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6When I climbed on the bus at six that morning, I really had no idea the things that were to come for the day.  I really didn’t know how I felt about illegal immigrants crossing the border.  After we heard Jen Allen, director of Border Action Network it started to open a can of worms that would unravel the rest of the day and soon my opinion would be developed in a way that I could never have imagined.  The group I researched for my immigrant agency report  for class was the Civil Homeland Defense after reading their mission statement it hadn’t occurred to me that they were part of the militia.  I didn’t know that they were purposely killing people out in the desert.  Jen made an interesting point that Mexican immigrants  aren’t taking jobs away from Americans.  The truth is that even the low paying jobs here pay twice as much as the jobs there.   This correlates with an article "Why immigration" by Susan Sassen states, “The concentration of these high-income workers in major cities has created a need for legions of low-wage service workers residential building attendants, restaurant workers, prepares of specialty and gourmet foods, dog walkers, errand runners, apartment cleaners, childcare providers, and so on” (Sassen 1992).  When Jen Allen told us that 99% of Mexicans crossing the border weren’t criminals and that they were strictly just men and women in search of work.  That statistic stuck with me for the remainder of the day. These people are human beings and what is everyone so afraid of. 

            When we talked to the US Border Patrol they said that 10% of the immigrants trying to cross the border had criminal records.  So these statistics don’t match up entirely but they seem reasonably close, considering that the border Patrol's idea of a criminal is anything from someone who has already attempted to cross before so some one trafficking drugs.

            It is understandable why Mexicans are so poverty stricken.  They make hardly any money and they work ridiculous long shifts at extremely boring jobs.  The lady at the maquila’s said that they made 90 pesos a day.  I saw on a sign

colonia_las_torres_04_-_03

that we happened to be driving by that a six-pack of beer was 75 pesos.  That is almost an entire day's worth of work. It seems like the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Once we saw the poverty stricken one-bedroom shacks, I thought that was the only class of people there were.  Then we drove up where all the nice houses were,  there weren't many but it makes you wonder who lives in tough’s houses with large windows and beautiful statues.   colonia_kennedy_04_-_6

            I was starting to understand why people would cross the border.  In search of a better life.  It is like the article we read in class, that states “The causes of immigration are evident: poverty, unemployment, economic stagnation and overpopulation drive people to leave their countries” (Sassen 1992).  This raises the question why they wouldn’t do it legally.  This question became my mission for the entire day, I asked everyone that we came in contact with.  As it turns out, only about 2% of people that apply for a visas ever get them.  Manuela at lunch told us “people can wait for up to fifty years and never get called to leave.”  They make it virtually impossible to do it legally, so it makes sense to jump the border, or get a fake green card for forty dollars.  Either way rich business men in America are getting cheap labor from the Mexicans, whether they get it in Mexico, with all the American companies that are down there making products, or from all the manual labor jobs that they have here in America.  The thing that stuck out the most in my mind was when Kiko Trujillo, Borderlinks Mexican director, told us that in his view was saying how it shouldn’t p1010223be how can the US make it better or easier to migrate, but how can we build Mexico’s economy so that its citizens won’t have to jump the border.   If there was a way to develop Mexico's economy and allow them to stand on their own feet, then they wouldn’t need or want us.  In turn they won’t have to get hurt by the militia groups that think it is their civil duty to stop these people from coming over.  In turn they wouldn’t have to get visas or wait forever for their green cards.      

 

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