This is totally NOT WQ related but I think that everyone should know about this. Obviously this is an opinion piece I wrote for class. There are facts but it's meant to persuade. Go research the topic if it strikes a chord with you.
Mexico is right there. What separates the US and Mexico at some points seems to be nothing more than the sense of entitlement that Americans seem to have. At that borderline there are no language barriers; people who live that close speak more Spanish than English anyway. And is the US public aware that across this border – less than 50 miles from some cities in Texas a war for drugs exists.
That’s right, a war for drugs. This is not a war on drugs like the US and Mexican governments want us to believe. In these dinghy towns – particularly Juarez – everything exists to provide America with cocaine.
It’s time to stop being naive and think that the US has nothing to do with this. It’s time to stop thinking that these murders, disappearances, rapes and abundance of drug trafficking has nothing to do with American citizens and cannot affect them.
Who’s to say that an American vacationer won’t accidentally end up disappeared, raped, or murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It happens. Visitors to Mexico are warned not to leave their resorts because the safety ends there.
America, it’s time to stop ignoring this problem threatening to overspill into the US; it’s time to take the blindfold off of our eyes and see that existing in Mexico is dangerous.
To fix this problem would be to fix the US immigration problem. According to an article in the El Paso Times, the city closest to Juarez which houses many Juarez officials who are too fearful to live in the city they represent, “25,223 political asylum applications from Mexican citizens were filed between 2006 and 2010, but only 822 were granted, which amounts to 3.3 percent.” But these are only the numbers of those who applied for political asylum, and do not include the countless Mexicans fleeing to America illegally.
These people are not applying for asylum because the economy is bad in Mexico and want to take US jobs. They literally fear for their lives. They flee a government and a system that the US government supports outright. Yet, US border patrol works daily to strengthen our borders.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Unless of course, you’re fleeing a government that the US supports.
Great Article from Daddy's Girl!
ReplyDelete