The Shadow Debate: What's causing illegal immigration

With illegal immigration back in the news and after viewing raw footage of the cataclysm inside MacArthur Park, I thought I’d post a point or two that always seem to be left on the editing room floor of most leading infotainment outfits.

I understand American anger toward illegal immigrants, however, I cringe at this proposed cruelty of displacing the whole lot, as we're talking about millions of human lives. So, from that perspective this view is rather bigoted. With NAFTA's disintegration of the Mexican border for agribusiness, Mexican farmers are unable to compete with corporate mega-farms, which exploit cheap, Mexican resources. Consequentially, unemployed laborers are squeezed north with their families in order to make a meager living. For them, it is an issue of survival.

We need to adopt a policy allowing for the integration of current illegal immigrants along with renegotiating the patently racist Mexico-U.S. article of the NAFTA treaty so the same restrictions that are found in the Canada-U.S. agreement apply to our relationship with Mexico. As it stands, the agricultural section of the NAFTA agreement is divided into three parts, making it unique from the other articles of the treaty. Instead of one overarching standard for all the countries involved there are three individual sets of regulations between each country. While the American/Canadian portion imposes strict restrictions on American agribusiness inside Canada, as the ruling class is primarily white and of European decent when compared to our neighbors to the south, the American/Mexican agreement grants corporations greater access to Mexican land and significantly relaxes operational constraints. The implication being: They’re tiny and brown. We can step on them all we want.

As far as political footballs are concerned immigration isn't the Republican's undoing, it's Bush and his war. True, I know of plenty Americans, many of who are fairly liberal in thought, who feel amnesty is wrong and harbor animosity toward these tax-paying residents, but to victimize these families a second time by sending them back to the squalor they escaped would be an odious policy, and holding them here under such a threat as "guest workers" without appropriate benefits or fair wages is appalling on a human rights level.