It's Time to Boycott Arizona

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by June

I have never driven across the borders, I have always flown or taken trains, it seems to me when we flew, we showed our passports, just as we do in the states, but I don't recall having to do that when we bought tickets to go from Koln to Amsterdam, Paris to Koln.

Perhaps if we had been riding in a van, things would have been different.

When we traveled to Mexico last year, there was a checkpoint to get into the neighborhood enclave on the beach we were staying at, and then when we crossed the Penninsula to go see some ruins. In all cases, the guards had Machine guns. It was an odd feeling to be somewhere that it was business as usual.

I will never go back to Mexico. Sure, it was beautiful, but when traveling from our rented house, we passed by so much poverty, shanty towns built out of whatever people could find. I have never witnessed anything like it here in the US. And I didn't feel like the money we spent down there was actually helping anyone that really needed it.

Is it our fault the Mexican (and other South American) governments are so corrupt and fucked up? No. But as a human being, I have no problem understanding why people want to come here to get away from it. Probably the same reasons some of my ancestors escaped from the crushing poverty of Ireland and Scotland via Steerage, which may have been the equivalent of a Van in the 1800's.

I wish we (the collective we) could put this into a human perspective. It's not like people from South America are doing this as a lark (coming to America), no one with other options would choose to ride in the back of an unventilated truck crammed in with dozens of others, or risk being shot or getting lost while crossing a desert unless they were truly desperate.

This mentality of "I got mine, you need to stay the hell away" makes me sick.

Alas, though you and I personally are not responsible for the poverty to the South of us, it is the fault of the US, both diplomatically and economically.

I don't have time to locate the sources to quote right now, but American Companies looted those countries and the US goverment has meddled way more than the CIA would have you know.

Also, sadly, there are places that poor in the USA, some of them in my state.

I agree completely that no one back in the 1800's or now takes leaving their home to come to the US lightly. I think it sucks to hear that so many people do not/did not welcome them.