Mexicans STAND UP to bush* (pics).....go Mexico !!!!.....

[diamond14]

Maria Belen Torres, 70, rummages through trash in a dump by the neighborhood of Arboleras outside of Monterrey, Mexico Friday, Jan. 9, 2004. Torres, who visits the dump every morning, buys tortillas with the money she receives from a local recycled goods buyer. Torres supports her husband, 84, her daughter and her four children. The state of the Latin American economy is one of the issues being discussed at the upcoming Special Summit of the Americas. (AP Photo/Kathryn Cook)





Jose Vasquez Rivera plays with his two-year-old daughter Marisol at their home in the neighborhood of Valle de San Bernabe outside of Monterrey, Mexico Jan. 9, 2004. Residents say that the area was a former chemical dump site and they often experience skin rashes. They also say that high unemployment makes it difficult for them to better their living conditions. The state of the Latin American economy is one of the issuesbeing discussed at the upcoming Special Summit of the Americas. (AP Photo/Kathryn Cook)

[Don Claybrook]

1. Take a good look at the dump where the family is living

This is for a few posters who have recently bashed "illegal aliens".

I can state unequivocally that if my lot in life was to live in that dump near Monterey, Mexico, I'd cross the border as often as I had to in order to try to find work in the US, so that I could send money to my family and get them out of that squalor.

I do hope that some of the anti-immigrant types see that picture. It puts a human face on this issue.

[WillyT]

2. Right On Don, Well Said !!!

:kick:

[lovedems]

3. I am not "anti immigrant" but if this policy drives the current wages

down, people will be living like that in our own country too. I don't doubt for a minute the pollution, dumping and poverty that will soon effect this nation if * continues to get his way.

[POed_Ex_Repub]

4. Yes, it's sad.. but I'm out of work too...

Is it fair that I have this competition?

[fob]

5. Are they really competing with you?

Seriously, are you looking for an Agricultural Supplies Technician(fruit/vegetable field worker), or Industrial Commercial Cleaning Assistant(diswasher, restaurant kitchen worker), or any of the myriad manual labor tasks that "illegal" immigrants often find employment?

fob

[Gin]

6. Isn't this a Mexican Presidents problem? Not one for the USA Inc.

gin

[Don Claybrook]

9. It's the world's problem, and it's widespread

Remember our favorite 9/11 question: why do they hate us?

And what are they going to do about it?

Some equalization between the rich and the poor of the world needs to happen. This isn't a very popular opinion here in the US, but I just don't care anymore.

[diamond14]

12. much of this is caused by U.S. Government POLICIES.....

the chemical pollution likely comes from American factories, making profits off low-cost Mexican labor AND Mexico's inability to effectively control and regulate pollution...so OUR companies create this pollution...leaving it in Mexico, rather than in OUR country...

on top of that crap...it would be very easy for America to regulate and control PLASTICS, so that these chemicals would degrade....OUR current policies on PLASTICS is NO policy....ignore it....and it is all over third world countries....and here too....shrub has DELIBERATELY stopped adding chemicals to any regulatory list, and indeed, has also taken chemicals off regulatory lists...just the phthalates in plastics DEMAND regulation...

and then, let's not forget that America has changed the WATER flows into Mexico... we have damned-up the water that should flow to Mexico...in one of the cruelest agricultural policies ever, water now stays in America to water the desserts, while choking off Mexicans from their rightfully owned and life-saving water....the tiniest bit of water actually reaching Mexico these days, is HIGHLY polluted with American agrichemical pollution: pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, nitrates, salts...this polluted water demolishes children and kills crops...


and just like in Iraq, the Philippes and many other countries, OUR foreign AID money goes directly into the pockets of the wealthy, with nothing trickling down at all...

and this is just a little part of America's policies toward Mexico that could and should be changed.....

[POed_Ex_Repub]

8. Well.. since my programming job has already been offshored

And the IT market is looking pretty grim. I may be looking for work at a restruant.. and YES, a good chance I may be competing with some of them.

[Don Claybrook]

7. I'm out of work myself

And I'm highly pissed about technology jobs being exported overseas.

But to answer your question, yes it's fair that you have this competition. I assume you work in the restaurant industry, or agricultural or maybe construction. These immigrants only want the least of our jobs.

Aside from that, they're humans just like you are, so yes, it's "fair" for you to have to compete with them for jobs, if indeed you're competing with them.

Alternate question: is it fair for them to have to live in those awful conditions?

[POed_Ex_Repub]

10. No.. it's not fair that they live in these conditions...

But how about we take care OUR poverty issues first k?

[Don Claybrook]

11. Well, let's get started then

Let's arrest the heads of any companies that hire illegal workers. That should cut down on the "illegal aliens" coming across the border, right? We need to get serious about this if we're going to do it right. Of course, we'll need to brace ourselves for higher restaurant prices, higher produce prices, and higher construction prices. That would seem to go against the addressing of poverty issues here. But I'm ready if you are. Would you be ready to live out your convictions? Somehow, I don't think so.

As to those poverty issues that we have right here in the United States, I'd be a strong advocate of cutting the Pentagon budget by about 60% tomorrow. It could go toward socialized medicine and a general welfare state. We may need to increase taxes across the board, too, but that would be ok, so long as the government was meeting all of its citizens basic needs. We'd also need to triple or quadruple aid to foreign countries, with special attention to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

It would be a start anyway. k?

[POed_Ex_Repub]

13. I've already gotten started on it..

I'm voting democrat. :thumbsup:

(If about 600 more people did that in Florida in 2000, we'd already be about $87 Billion closer, with a budget surplus to work with to boot)


As for -- "Would you be ready to live out your convictions? Somehow, I don't think so."... Yeah, I would actually. And I think it's presumptuous of you to paint me in that manner.

[LeahMira]

20. Where to start, for the citizen?

Let's arrest the heads of any companies that hire illegal workers. That should cut down on the "illegal aliens" coming across the border, right? We need to get serious about this if we're going to do it right. Of course, we'll need to brace ourselves for higher restaurant prices, higher produce prices, and higher construction prices. That would seem to go against the addressing of poverty issues here. But I'm ready if you are. Would you be ready to live out your convictions? Somehow, I don't think so.

I wouldn't mind higher prices in some areas, but I do think that some of the higher costs of living might be offset by lower medical costs, for instance. It might balance out in the long run. The people who live off unearned wealth, which is exactly what stock dividends are, need to lower their expectations and try to get a real job.


As to those poverty issues that we have right here in the United States, I'd be a strong advocate of cutting the Pentagon budget by about 60% tomorrow. It could go toward socialized medicine and a general welfare state. We may need to increase taxes across the board, too, but that would be ok, so long as the government was meeting all of its citizens basic needs. We'd also need to triple or quadruple aid to foreign countries, with special attention to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Those sound like good plans.

[qanda]

14. People are living in conditions even worse than this

All over the world. Have you been to Baltimore or Washington DC and seen the desperation of some of the people living in America?

Wouldn't a better solution be to spend the money to build up Mexico instead of using money to destroy countries all around the world. Couldn't we make Mexico a more liveable place for its people?

The plan as it now stands is to continue to drive down wages so that there will be no middle class in America, just the rich and the poor. And as long as we see the suffering outside of America as more dire and more urgent than the suffering inside of America, then we not only have no clue, but we also have no hope of a better future for ourselves and for our children.

[diamond14]

15. living inside the Beltway, and working in DC...I have yet to see

anything close to third-world conditions in the DC area....and I grew up in Detroit....

IMO, you have travelled very little internationally....I agree that there is serious poverty in the USA...and homeless....in DC, MOST of the homeless are OUR Veterans (around 60 % of the DC homeless are OUR Veterans)....and those issues are very different than those in Mexico....most of OUR homeless Veterans have serious disabling war wounds AND are shell-shocked, desparately needing mental health counseling....

bush*'s HUGE budget cuts to OUR Veterans is what causes this homelessness...OUR Veterans deserve better...mental health counseling, prescription drugs, medical care, job counseling, homes, and more...bush* cuts have degraded OUR Veterans....

in Mexico, bush* policies have created those slum conditions: water, trade, foreign aid, oil....and Mexico has nothing to offer those people, damaged by OUR chemical dumping, starved by OUR water diversions, poisoned by OUR agricultural chemicals and PLASTICS...

I agree that we must build up Mexico to a decent standard of living...this is OUR neighbor, part of OUR stability...we could do so much more with OUR neighbor, rather than currently wasting $ 150 BILLION in Iraq that is doing NOTHING....

But I disagree with your contention that the poverty in Mexico is comparable to poverty in USA....Mexico is so much more dire circumstances, that Mexicans will continue to flood across our borders until their lives are at least minimally civilized...that 70 year old woman, digging in a Mexican dump, will always find more food in ONE trash bin behind any American McDonalds, or any American Pizzaria or any American grocery store....it wouldn't matter if the shrub legalized 18 Million Mexicans...18 Million more would be right behind them, and I don't blame them at all...you can WALK across the Rio Grande River, now that USA drained out all the water for OUR farmlands...shrub has NO CLUE about dealing with this issue...

[cosmicdot]

17. when we took food to a NE DC family

one Christmas season ... they were sitting in the dark wearing their winter coats with no heat or electricity ... perhaps not comparatively 3rd world, but pretty sad state of affairs for America just the same ...

I don't trust Bush or the former Coca-Cola executive Fox.

About Bush, Fox said "I want to give him full recognition, because he's always thinking about the human aspect."

[Laughing Mirror]

22. why don't you cross the Anacostia River if you don't

believe there are third-world conditions in this country. Look around between dodging bullets for a grocery store and see if you can find one. You won't. Maybe you don't call this third world. What do you call it?

More than 60,000 people in Ward 8, a neighborhood in the capital of the free world, without so much as a grocery store.

Washington, DC, capital of first world, richest country in the world, USA.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

19. No.

We are NOT responsible for taking in every poor person throughout the world. No, no, no, no, NO!

I am all for helping the country of Mexico and other third world countries. I am not for taking the problem of their hands for them.

Let me tell you something, I have family friends in Italy that are in just as bad a position as a lot of these Mexicans are. We've been trying to get them legally into America for decades now, and have been unable to. Why? Because we already have too much of a burden thanks to illegal immigrants to be able to take in the people who respect our laws and legitimately want to be a part of this country and not just leech off our economy. That is the oft ignored part of the issue. The current system actually encourages illegal immigration because quite frankly, it's a lot easier. This new program proposed by Bush only deepens that major flaw.

[proud patriot]

16. Gracious Amiga's en Amigos

:bounce:

[goforit]

18. And Bush is gonna bring them in just so he can take them to Iraq.

So sad!!!

[maggrwaggr]

21. damn! Them's a lot of riot police!

Gotta hand it to these folks, those are riot police, and that is Mexico, where the police slaughtered a whole ton of people back in the 60's for protesting.