Sonora Desert

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Each year, dessicated bodies in various stages of decomposition–some are only bones–are zipped into white body bags by the border patrol and sent to be autopsied and, if possible, identified. There have been over 300/year for several years, now. They can be young (children) and old (parents and grandparents), male or female. Death doesn’t care.

They have some things in common: they’re poor, they’re trying to help their families–a lot of them are trying to get to the US to get back to their families–and they’re illegal.

If they’re caught alive, they’re deported, often to border towns full of drug cartels and drug warfare, where they’re left to try to walk back to their homes.

This is nothing new–it’s been going on for a couple of decades–long enough to have been forgotten about. But it’s still going on.

Our border and immigration laws are in a state of flux. Toward the end of the 19th century, Chinese immigration was totally stopped. This spread to include any Asian. Now the focus is on the Mexicans, even though there are hundreds of people from all over the world who let their visas elapse and don’t go home–but they didn’t die in a desert trying to get here.

Independent farmers and orchardists in the US are crying for help in bringing in their crops. Are they humane in their need? Are our laws humane?

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The vast majority of illegals are not Mexicans. They come from South American countries. Mexican police are overwhelmed to the point that it sadly and coldly is a shoot ilegal border crossers situation. It does not make a dent in it. Possible death does not slow it down. The desert is just an obstacle. Frankly having been raised in Tucson I have little patience for illegals. Those that follow the rules deserve respect. I pity the illegals but, they know the risks involved. The farmers need legal employees
willing to bust their asses under a dry hot sun for minimum or less than minimum wage. Living wages will make that $1 head of lettuce $2 or $3 . Etc etc.
Working in the desert farms is a crap job. I could see the illegals being allowed to earn money there during the season but being sent back afterwards. Otherwise its really not fair to those who came here legally.

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Yes, it is terrible. We need walls, and reposition troops from absurd silly places like Fairbanks, Alaska to the Sonora… at least during the winter for training. Their strykers have the optics to spit anything.

Yeah… no one is saying they can’t come here and work, just no unregistered, illegally, and they got to get a minimum wage. Only thing the left us stalling for is economically, its core constituents in places like San Francisco and Los Angelas get off on the slave labor prices, despite having ghastly high homeless rates, US CITIZENS!

The other reason is a desperate hope legalizing these people will turn them into Democrats, propping up their party’s slagging returns. It took a racially charge vote from the African Americans to keep Obama in office this time around, and Obama used up his second and final term this time around. Hilary Clinton likely will face criminal charges soon over Bengazi. They don’t have anyone obvious to go to, and the House of Representatives has shifted strongly to republicans.

It’s only a matter of time, given the house is representative of the population, that the Senste goes that way too. Right now, for the Demicrats to survive this demographics collapse, they need a new population to latch on to. Only people showing up are the illegals.

And what Kriswest says is true, a surprising amount comes from not Mexico, but farther south… Anyone who hiked from say, South America should be offered a chance to be recruited in the military, outside of this heroic group, send them back until the dems get serious, build the wall. Then we will consider a delayed non-naturalization amnesty program with those left behind. If they are working for the drug cartels, or are violent, we will weed them out the first few years, after 5-10 years those who have officially been here can stay.

Fact of the matter is, Obama can change the border issue in a matter of days… we have a bunch of troops sitting in Barracks at home, many in cold climates, who would live to head south for the winter, even if it meant tents and eating from a cooks field mess. Even if they are there for just a month for ‘training’ we got more than enough to overwhelm this side of the border. We can set up and even make the concrete walls, its not rocket science, roman army did much the same.

It’s very simple stuff. Tell Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama your against their de facto slave labor policy, that you know we have the troops to seal off the border, and that if they want to win elections, they gotta change their ways and stop looking outside of the US for a new voters block to sustain them. We can have this solved within a week if Ovama cared to.

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C-N, How did I know you’d answer the way you did? You are such a kick! :wink:

I know we’re not going to solve the immigration problems in a forum such as this–the rules are simply too many and too varied. Because of NAFTA, for example, “skilled labor” can cross the borders from both Canada and Mexico without visas. Migrant, unskilled, labor can be given H2-A visas only if the employer is willing to pay:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guest-worker-20130331-dto,0,5896092.htmlstory

Independent farmers–or other small business owners–say they’re forced to hire undocumented labor because most US citizens won’t do the needed work–or that they simply can’t stay in business because of the expense of hiring documented labor.

Anyway, I tried to narrow the discussion by limiting it to one area–the desert–and one question–are our immigration laws in this one immigration area inhumane? Were our immigration laws humane when Asians were kept out, or when quotas were established in the early 1920s to keep ‘undesirables’ out of the US?

If nothing else, it should give you an idea of how difficult it is to come up with a solution that covers all illegal immigration from every country.

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No… you can’t narrow it down to one geographical area in a piecemeal dodge. Build the walls, man them, and start the illegals down a long term path to legalization, dumping the serious criminals and drug gang members in the filtering process.

It’s simple, and easy. One week, we can have the border secure. Then we start filtering the bad ones out. We can legally hire migrants from that point on. I don’t give a fuck about why some businesses say they need slave labor hidden from the government- they can hire people legally from out of the US if that’s the case.

My Godfather was Mexican, I was born in San Andreas, I share the same religion with them. However, its been nothing but chaos.

The only realistic way of solving this, shut the border down. The people here can work towards learning English and citizenship… citizenship in the LONG TERM given how they snuck in.

I don’t see why we should dodge the drug smuggling and rampant illegal alien issue as two seperate issues, same border, same population, same techniques getting in and disregard of law.

However, its not bad to seperate the two elements.

Solution to Sonora… no leftist suicide tactics, just build and man the wall. It will be several magnitudes easier to get reform going then. The walls in San Diego cut illegal immigration by 90%. It’s restarted not to build walls considering the nature of the country to the south of us, what they do to themselves, and the loopholes in our own border policy that funds that mayhem.

Build the damn wall, man it. We got the troops in barracks not doing shit otherwise. Build the wall.

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The most important thing, to me, about Immigration policy is this-

“Let anybody come to America who wants to, open borders and amnesty”

and

“Let’s have a robust welfare system where the Government supports anybody who doesn’t feel like working”

are a huge contradiction of goals that, if both implemented, will destroy this country faster than a nuke.

There’s a distressing number of people that seem to be in favor of both at once, and they are both very dangerous positions to abandon if you’re trying to appeal to certain voting blocs.

As far as a wall is concerned, I’m not against it per se, but it seems like it might be cheaper to enforce laws that keep illegals from benefiting once they get here. I wonder if it would be cheaper if, instead of building a wall on the border, we built a few prisons on the border for anyone we catch crossing or having crossed.

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We let Cubans in. We let girls and boys that have been shipped here as slaves in. If a person proves they have risked it all, they belong here. but, that border is too easy.I was raised there. Its not that difficult if you have brains. Folks die crossing there. Its mostly stupidity. Kids die because their parents do not think. I realize it sounds cold and hard but lines are there.

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It isn’t cold and impersonal, kris. I live up by the Canadian border–we have few problems there. I keep trying to stress the humanity of our immigration laws when it comes to the US-Mexican border. Are we doing the same thing with that border that we did in the last two centuries when we excluded people through either quotas or outright banning? Is this every humane? Is it how people should be treated? How does that show us to the rest of the world?

If we’ve outgrown the label of Home to immigrants, shouldn’t we admit it? Shouldn’t we 'fess up and say–“Okay, everyone. The US can’t take any more of you! We need an hiatus so we can sort things out. We’ll no longer accept tech people on work visas–we’ll hire our own tech people!”

It’s the laborer who’s suffering–yet we need laborers. No US citizen will take those jobs. Should anything be done about that? Is anyone with a college education (given to them by their parents, usually, so they can ‘succeed in life’) willing to dig ditches, pick crops, mow lawns, or hang wall board?

I don’t disparage the kids who fought their way through college, by the way. I did and I know what it’s like. But if my family or I were starving, I think I’d take whatever job I could find. If I were jobless and living with parents, I think I’d take whatever job I could find.

It seems to me we have a little problem, here. People want jobs, but they don’t seem willing to take the jobs offered them. Why?

In the meantime, people are literally willing to die for those jobs–but we don’t want them. Sounds like a very tangled web, to me. :slight_smile:

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I agree for the most part. It’s not the job being the reason our people don’t want it. Its the pay for it. Culture makes it possible for the Mexican/South American people willing to accept the low pay. They by working together, pooling resources, and living together gives them more money to use and send home. In a 3 bedroom house 20 people will live and split the costs. this makes 3$ an hour more like minimum wage of 7$ to10$ an hour. We don’t live like that.
Under a hot sun working fields 12 hours. girl would you work for 3$ an hour or get paid per a set weight of produce? I sure won’t. But, thats my cultural standard.
Pay the standard minimum wage and that head of lettuce costs as much as a gallon of milk. I don’t want to pay that.
We could allow illegals to work seasonally at a first come first serve basis. With fixed limits and details. Then send them back but, Mexico is not their home so we have the expense of shipping them back to their country… a free ride home. I dunno. Annexing these countries might be the smartest idea.Fix their government. That would be prohibitively expensive. I have one idea to get our people to take those jobs. Give grants to farmers to set up decent free housing for laborers . Housing is a huge expense even for minimum wage and travel expense. What do you think?

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The Christmas tree farmer I cited goes through hoops to get his workers back, and he has free housing for them. He, I think, is working to get a grant, but it’s the immigration laws that get him. The government won’t give grants to hire undocumented labor. And the farmer has trained ‘his’ people, so he doesn’t have the loss that comes with retraining. I don’t know, Kris. The laborers can’t apply for citizenship if they’re not legal. So it’s like a big circle. If we gave amnesty to the undocumented people already living here, they might apply for citizenship, given a certain amount of time for them to do so. That would probably also work for repeat ‘offenders.’ But do Americans want that? :evilfun:

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What abiut the North American Trade agreement? It’s probably a silent caveat that implies a slow acceptance of the erosion of national bounderies withing all the Americas. The de-facto enhancement of the keep off of the Americas doctrine.

Fit’s in with what the Eurepean union has already done. It’s coming, it’s a safe bet. About aligning drugs with political openings? Unlikely. Remeber the deal Reagan had with the Contras?

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I don’t think NAFTA is at all like the EU when it comes to immigration–but I don’t know. Europe seems to protest the influx of both religious and secular immigrants. The US only protests the influx of Latinos to fill jobs.

But I wonder how many small farms in Mexico have been ‘absorbed’ by US megafarms. How much of the results of manufacturing in Mexico doesn’t go to Mexico, because the companies are headquartered outside of Mexico?

And, of course, there’s drugs–from Afghanistan to Columbia. The US is very frightened by drugs and drug dealing. :slight_smile:

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There are legal migrant workers and their families. They do want that seasonal work but illegals get hired. Most people here in the US have no problem with legal immigrants, it is the illegals that cause issue.
What about assisting those governments to make stronger economies and civil safety? I don’t know answers there is too many opinions and quarrels. Each could work. To change the deaths in the desert, educate or block it off. For some damn dumb reason people walk during the day and go through it ignorant of how to safely travel on foot. Walk at night. cool off during the day in a wash or cave. Water traps. etc etc.

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Kris, I’m going to leave this site for a while. Talking to one person is fine and I appreciate your input.

But there’s no real philosophy discussed at this site–there are no real crunchy nuggets of thought and ideas to munch on–to learn from.

I’ll be back when when–and if–the site becomes something other than a male chat site.

Take care. :slight_smile:

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A border of nearly 2000 miles, and only ‘fenced’ and controlled for 700 miles? Incredible, really, with the general paranoia that you have in the U.S. concerning security.

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Sorry to see you go lizbeth, I have lived most of my life with males only. I guess I might be numb or blind to it. Not enough female influence.
I was going to bring up a crucial problem. Diseases coming here that we have not had or have thought we eradicated. South American immigrants are not healthy. So do we protect ours or keep going?

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I’m not completely gone, kris. I pop in and out and will continue to do so–But–

I like you; however, you’ve said things–without citation–for which I can’t find corroboration. How many drug dealers are slipping through the border disguised as laborers? From what So. American countries are they coming? How many people other than Mexicans are trying to cross the Sonora Desert? What diseases are they bringing with them? (Remember, the Western World brought diseases to the New World–all of the New World, not just what would become the US.)

You’re an intelligent woman, but when you say these things, it sounds like propaganda coming from people who just want to keep Mexican laborers out of the US. Is this humane–or is targeted hatred similar to banning Chinese or fixing quotas for European immigrants? :slight_smile:

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I think the most humane thing we can do is to have a clear, straightforward, and consistent immigration policy - a policy which is firm yet humane, and doesn’t overburden the taxpayer.

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The only people I Hate are politicians. PBS broadcasted a show about illnesses. Polio, chickenpox, on the rise where ilegal immigrants are. Plus other illnesses coming out of South Anerica. Damned if I remember the name of the show though. I tend towards cynical, I know and sorry.