Why is it Subcommando Marcos has never networked with Latino affinity groups to fund his operations? At least the Irish cultivated a network in the states to send money back to the homeland to support the cause. I have never heard of La Raza, LULAC, of MALDEF ever throwing parties to fund resistance movements in Mexico or any other oppressed Latin American nation. Look at how Michael Collins was able to organize a resistance movement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Collins_(Irish_leader)

I know that the oppressors in Latin America aren’t from a colonizing country, but the people are being oppressed by a selfish elite with colonial attitudes.
I disdain the lack of manhood among these open border foreign nationals, who want to make it worse for the struggling working classes of my country. Guns for Subcommando Marcos? Si! Section 8 and welfare for jackpot baby illegal aliens? Nunca!

It’s relatively easy to choose up sides and start slinging insults and accusations. It’s a hell of a lot harder to deal with all the complexities this issue involves, and still retain some semblance of humanity. I can say that. I live in Phoenix and I’ve been struggling with this for quite a while.

Please, come read my pieces on this at http://www.wildchihuahuas.blogspot.com if you’re interested in knowing what that “struggle” means, at least in my experience. One post is “On the New Sanctuary Movement,” posted today. The other, a 2-part piece, is called “The Border, The People, The Questions.” It’s found in the archives of the week of Sept. 12. (The site is searchable.)

I think this article is excellent and should be required reading. True, it doesn’t present the point of view of the folks who live just this side of the border. That’s fine; it didn’t promise that it would, and it doesn’t have to. There are, God knows, plenty of other places to find that and other points of view. There’s no need to try to stomp this exhibition or this article into the ground because it doesn’t do what it never set out to do.

I guess I’m appealing for a right of free speech, and for recognizing that the same economic decisions that are outsourcing OUR jobs here have killed off theirs. True, that’s not all the story, but it’s a very important part of the story that needs to be taken into account. If we keep going as we are now, it won’t be long before WE find out what it feels like to be on the bottom tier. Facts: Our middle class is disappearing. Our homes are losing value by the hour; our jobs are being outsourced; our purchasing power hasn’t increased since the early 70s, but you can bet our prices have and our “employee benefits” have disappeared at the same time.

It may be that these are the reasons we feel so threatened by a bunch of Mexican peasants.

I’ll say this: If I were in their shoes, I’d be doing exactly what they’re doing. And its not true that these immigrants know exactly what they’re getting into. From interviews that Humane Borders people have done with these “illegals,” we know for a fact that coyotes tell them anything to make a buck. Many expect an easy 1-day trip, and some bring baby strollers. That’s how little they know. These are people from the interior of Mexico, Salvador, Guatemala. They know from shit about anything except semi-tropical jungles. They know ZIP about the Sonoran. Most Americans know ZIP about it. A gal who moved here recently set out on an 8-mile hike in 108 degree temps, for God’s sake. In her 30s. She died.

It’s also true that many of these people come TO border towns for the maquiladoras == the thriving factories we were all promised would bloom because of NAFTA and CAFTA. When they get to Nogales, Mexico, they find 50 percent of the maquiladoras have closed, their jobs ALSO outsourced to Asia. So then they have little choice but to push further north for another “promised land.” They can’t go home. There are no jobs at home.

Every single great religion in the world stresses that its believers are to give generous hospitality to the outcast and the stranger. It f’ng isn’t easy, is it? But that’s where the rubber meets the road for people who call themselves, say, Christians. If you do it unto the least of these. . . .  So: for me, the struggle involves my fears, the contradiction between our legal system and actual justice, and what it means, in the end, to be a human being. My journey may not be yours, but it’s sure been instructive for me. As has actually living IN the Sonoran and talking with the people involved on both sides.

Me, I think the immigration crisis pales by contrast to the things Naomi Klein has documented in The Shock Doctrine. I hope we do not let ourselves be distracted from far greater threats.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. Probably does.

Comment for Rusty:
You are correct, these people are entering our country illegally.  And sorry, in the middle of the night I get poetic, and I do rememember the women that brought their kids (now one my brother’s wife, a teacher, totally legal)over from Tampico long ago, and in their religion they would be considered ‘saintly’ for their travails.

The slaughtering would be done by Blackwater West.  You Betcha!

But the migration is illegal, the trash in the USFS wilderness is phenomenal, it is a mess, the fire that cost millions just last week was started from an illegal campfire down in a wash by these guys, because the forest was CLOSED in that area to all legal citizens, due to fire danger.

I think the corporate folk want them here, because it is cheap labor.  I think plenty of Americans would do those jobs for minimum wage.  The ‘coyotes’
that bring these people over are the ones the BP goes after, and rightly so.

I get all fired up, because I really don’t want to see Blackwater here protecting our borders.  And I feel that their country is such a mess, but so is ours.  I once looked into immigrating to other places and the ONLY place I qualified to go was guess, Mexico.  While their people are streaming in.
Hang out for hours on the TJ border and look at the people there, begging, sticking their kids in polluted traffic to beg.  Makes me glad I’m not that bad off.

I wish I could sneak into New Zealand with my daughters, my cats and my dog Clara. I really do.  So I understand the immigrants plight. They wish for a better, more just and sane world.  So do I. 

I do too.

Here is a truth.

We put gallon water jugs out in the wilderness of Pine Creek.  The citizns get angry.  If we don’t put them out, they sneak into their yards....

What’s a human to do?

Correction on the “ Read"” it’s Victor Villasenor, the Rain of Gold.

I wish every southern CA kid would read that book.  I’m just a gringa Catholic white girl, my brother, who is 59 now, married a girl way back when…
she actually was a “wetback” and laughs about it now, how she and her mom and her aunt (no men involved, interestingly)and her little brothers crossed the Rio Grande into Texas.  This book gave me an understanding of how and why those brave women did this.  They both died, the mom and the Tia, within the last couple years.  But now I maybe have a grasp on what they did.  We certainly don’t need the likes of Blackwater patrolling our borders slaughtering saints in the wilderness like these brave women were.

Victor Villanueva.... Read.

The immigrants come across, and into the Cleveland National Forest, near San Diego, through the Hauser/Pine Creek Wilderness where Blackwater has it’s base set up.

The Rangers clean up the campfires and the trash.  We understand your plight.  But don’t set the country on fire, please, we just spent millions last week on the Pine Fire.

We dont want Blackwater to patrol the Border.
Everyone, be careful....