slave wages. When they are caught, pay the small fine and wait for they load of illegals.
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KatyD
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:32:55 AM
Local Grower Corporation and businesses won't put up with it.
Nope, you're wrong. Big Business and Growers are not only supportive of a "guest worker" program, they're the ones urging Bush on. It is to THEIR benefit and do not forget that "guest workers" are not treated the same as US citizens and residents when it comes to pay and health benefits. Many feel that it will lead to legal abuse of the undocumented who will become "guest workers".
KatyD
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snowyegret
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:33:50 AM
KatyD, that's very interesting. It would certainly mean more dollars in the Mexican economy.
I was overseas when the last amnesty went thru (think it was 88), but there was very little change in South Texas.
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KatyD
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:43:01 AM
Yes, snowy. More dollars for the Mexican economy. Currently, the Mexican economy receives roughly 6 billion dollars a year from Mexican immigrants living in the US that send money home. It's to Mexico's advantage to have their citizens living and working in the US and sending money home. I also read the other day, that President Fox has proposed a "fund" for Mexicans working in the US to contribute to..said "fund" to be used to "help" the villages in Mexico that have been decimated by migrant flight of it's youth to the US. These villages and town are becoming ghost towns with only the elderly and the infirm.
KatyD
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rawbunzel
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:49:17 AM
Gosh, I guess this would mean that I could go down to Mexico legally and get my old job back!
Bah-humbug! We already have been sending Mexico many of our best blue collar jobs.NAFTA saw to that. If that isn't helping their economy what will? Letting them all come here legally would only hasten the ruination of ours. Of course the President of Mexico would like it.Sometimes I think our President would like that.
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gravid
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:15:55 PM
I feel that it should be a basic declaration of human rights that any person not armed or
fleeing criminal prosecution should be able to freely cross any border in the world with the object of seeking work or residence in that country and that the country denying a person the right to travel across their country without restriction and to engage in trade and business should suffer a loss of equal status in the international community.
Before the first world war there was no such thing as a passport. If you were expelled from a country it was because of criminal activity. The orientals and certain arab nations made outsiders unwelcome as amatter of racist cultural isolation and were looked down on for it.
If they opened the border to everyoine who wanted to come here our economy would grow much faster and the idea of how we were going to pay for social security and other programs would not exist.
If the borders were open many more Americans would go to mexico both for retirement and for casual travel and bargin shopping. Border straddling towns would boom if there were no long lines at the border to get through cutoms.
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spazmodeus
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:17:25 PM
Terminix has a commercial on TV now. It shows a line of ants crossing a lawn, making for a house. The voiceover goes: "Ants. They think they can come into your house anytime they want and then they're living la vida loca." A few words about Terminix's services follow, and the spot concludes, "Hasta la vista, ants."
You think this commercial is a thinly-disguised critique of illegal immigration?
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KatyD
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:21:00 PM
I think it's a thinly disguised critique of ant infestation.
KatyD
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spazmodeus
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:25:59 PM
Well that's what I thought at first too, Katy. But then I read the Joe Lee Gibson thread and realized that you can find subtle, hidden bias in just about anything if you try hard enough.
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snowyegret
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:30:00 PM
:^0
Another little bite!!!!
Possibly the decollectivization of land when the privatization of the state owned companies started by Miguel de la Madrid in the 80s had something to do with the depopulation of certain areas also. The land speculators bought up state owned land (much of it with narcotraficante money). Salinas de Gotari went on with it, and the privatization was a requirement for NAFTA signing, if I remember right.
What's in it for Fox? And Bush?
when the for and
[ edited by snowyegret on Jul 18, 2001 12:40 PM ]
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KatyD
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:30:10 PM
Lol! Well I'd agree with you there, Spaz, but first they'd have to change the ants to cockroaches. Then I might be more willing to believe in a "hidden bias". 
KatyD
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Borillar
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:45:27 PM
I think that it would be better to fix some of Mexico's problems, rather than import them into the USA.
Overpopulation and a massive population explosion is keeping everyone there in dire poverty. The answer is not to simply move them in U-Hauls into the United States where they can then do the same thing, but to stop the population explosion.
The population explosion is because the Roman Catholic Church does not believe in contraception or sterilization - only abstinance. The majority of the population of Mexico is Roman Catholic and follow its teachings "Go Forth and Multiply!" This is why Protestant teachings are very popular down there and is a FAST growing segment of the religious marketplace, just because contraception is an acceptable alternative to gigantic families.
We have a number of mexican/Latino communities here in and around the Portland, Oregon area. Having lived in them myself, I was shocked to see the married women pregnant 365 days a year. As soon as one baby was born, the woman was pregnant right away with another one. Many of these families have two kids born in the same year several times!
How can anyone support 12 to 15 kids picking berries? Or being a nuclear phyiscist for that matter? When the population outgrows the resources availabel for exploitation, the result is severe poverty, famine, war, and death. Usually, this is what historians link to the extinction of many great civilizations of the past.
So, the long-term answer is to send our evangelical fundamentalists into Mexico and Central/South America. Make it our Manifest Destiny to convert the Western hemisphere entirely to Protestantnism and contraception before it is too late for all of us.
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uaru
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posted on July 18, 2001 12:59:21 PM
Didn't Carter give amnesty for illegal immigrants during his administration? I'm pretty sure he did. It didn't seem to have any long term effects did it?
Poor Carter was a series of foriegn blunders. Remember when he allowed all the Cubans in the 1980 boat flotilla? Castro emptied is prisons of violent criminals and mental institutions and put them on the boats with the refugees. Castro is a prick, but he's a clever prick.
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kraftdinner
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:02:23 PM
Borillar - I think that has to be the biggest, unanswered question going......why isn't population control a factor in any country's aganda? With Mexico, they are SO religious and their beliefs so deeply rooted, I think they would think of your statement as blasphemous. (Although I agree.)
"Do what you want in life, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else" is just not a happening statement anymore.
uaru - Carter was too decent of a man to be President.
[ edited by kraftdinner on Jul 18, 2001 01:05 PM ]
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spazmodeus
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:13:50 PM
"Do what you want in life, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else" is just not a happening statement anymore.
Wiccans might disagree.
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NearTheSea
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:16:17 PM
The Pope has allowed birth control for some time now. It used to be abstinence or the rhythm method.
The Catholic church changes the 'rules' all the time.
The best immigration policy is Austrailias, IMO.
[email protected]
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uaru
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:25:58 PM
The best immigration policy is Austrailias
Australia doesn't have a lot of people wading across the Pacific to enter the country illegally.
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inside
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:28:49 PM
"why isn't population control a factor in any country's aganda?"
I think China works hard at controlling their population.
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snowyegret
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:29:10 PM
An article on the North/South split. Hmmmm, some pieces falling into place.
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kraftdinner
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:41:25 PM
"Wiccans might disagree.
Isn't that why people become Wiccan? Is because they do agree?
inside - isn't China the most heavily populated country for its size, and still growing?
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kept2much-07
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:46:22 PM
Mixed feelings on this one. The school I worked in was 80% hispanic. Some of these people are good people and deserve to be here. But there are others that should pack up and go back home.
When school let out and I was on outside duty it made me sick to see all of the new trucks, minivans and cars picking up their children. The reason-all of the kids were on free lunch! If they can afford new vehicles their children should not be on free lunch period! These people have good jobs but they know how to work the system to get free lunch, free school supplies, free coats, mittens and hats from the schools, low income housing, food stamps etc. If they need it, that's fine. But most do not.
We also had a case of where a child had passed out in the hall at school and was taken to the hospital. We couldn't find her parents. The children went by their real names at school but the parents
worked under another name(fake i.d.s?) at the local meatpacking plant. And on school records of course the parents had the same names as their children.
Another big problem the schools have here is that the kids are in school one day and the next day they are gone to Mexico and will be out of school for a month. It's hard to get and give a good education when families pick up and leave like that. Or out of the blue the families just up and leave and we never know what happens to them.
The drug and gang problems in my town are terrible and increased dramatically when we got the meat packing plant.
I could go on and on but I've got to stop before I break my keyboard.
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spazmodeus
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:51:56 PM
"Do as you will, as long as it harms none," is a paraphrasing of the Wiccan rede -- very similar to the sentiment you expressed above. I meant they might disagree with your opinion that it's "not a happening statement anymore," since real Wiccans try to live up to those words every day.
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reamond
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posted on July 18, 2001 02:03:57 PM
If they want to open the US Mex border, then let's have it be an equal opening.
The US got screwed on NAFTA in a certain aspect that many overlook.
US businesses are not allowed to sell used cars, or used tires, in Mex and many other things that Mexican's lower incomes would provide huge markets for.
US citizens are not allowed to own property in Mex. If we could purchase and develope property in Mex, it would provide a huge market for US retirees, resorts, spas etc..
I have often considered retirement or even living someplace like Mex with a developing economy. If you can derive income from the US through retirement or investments, your standard of living goes up greatly in a country like Mex. However, with provincial property laws, not to mention the corruption, it is unworkable.
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krs
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posted on July 18, 2001 04:09:45 PM
Nobody mentions that Bush may pick up an estimated three million votes by naturalizing mexicans? He's trying hard to gain favor with catholics.
Reamond,
It is quite workable for you to live in Mexico. You can own property. There was a restriction that you could not own property within first 50 then 25 miles of a coast but that has been altered if not removed. In any case you've always been able to lease property anywhere in the country. You can live quite well there for as little as you'd like, but a very nice house with a cook, gardner, housekeeper, would cost you about $600. a month (estimate from experience) for all of your monthly expenses. It's not accurate to characterize the country as being corrupt. There are corrupt officials, much like republicans here, and there's a different way of getting things done than you may be used to, but because of what you are used to you should not let the thought of corruption factor into a decision to live in Mexico.
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gravid
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posted on July 18, 2001 04:25:03 PM
The big mistake some have made moving to Mexico was to put a substantial portion of their cash savings into pesos.
Why anyone would do that I have never understood but thousands of people did and got causght in devaluations.
It is also very important to have plans to travel quickly to the major cities or back to the US if you need medical treatments that are beyond the level available in much of Mexico.
My Dad found out that there are areas of rural Mexico where nobody in their right mind will travel while showing any evidence of wealth - which has a much lower meaning there - without being armed. And the last I knew Mexico will not allow foreigners to keep firearms. It was neccesary to hire local musle to travel safely in some of the interior.
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