We have a cleaning lady who comes once a week, usually, for a few hours. Maria is a legal immigrant from Mexico who has been in this country for about 30 years. She came as a teenager. She is an active Pentecostal. She's a hard worker, and has become a friend.
I asked her about the illegal immigration question this morning. She said, "I don't care how big you build a fence, Mexicans will come over it. We are poor, and there's no hope for us in our country. The rich control everything. In Mexico, I couldn't even talk to you. You're a writer, you're educated. Me, I'm not educated. We couldn't even speak. When I was growing up in our little village, we couldn't even afford to make tamales at Christmastime. Listen to me: nothing is ever, ever going to change in Mexico."
"The Catholic Church is part of the problem," she said. "I grew up Catholic. They don't teach you nothing about how to change your life, about what the Bible says you supposed to do. All they care about is that you show up. Nothing changes there. Nothing."
I said to her that it worries many Americans that our border is effectively meaningless, that we have no real ability to say who can or who can't come to our country.
"What I'm telling you is you can't stop it," was all she said in response. Which I took to mean, "That concern is irrelevant; the force of this movement of population is beyond the ability of anyone to control."
I'm not saying she's right. I'm not saying she's wrong. I'm just saying that that's what she's saying.
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And I'm saying, she has more sense that you do, Rod -- for now. Mexico's birth rate is plummeting, so in a few decades, Mexico will have a labor shortage. And then all the angst about immigration today will look pretty silly.
Mexico's birth rate is plummeting, so in a few decades, Mexico will have a labor shortage.
Labor shortage has only a very remote relationship with population size. Labor shortage or employemnt have direct relationship with economic activity.
China, population 1.3B, has labor shortage in the cities.
Jordan, population 6M, has huge unemployement.
Most small and tiny African countries have huge unemployement.
There is no particular reason to expect Mexico to keep number of available jobs constant while population declines.
"Ship them to Europe? A trilateral approach involving European countries accepting Mexican immigrants as a hedge against the "Eurabianization" of the continent? Plus you've got all those empty churches already..."
I know that was meant as a joke, but, seriously, I think most Europeans wish we had the USA's immigration/ethnicity problems. You get all these Mexicans, who are basically American (European immigrant ancestry with a bit of Native American mixed in), socially conservative and hardworking. We have mujahadin. Which would you prefer?
During the Mexican War John C. Calhoun, the Senator from South Carolina, favored annexing all of Mexico to achieve our Manifest Destiny. He was opposed by northern abolitionists who expected that given the geography the new territories would draw in slave owners and eventually become slave states thus furthering the spread of that abomination and uspsetting the balance in the senate which affected other issues as well. A good argument in those days, but this is today.
If there were an honest plebiscite for annexation to the USA held in Mexico today, ......???????
Two things, Rod (seriously): 1) This is news? (Welcome to my world.) 2) I hate to think you might become disillusioned with the Catholic church.
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