I posted this on Facebook today. A few people shared it and Lorna thinks I should also post it here.
Tomorrow morning we are about to leave our winter home which is eight miles from The Border. After living here for five years I know more about some border issues than many politicians seem to.
Drugs: Virtually all the drugs come in on trucks through existing border checkpoints. A wall would have NO impact on that, so let's take that off the table, not dog whistle the issue. Clamp down on trucks? Maybe - but it is a tall order. I just checked, about 4,000,000 trucks came across the Texas border from Mexico last year. Yes, four million truckloads to check. So let's be up front about it; the wall is only to stop people, and if people seriously want to come across I do not know how to stop them, but a wall is not going to do it.
The culture, families and economies of both countries are linked beyond what most people realise. For instance, I recently read that over half of the hotel and mall traffic in McAllen, Texas are Mexicans, mostly from Monterrey. The business people certainly do not want an 18 foot wall between them and their customers.
The local Hispanic population are not "Mexicans". They may or may not refer to themselves as Mexican, but they are a people who have lived in the United States for generations, some for 200 or 300 years, before the border was drawn, and over time many families have become scattered on both sides of the border and they are being cut off from each other. Grandma can no longer come over for a Sunday picnic.
Say nothing of what it does to wildlife movement.
Enough. Sorry for the rant. - Gunnar
4 comments:
Recently, I read somewhere that the wealth gap between Mexico and the US is greater than it is between any other contiguous countries in the world. As long as that is the case, people will try to cross the border.
And, as long as there is a demand for drugs--and as long as our asinine laws against them keep the prices high--people will find ways to get them across the border. And towns along the border will continue to be ravaged by gang violence and corruption, which will give even more people incentive to cross the border.
It doesn't matter how high, or from what, that wall is built. Or who pays for it.
i have to wonder, in the midst of this clampdown on "illegals," how many non-"hispanics" are also being rounded up. To me, this looks an awful lot like the exclusive target is brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people.
The last "illegal" immigrants i met were an Engishman and an Australian, both "white."
I do not think they have to speak Spanish. They just have to be non-Anglo or non-Christian. And particularily brown-skinned.
NO BORDER WALL!
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