Am getting a Page Load Error...is Telmex acting up again? I can't reach a couple of other sites either...
Hilarious! Displays two simple messages. 1. Why does the US pander to immigrants (legal or otherwise) by not forcing them to assimilate. 2. What the f**k is with the 14th Amendment??! Have your baby on US territory and it is automatically a citizen? What bullsh1t is that?
Ok, I finally was able to see it (have seen it before). I think it makes a complex subject way too simple and belittles Mexicans in the process. It's insane that the richest country in the world (the US) can be located next door to a poor country and NOT expect lots of immigration. According to the World Bank in 2004 about 25% of the population of Mexico lived on less than $2 USD per day. Think about that. What can you do with $2 per day? Can you feed yourself properly? Can you buy school books for your kids? Even if the doctor is free, can you afford the transportation costs to get there? People should try living on $2 USD per day before they criticize illegal immigrants who go to the US.
I think there really are a lot more than two different messages in this "spoof" but I am uncertain if Eddie got them right. Many of us could have come up with two totally different messages. It seems to me that there is a double standard in place and this is a funny (or at least an attempt at funny) to make fun of US Immigration policy as it relates to Mexico but I don't think it is insulting to Mexico or its citizens. It would be nice if it were simple for law abiding Mexican citizens to visit the US, go to Disney World, New York or wherever but it is anything but simple. We all have friends who can get a visa and friends who cannot, no matter how well intentioned they are. Rivergirl points out that the US is so rich and Mexico is so poor but that does not make it right that the US borders are so porous when it comes to Mexican people, nor does it make it right for people to breach the borders. But if they can do it without consequences, then i think this is a better point that can be made of what RG posted. You don't see people trying to sneak across the border to enter Sauia Arabia and they have a pretty good income per capita. What really bugs me is that the policy for Cubans to enter the US is vastly different than for a Mexican. Hell, that is why we have so many problems in Mexico of late with the gangs killing each other, police and politicians. They are having a field day with the US "wet foot, dry foot" policy as it relates to Cubans. It makes perfect sense to bring the Cubans through Mexico and here we are in Cancun, 90 miles or so from the tip of Cuba.
I see your point about the humor of that cartoon. I still think it encourages people to think to simply about a complex issue. I completely agree with you. And Mexico is not helping by having its own version of the Wet Foot/Dry Foot law. If Cubans are caught in Mexican waters they are sent back to Cuba (after some weeks or months), but if they are caught on land in Mexico they are held for a while and then released. Makes no sense to me, if they are going to release them anyway then why hold them for so long, why not kick them lose immediately? I also see that the US attitude towards Cubans who make it to the US encourages a kind of arrogance in the Cuban-American subculture. There's often a sense of entitlement in that community that makes me very uncomfortable. I don't think that the US should have fluid borders but I do think that the US needs much more realistic and much more enforceable immigration laws. The iron first approach will simply not work. Immigrants who go to the US knowing they will be illegal there do so because even though it SUCKS to be an illegal it's better than being so severely underemployed that you can't afford to send your kids to school (in Mexico, afaik, all parents must buy schoolbooks for their kids, even in public schools). When you have the kind of financial disparity that there is between the US and Mexico you need to address the fundamentals of the problem in your laws. I don't see the US doing that when it builds a higher wall or puts more cranky agents on the Mexican border.
First, I'm sure mixz1 posted this because he wondered what our attitudes were, rather than necessarily finding it funny himself (just in case anyone thinks otherwise). I think it reinforces Mexican stereotypes as perceived by the uneducated, trailer dwelling, forward a "funny" email to your whole address book demographic. It could also be a spoof and others with a better grasp of World issues might find it funny as a piss take on the aforementioned redneck attitude, in much the same way as the video linked below I posted on our hurricane blog a few weeks back. Hurricane Video
Thanks for the confidence, Steve. Indeed, I posted this with a concealed viewpoint, partially visible in the question mark after the word funny. I don't think it's funny. I do think it's a sign of the jingoism that has been promulgated in the US by the current administration, partially to demonstrate the quasi-vigilance of the ill-named Homeland Security folks and partly to pander to the hard right. As a child of Holocaust survivors, I have to wonder about the tin ear that didn't remember when the Nazis "protected" their Fatherland and Homeland. As was demonstrated by the May 2006 "Day Without Immigrants", the US agricultural industry was brought to its knees by the one day strike. The US needs to deal with this in a more informed manner,
I think that part of the problem with US Immigration policy comes from the fact that most Americans have no idea a) what life is like beyond their own borders and b) what life is like for an immigrant (even a legal one). Due to my country's lousy education system I received very little education in history (until I started sleeping with a history major), but even so the thing that was drummed into my head was that the US was a country of immigrants (we killed off the natives). So when I see the US becoming so anti-immigrant it makes me sick to my stomach. Immigrants made the US, diversity is the country's strength and is at the heart of why it IS the most powerful country on earth. Anti-immigrant sentiment routinely rears it's ugly head, it too is normal, but the US was founded by immigrants and was built by them. An amusing example of some of this comes when you ask an average American what their Nationality is. The average idiot does not know what Nationality is...so they tell you their country of ancestral origin. So if their great grandmother came from England or Italy they think they are British or Italian... The nice thing about it is that Americans are proud of their ancestry, they care that some great grandmother came over from France. Sometimes it's troubling to me that the US has such a short history compared with many other countries, and I think our short history contributes to our lack of understanding of Nationality. But basically all of us as Americans have ancestry from somewhere else. My own ancestry is British, Irish, German and French. Part of my family came on the Mayflower, so you don't get more American than me...(woohoo Go Red Sox)! For the record, I know Mix1 well enough to have seen the underlying meaning in his original post. He knew he was baiting me...
