National disgrace
We made our first and last trip to Big Bend National Park. Upon arriving we were met by the camp host who very nicely informed us of all the rules. We noticed that the literature and signs within the ...
Forum Discussion
The "disgrace" lays not on your personal discomfort, but on the governments on either side of the Rio Grande. The Mexican government is corrupt from top to bottom. There are honest, dedicated individuals, but all too often they end up dead because they won't play along. The Mexican government has squandered their national resources both human and natural. Their citizens are reduced to begging at our boarder.
Norte of the Rio Grande, the US government has failed to put together a coherent and comprehensive immigration and guest worker program. Mexican citizens should be allowed to work in the US and pay taxes. Their employers should pay taxes, including workman's compensation. Somebody much smarter than me should devise a path to citizenship. These people are not taking away American jobs. They are doing jobs that Americans are too lazy to do.
We were in Big Bend and saw the warning signs, the trinkets and cash jars. I looked across the Rio and thought about those people who were trying to feed their families off our pocket change. I saw some of their work legally imported in local shops and wondered how little of the money went south of the Rio.
Today, we were within a few miles of the boarder between Arizona and Mexico doing some hiking and exploring. Yes, I was carrying a sidearm. I'm not paranoid, just not stupid.
I too had to go through the checkpoints and saw the Boarder Patrol "hiding" along the back roads. By all means we should allocate the necessary resources to interdict cartel drug smugglers. But we should put our paranoid ethnocentrism aside and embrace the Mexican people and all that they can and will do for themselves and us.
I've traveled extensively in Mexico and love many of the people that I met. Most of them are just as good as my neighbors. The problem is the crooks and politicians on both sides of the boarders.
Norte of the Rio Grande, the US government has failed to put together a coherent and comprehensive immigration and guest worker program. Mexican citizens should be allowed to work in the US and pay taxes. Their employers should pay taxes, including workman's compensation. Somebody much smarter than me should devise a path to citizenship. These people are not taking away American jobs. They are doing jobs that Americans are too lazy to do.
We were in Big Bend and saw the warning signs, the trinkets and cash jars. I looked across the Rio and thought about those people who were trying to feed their families off our pocket change. I saw some of their work legally imported in local shops and wondered how little of the money went south of the Rio.
Today, we were within a few miles of the boarder between Arizona and Mexico doing some hiking and exploring. Yes, I was carrying a sidearm. I'm not paranoid, just not stupid.
I too had to go through the checkpoints and saw the Boarder Patrol "hiding" along the back roads. By all means we should allocate the necessary resources to interdict cartel drug smugglers. But we should put our paranoid ethnocentrism aside and embrace the Mexican people and all that they can and will do for themselves and us.
I've traveled extensively in Mexico and love many of the people that I met. Most of them are just as good as my neighbors. The problem is the crooks and politicians on both sides of the boarders.
