I went to play golf this morning with the Seafood King and Some Guy Named Bob. Seafood Jr. begged off due to the heat.
Our start time was 7:15 and the temperature was a pleasant eighty nine degrees. Play was slow and by noon when we finished it was up to one hundred four degrees. Even though we rode carts today, I was drained. The forecasted high for late this afternoon is one hundred and six. It is supposed to reach one hundred and ten this weekend.
When I came home I laid down and took a nap, awaking feeling drained rather than refreshed. The heat just saps the strength.
This oppressive heat got me to thinking about the people out in the deserts of Southern Arizona who are dying trying escape the crushing poverty of Mexico. It kind of makes whining about the discomfort of a round of golf seem petty, doesn't it?
Many illegal border crossers take to the desert because it is easier to evade the Border Patrol away from the cities. Most take a plastic milk bottle or two filled with water for the trip. No matter how much water they carry, it is inadequate for the trip ahead. It is simply not possible to carry enough water to traverse 60 miles of desert on foot in the summer. The temperatures are brutal and the sun unrelenting.
The lucky ones will find water stations that volunteers place along routes known to be used by illegal crossers. Some will give up, beaten by the elements and just sit down somewhere in hopes of being found by the Border Patrol or volunteer searchers. The unlucky ones will die an agonizing death from heat and thirst. Their remains will be taken to the medical examiner's office and held until someone back in Mexico reports them missing. Maybe they will be identified or maybe not. Some will leave relatives guessing as to their fate.
Those who reach safety undetected, take jobs that pay low wages and require long hours. Jobs that pay many times what they can make in Mexico. This is what draws them here.
In a perfect world immigration would be orderly and safe, but this isn't a perfect world. It is a world of economic imbalances, so people will always seek to better their lives despite the risks to life and limb.
Mexico is glad to be rid of their poor, they have plenty. These workers send money back home to family left behind, boosting their local economy, a duty their own government has abdicated. U.S. employers are glad to have reliable workers who will work hard and in silence. Many American grumble about these uninvited guests fearing that their presence diminishes our prosperity and takes our jobs. Everyone has a dog in this fight.
Thirty years ago the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I were involved with the Vietnamese Resettlement Project. Thousands of Vietnamese piled into boats big and small, seaworthy and not, all dangerously overloaded and put out to sea in the hope of finding a better life. They endured pirates, lack of water, the elements and the risks of the sea. It is the same human spirit yearning to be free.
This situation is a sad failure of the governments of the United States and Mexico. They are equally culpable if you ask me.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor
6 comments:
Bravo, Merle. Not everyone understands the risks and desperation of many immigrants - especially, it seems, in border states.
I'm aware that this is a polarising and contentious issue in the USA but all of the points put forward in your post are pertinant to the isuue. Immigrants, legal or illegal, from poorer countries anywhere in the world, where life for many is barely eking out an existence are just as deserving of equality, justice and respect as everyone else.
I'll stop there.
Ms Soup
PS: D (for Departure) Day is nigh Merle, enjoy your retirement!!
Glad you posted this one. Everyone should see the film "El Norte" but Barbara Ehrenreich says what I feel, so I will just quote her from her blog--
"In case you don’t know what immigrants do in this country, the Latinos have a word for it—trabajo. They’ve been mowing the lawns, cleaning the offices, hammering the nails and picking the tomatoes, not to mention all that dish-washing, diaper-changing, meat-packing and poultry-plucking.
The punitive rage directed at illegal immigrants grows out of a larger blindness to the manual labor that makes our lives possible: The touching belief, in the class occupied by Rush Limbaugh among many others, that offices clean themselves at night and salad greens spring straight from the soil onto one’s plate.
Native-born workers share in this invisibility, but it’s far worse in the case of immigrant workers, who are often, for all practical purposes, nameless. In the recent book There’s No José Here: Following the Lives of Mexican Immigrants, Gabriel Thompson cites a construction company manager who says things like, “I’ve got to get myself a couple of Josés for this job if we’re going to have that roof patched up by Saturday.” Forget the Juans, Diegos, and Eduardos – they’re all interchangeable “Josés.”
The place I live in has no one but illegals doing the really menial jobs that any American would refuse to do-- I see them every day. working.
In ireland people sneak in to work in the fish industry -- no locals will do the menial jobs at a fish cannery.
sorry if that was confusing--the Ehrenreich quote is the 3 paragraphs in center in quotes. you can visit her blog thru my links list
I've never understood the concept that because I was born in the US, I am entitled to a certain quality of life, and I need to protect that from others who were not born here and who might somehow ruin it all. I say it again, "other people exist."
Don't listen to Kurt.
We have big weekends in store for us, Merle! Your retirement party and my Bob concert... Kurt is just going to be sitting around with Todd and a pot of ink.
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