Food For Thought

An Open Letter to Valley Residents

           How would you feel if you couldn’t take care of your family?  What would you do if there were not any jobs available where you lived?  What would you resort to if the only work you could find didn’t pay enough to support you or your family’s needs?  This is the predicament that faces many Mexican people every day.  Many choose to illegally try and enter the United States each and every day to find better paying work.

            As a US citizen and more importantly, a resident of the state of Arizona, this is a topic that is in the news and a topic of discussion each and every day.  Thousands of Mexican people decide to take there chances and try to illegally enter the US through Arizona’s border each year.  Tragically, many of them don’t make it.  They die trying. Can you imagine the harshness of the Arizona desert during July or August when temperatures soar to the 120’s?  I know during the summer I can hardly walk to my car in the parking lot, let alone try to trek 100’s of miles through the desert.  But many Mexican’s do this and the US government knows all about it, and in fact, it relies upon it.  The US economy has become hugely reliant upon illegal immigrants in many industries.  For example, the meat packing industry in the mid-west part of the US would crumble without the cheap labor of illegal immigrants from Mexico.  Part of the reason the US borders have become so porous to illegals entering is because the government knows that without their cheap labor, many US industries would collapse. 

            So, Border Patrol agents and government officials find themselves stuck between the proverbial “rock and the hard place.”  Is it a threat to our national security to have leakages through our borders?  Maybe.  Is the threat large enough to jeopardize several huge American industries collapsing in order to make sure the access to the US is closed off to all undocumented foreigners?  The answer has been debated greatly and will continue to be debated with one shore solution not apparent to anyone right now.  As a resident of Arizona and the Phoenix area, you owe it to those people dieing in an attempt to provide a life for themselves and their families to educate yourselves on the topic and become active in voicing your opinion, whatever it may be!