The Border Crisis - What's Your Play?
by Alfred Brock
My mother told me that when she was a baby – about four years old, I believe, she was separated from her mother and sent to Germany. The reason this was done may have been that her mother, my grandmother, was in the United States on a work visa and some disagreement about citizenship and other things raised its ugly head.
She was transported by ship along with thousands of other children to Germany where her grandparents, my greatparents, took her and raised her until she was sixteen. She had to stay there for so long, chiefly, because shortly after this separation took place World War II broke out.
What just happened along the Mexican border brought this up again. It is all very unfortunate. We are all, in our family, agreed, that if you cross into the United States illegally you should be deported. If you come in with your family then everyone should go back together.
The clamor around the missteps at the border (caused by laws long in place) has covered up and obscured the evils that caused it. Nothing was done illegally by these separations – they were all conducted legally. There is no plan to change those laws. Those who should do it have been vocal about the problem they caused but have not owned up to their own guilt in crafting and passing them.
Guess which party they primarily originated from. I won’t get into the details of that partisan bickering, but, certainly, things need to be corrected with the laws. We can’t allow the Senate and House of Representatives to continue to make laws which outlaw and legalize things in the same law just to satisfy political career needs. The depth of that problem are too deep for this writing and are already in play across the nation. I can only hope, before leaving this topic, that discussion about it and the work necessary to correct the problem take a more prominent place in the media than the daily haranguing and personal complaints from them that we are subject to.
The evils of the governments to the south which caused this flight are far worse.
It has been said we don’t know who these people are who are coming across the border and, in specific that is correct. I don’t know them. I have no personal acquaintance with them.
It has been said we don’t know why they are crossing the border into our nation – and that, again, in specific, is correct. I don’t know why they are coming or what reasons they have.
I do know the pressures they face in their home countries, however. I am aware of the propaganda they face, which is, almost unbelievable than that which is pressed on us each day.
Many Americans are unware of the pressures on the poor in South and Central America. They are only dimly aware of the situation in Mexico.
Here are a selection of facts – without figures or individual names – for you to consider. If you have read this far I thank you for your time and attention.
Let’s skip Mexico for a bit and drop down into Central America. There we find the remains of Panama as well as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Belize and a large portion of Venezuela.
Venezuela is led currently by a Communist Government that forced its way into power. At this time they extract the money and power they need to to continue to subjugate their people from the petroleum industry. The government remains in power essentially because of business deals with international oil companies and primarily, it seems, through direct monetary support from the People’s Republic of China. Considering the People’s Republic of China’s (from henceforth referred to as PROC) outright dependence on their own dictatorship to be underpinned primarily from unfair trade practices and an enormous cash flow from their investments in Federal Bonds issued by the United States Government that’s a pretty complex situation.
We are not concerned with that entire structural mirage in this writing. What we are concerned with is that the loss of jobs, basic necessities and even lack of food and clean water have caused many people in Venezuela to decide it is time to go. So – off they go – to Colombia.
They don’t stop there, however, because Colombia is still reeling from a multi-decade civil war fueled by political disagreements between government factions represented by dictatorial powers, the military, the Communists (again) and the drug cartels. Not finding a permanent place in Colombia they push on north. (To dispel the suspense all those indicated in this writing will ultimately try to enter the United States either as a first choice of ultimate goal or because they just kept getting pushed farther north.)
Throughout Central America the old pressures that had existed in the late 19th Century and through ? of the 20th Century have either persisted and grown again with a new twist. For example – even though ecology and modern farming methods have appeared in the region they have been competing against piles of money flooding in from Europe, Russia, China and even from the United States and Canada.
These investments have poured into banana and fruit plantations, large scale livestock ranches, ‘greenfield’ factories and other industrial activities. Most of all these activities do not serve the best interests of the people who are living there already. They are, more often than not, in direct conflict of the local people and their ownership of their own land and homes. This is a very serious problem.
These large investment companies show up and build whatever they want to build wherever they want to build it. Local governments are often unable to cope what is coming in and the national governments of these countries, if they can be called that, move in with ‘eminent domain’ and other ‘legal’ means to take what they want – even if it not theirs and sell it to the highest bidder – even if it is not theirs to sell.
What I just described there is robbery. Just as the robber barons of old in the United States these situations are taking place right now. Today – just as in the 19th and 20th century it is all ‘legal’. If it is not legal, as most can tell you who are aware of how robber barons work, it can easily be made legal without too much trouble for those profiting from it.
What can’t be corrected too easily is the disruption caused to local people. Whether their homes and land were condemned, seized by force, bought for an unfair price or even bought at market prices – the people are forced off their lands.
Where are they to go? The companies and people doing this don’t care. Ultimately many of the people die. How many? No one is counting. We don’t even have an accurate account of how many have flowed into the United States as a point of last hope. We have become a have to those driven from their lands, sometimes, by the actions of American, German, Italian, Canadian, Russian, PROC and others.
Where does the money come from for these activities? From banks, from Wall Street stock market deals, from bonds, from private interests, from private industry and even, in some strange cases, from monies provided by the governments of these nations themselves. In that last example – the money coming from the nations that are driving off their own people, there lies the true origin of this gigantic problem.
The issue has been brought up by world leaders from time to time but not action is taken because it would infringe on the sovereignty of these smaller nations. After all, goes the common ideal, it seems, if they want to be slaves, who am I stop them?
For my part, and I’m not bragging, I’m just going to tell you a story, I tried to get involved by sending books to certain locations in Central and South America. I decided to do this because I had heard that many of our airliners (the planes) that we fly in are repaired in Central America. I also found that the work takes too long because the people that do the work depend on supervisors and managers who have to translate manuals. They don’t actually write down the translations – they read them in English and tell the workers what to do in Spanish.
I thought to myself – well, if they don’t have technical manuals to do their actual work – they probably don’t have other books in Spanish either Poor folks, aw, right?
Well, it turns out there are laws all across those countries that make it illegal for me to get these books to those people. I’m not even talking about the Bible either but all the books that you and I take for granted in the United States. Keep in mind that these nations are supposed to be our allies and yet the censorship is so vicious and crushing that they have created an entire existence that is impossibly foreign to us. This is all through no fault of the people themselves, the ones for whom the governments are supposed to exist.
So, you see, the evil I speak of is larger and more insidious and unforgiving than any spoken about on any of our television stations, spoken of on our radio stations or written about in our newspapers, magazines and even books.
It is a travesty that I display for you here.
The truth remains is that those who are being enslaved are not enslaving themselves.
The slaves have not put the chains upon themselves.
Let’s move on to Mexico for a short bit and then bring this writing to an end.
Mexico has had at least three major Revolutions. First they broke off from the Spanish Empire, then they had several small Civil Wars which ended in a suspended stalemate, and finally, they had their last and most recent revolution in the early 20th Century which ended with what appeared to be a workable and strong government.
One action they took was to finish the first revolution by seizing all the land that the Catholic Church owned in Mexico. Considering that the Catholic Church literally held title to nearly the entire nation of Mexico should cast a slightly different historical light on relations between the United States and Mexico, including the Mexican War and the lack of preparation at the time, for Mexico to defend itself.
The advantages of the last revolution were many and offered the people of Mexico the freedom they deserve but one thing went wrong. The Mexican government succeeded in seizing the lands of the Catholic Church but instead of turning them over to the people who actually lived and worked the land and who, defecto, owned it, the government decided to keep it.
As a result today, you can venture, if you dare, outside the tourist camps and factory fortresses to see the true landscape of ‘Free Mexico’. In the towns, cities and villages the surrounding countryside may be farmed and irrigated by large Mexican or international corporations while the people who live and work there are confined to small living spaces. From south to north homes have their windows and doors guarded with steel and iron bars. Their work opportunities are few and far between. Their hope for advancement nearly non-existent unless they join the gangs that run the businesses or run the government or run drugs.
Mexico cannot absorb the flow of those disrupted from their homes and lives further south.
They are still caught in the last revolution which will not complete until they close their own border. The influx of American money, European money, PROC money and the constant recycling of money through national companies like PEMEX and FERROMEX will not allow the growth of Mexico or allow it to gain the power a pan-continental country should have.
So now we know a little more. The question becomes when do we, in the United States, actually bring an end to slavery in the Western Hemisphere? Many who support continued illegal immigration employ the refugees in jobs that are illegal and extract profit from them. They will never support closing the border or ensuring that all people in the Western Hemisphere get paid the same for the same work.
Ask American women about how fair it is that they get paid less than a man doing the same job just because they are not men.
There are few real success stories. The ones we hear about in the media are apparently exceptions.
The misery continues. The hypocrisy is on a national scale.
It is best to stay within our borders. There is nothing wrong with strong, independent nations around the world that can take of themselves.
In the end, if this problem cannot be solved at our borders there will be a necessity to intervene. In fact, that time has passed but I seek peace rather than the ravages of war. Short term profit is now driving people from their homes and killing them on the roads they are taking to find safety.
The end of this political argument in the United States will determine the direction of not only the United States over the next century but will determine the future of Central and South America and the 1 billion people that live there.
We can all look on and observe before breakfast or after dinner or we fix it.
What’s your play?