If illegal Mexican immigrants spent half as much effort on fixing their own country as they do on getting into ours, Mexico would be a world super power.
With all the focus on the cost of illegal immigration to the United States, specifically focusing on Mexicans that cross the border , it’s rather surprising that there is so little information on the “cost” to the immigrant that is leaving their home country and entering the United States.
How much do these immigrants pay to the human smugglers to get them into the United States? They actually pay these smugglers big money to put them in life threatening situations in order to gain illegal entry into the country. They then go on to pay for fake social security numbers, shoddy housing. They go without preventative health care, they work 80 hour weeks performing often dangerous tasks for less pay than their US citizen counterparts.
Many immigrants leave their families and loved ones behind, unprotected, in the very country from which they are trying to escape because of such deplorable conditions. So, they leave their wives and children and elderly behind in a country riddled with crime, a failing economy and political unrest.
Once these illegal immigrants feel more comfortable with the arguable squatting they are doing in the US, they begin to refer to themselves as Mexican Americans, or Latin Americans. They take such pride in the heritage of a home country that has given so many of its citizens no other option than to run away.
The critically acclaimed Broadway musical, Les Miserable, is an interesting parallel. In Victor Hugo’s story about The Miserable, the French proletariat were oppressed as well. They had few economic opportunities, they were sick and starving, many worked from cradle to grave and dusk to dawn only to end up where they began, at best. There was crime and inequity and desperation. They were oppressed and there was heartache, but instead of fleeing their homeland and giving up, they stayed, the fought hard and they rose up to greater heights.
It’s curious then, that there are Mexican citizens that are willing to endure as much as they do to fight for a space in another country, when they could just take those efforts and fight to repair their own home. According to http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1191/mexican-immigrants-in-america-largest-group , as of 2008, three whole years ago, 12.7 million Mexican immigrants lived in the United States and 55% were undocumented. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces, active United States military personnel as per the date of the article was 1,477,896. The United States military is one of the most powerful in the world, and it’s staffed at less than 1.5 million, even with the Reserves, the United States military is at less than 4 million. Imagine the change that could be exacted if those 12.7 million Mexican immigrants banded together and fought for a better tomorrow in Mexico. Imagine the new level of pride they could take in their heritage. Any home that rich in history and culture is surely worth the fight.
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