Mexico’s Ghost Towns --The other side of the immigration debate by John GiblerHow we approach this problem can make a difference. Rounding up, jailing, abusing those who have come to this country is not only cruel and barbaric, it is not in our own best interests.Cerrito del Agua, population 3,000, has no paved roads — either leading to it or within it. No restaurants, no movie theaters, no shopping malls. In fact, the small town located in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas has no middle schools, high schools or colleges; no cell phone service, no hospital. Its surrounding fields are dry and untended. The streets are empty.
The explosion of emigration to the United States over the past 15 years has emptied much of central Mexico, even reaching into southernmost states like Chiapas and Yucatan. But it has simply devastated Zacatecas, a dry, rolling agricultural region located about 400 miles northwest of Mexico City.
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We are not helping anyone when we abuse others and we have a sorry set of politicians who either are corrupt or weak. We all are playing into the overseers' [greedy corporate] hands.
2 comments:
If one set out to eliminate the middle class in the US, one would do it by moving the manufacturing jobs overseas and by using "illegal aliens" for all the service jobs. If it is costly and dangerous for workers to enter the US, the threat of deportation allows employers to get labor via what amounts to extortion.
The matter becomes serious when an executive sympathetic to business interests chooses not to enforce immigration law in workplaces that hire mostly illegal immigrants (construction, meat processing)
But the consequences are far-reaching. In a recent talk-show on NYC's public radio, a Mexican carpenter called in to say he could not join a union; therefore he worked for a small fraction of the going rate, and he worked under much more hazardous conditions.
Why should foreigners not have equal protection of law? The fact that they are here illegally does not make them any less human, does it? And is it not the fact that they are paid less and do not enjoy the protections of OSHA law that threatens to undermine worker protections in general?
It's another case where doing the right thing is good for everyone up and down the line.
Everyone, absolutely everyone, should have the same rights where the US government is concerned.
However it is now the case that even US citizens do not have any rights. If the person sitting in the WH can point to anyone and upon his word only claim they can be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, charges or human rights then NO ONE has rights. We continue as we are on sufferance alone and, as we are not putting up much of a fight about this, I assume groups will be syphoned off one at a time. Right now the targets for abuse are 'illegal aliens' and whomever the US government defines as a terrorist.
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