The funniest thing happened when I published a photo essay about my vacation to Mexico: numerous readers assumed that I was romanticizing the country or defending the hordes of illegal immigrants who come to this country from Mexico seeking a better life, when in fact, I was doing neither.
Mexico has very real problems, including environmental degradation, corruption, and poverty. It is also a beautiful country, and the people who live there have a beautiful, lively culture. None of this is to say that we should open our borders and invite the entire country to move here.
I saw a great many instances of what happens when there are no laws enforcing environmental quality. Every American knows not to drink the water in Mexico. Perhaps the reason escapes people. The water quality in Mexico is poor because there are no environmental regulations requiring safe disposal of wastewater. This lowers both the cost of living and the quality of life. The Mexicans don't drink the tap water in Mexico. They buy purified bottled water to avoid Montezuma's revenge, just like visiting Americans.
While passing through the thousands of acres of junkyards on the outskirts of nearly every city, I realized that the environmental distruction I was seening is a snapshot of what the United States will have if we continue to allow our environmental rules to be weakened as we have over the last 20 years.
Mexico City is famous for its air pollution, but lax air-quality and vehicle emissions standards are uniform throughout the country. Within 24 hours of arriving in Zacatecas, a city of 100,000 people, I experienced respiratory syptoms such as a productive cough and chest congestion. It took careful observation to realize that the problem was my spending a great deal of time walking through traffic jams and breathing exhaust fumes each day. 
Mexicans face many economic, political, and environmental challenges. Big corporations have been encouraged to set up shop there by low wages, lax or non-existent regulations, and the ability to escape the reach of the IRS, but they are unlikely to improve life for their employees in the long run. I don't pretend to know the political situation in Mexico, except as I understand politics in general: people get favors based on their usefulness to those in power. That leaves about 95% of the population in the cold everywhere.
But the thing that negative commenters on my previous story showed me most clearly is that the conservative spin campaign is really working. While all of you are worrying about the influx of illegal immigrants, you aren't at all thinking about the quagmire in the Middle East. And that is exactly what the neo-cons want.
At the rate things are going in Iraq, we are going to need to re-populate this country anyhow.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 17
"People get favors based on their usefulness in power. " ~ This is what the world has come to, but needs to steer clear of, moneymonger, because it just can't keep going this way. Middle class in America is all but gone. Wonder what the brains will do once they get rid of all the brawn ~ who will do their dirty work then?
:-(
WwW.SparkleTags.Com
12 - 20 million, when we are already very seriously overpopulated to begin with.
With our overall resource base, we shouldn't have a population much larger than
50 million, tops. If we had followed Canada's good example (point system immigration instead of chain migration), maybe we'd have only 30 million (1/10 our current population) like them, and like Canada, we would be enriching our treasury by exporting oil, instead of importing 2/3 of our oil like we do now, from very unfriendly countries (Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Mexico).