This post is a commentary from a 30 year resident (missionary) in Mexico about Trump verses Mexico.
See also Mexico Standing Up to Trump
and Mexico’s president accuses Donald Trump of damaging US
I think that Trump stomps on people to make a splash, and really there is little substance to his words except to rile people up, make them angry, and cause contention so that he gets attention.
Trump is like the little school boy that is constantly bad in order to get everybody’s attention.
In other words, Mexico has been getting a bad rap in Trump’s speeches, and they are looking to fight back. There are some issues in all of this that Trump little understands, or if he does understand it, he prefers to ignore it in order to follow his agenda.
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Lazy Mexican workers?
First of all, the bulk of the Mexican immigrants into the US are hard workers. Let me explain this. The US laborer has gotten fat and lazy. They want a high life style (because TV shows like those Kardashians and Trump lifestyle parades promote lust over riches), but they don’t want to do hard work (even worse on trying to save money) in order to get there.
Most of the Mexican workers in the US just simply do what normal American workers refuse to do. Is it a job in the sun, hot, nasty? They will do it, and the US laborers won’t. Is it difficult or dangerous to do? Again.
Mexico’s War on Drugs
Secondly, the US has their own share of blame in the drug mess. If the US enforced the law down to individual possession, maybe there would be less drugs, and less who sell them. While the US is doing a good job in some areas, they are not in a “drug war” like Mexico is. In Mexico, the politicians who fight drugs instead of giving in to the cartels end up dead. Over the last 5 years, I can remember reading about 4-5 governors and Senators to the Mexican congress who vowed to fight the drug cartels, and they were killed before they even got elected (some) and others afterwards. We contrast that with ex-Mexican president Vicent Fox who capitulated completely to them, and now confesses to having used drugs, and wants to make drug use and production completely legal.
Ex- Mexican president Felipe Calderon was threatened with dead for his war on drugs, and has moved to the US seeking protection. Where are the US leaders who will do something right to the point of ruining a normal life for them? So there is a lot going on south of the border that Americans just don’t appreciate.
The Mexican military also has been heavily involved in keeping order as the police departments are corrupted and basically overrun by the cartels. Things like whole police departments in towns along the border where it is illegal for policemen to have cell phones? Why? Because everytime they were going out to hit a drug bust, the cartel was advised ahead of time. Whole police forces in some towns were indicted for complications with drug cartels and murders, even extortion.
The Mexican Military
We (my wife and I) know and have friends and family in the Mexican military. The cartels have sought to corrupt the military the same as the police forces, and they have in some cases, but in many they have not. That is not so much a praise of the soldier’s character (which many are good people) but that the government doesn’t want to lose it all. They will have no control if they cannot rely on the army.
The Mexican Wall
The foolishness of building a wall is like a two-year-old’s understanding of the problem. How will that fix anything? There have been several hundred tunnels under the existing wall, and from my understanding of things, along most of the US-Mexico border, people are not crossing in the desert. I know probably 100 Mexicans in my years in Mexico that are now in the US, and most came across illegally.
In my first years in Mexico, some we knew crossed the border walking in the desert. They had to walk 2-3 days carrying their water to drink, and it was used up the first day and there is no water out there. Their feet and legs were swollen, and getting into the US, they basically had to be hospitalized.
But after 1989 or so, nobody told us about these experiences. They crossed the border in a car. How? The coyotes (men who traffic in people, which have papers to come and go) would follow the US Border immigration workers home at night, and they would give them bribes. We are talking about $50,000 for a day or two of getting people across.
The coyotes would get background information on their people crossing, and give them “credit” after the cartels would establish their relatives and where they live. If they don’t pay up over a year or two, then they would begin torturing and killing their relatives. The typical price for getting across the border illegally today (2016) is between $15,000 to $20,000. Consider that they run 30 people at a time across the border when their bribed border guy is on duty, then they will make between $450,000 to $600,000 A NIGHT! If they get caught, the US Border patrol returns them to Mexico the same day, and they try again later or the same night even. The drug cartels see this as a better money making deal than drugs. So the issue is tremendous.
On the other hand, Mexican statistics by the Mexican government monitors money from US coming into Mexico by various methods (workers to their families still in Mexico), and it is a tremendous outgo of money.
But by the Mexican government’s own records, in 2015 there were more Mexicans returning to Mexico to live than where going into the US. Why is that? It is because the economic condition in the US is too expensive, and these Mexican workers are at the bottom of the pay scale.
Amnesty for Illegal Mexicans
My take on amnesty is that it is wrong. Obama wants to give away everything he can and make America the worst place he can. Obama is against America. Before you judge me as “great” or “horrible”, hear me out. The problem here is that the United States of America was built on immigrants. To ignore their contribution is stupid. Only native Americans were naturally born here without any immigration (and anthropologists say they came across from Asia).
But our country was built on immigrants that came to be free, to work, and to enjoy what their labors would provide for them. Today we have a problem, and that problem is the Democratic party that draws people by bribery. For my whole life, the Democrats have offered all kinds of welfare and give-aways to the blacks. Their thrust was not to put blacks into good paying jobs because they are good workers, but to make the majority of them dependent on the government through welfare type things. The equal opportunity stuff which supposedly placed blacks into jobs equal to and beside whites, didn’t work. What it did is give the blacks an unfair advantage over the whites. They got jobs that they didn’t deserve, and deserving whites were out of luck. If you are reading this and you are black, there is blowback coming, so read on.
But the line we were given is that they were underprivileged, so this government enforced advantage was necessary. Well what happens is that many blacks did go through college and became very proficient at whatever there career was, and now, they are given the disadvantage because now the government wants to bring in people from Asia (Indian, China, etc) to get this unfair disadvantage. You see the problem here is that it wasn’t broke. But the government went about “fixing it” and made things extremely worse.
A long time ago, the blacks were the underpaid workers. Then the foreigners. Then jobs started going to Mexico. Now the Mexican workers in Mexico are losing their job to Asian workers in China and India. Even in China, the businesses are making dark factories completely computerized with robot arms and all that they can set up, and cut the lights out (dark) because they don’t need humans in it.
In all this mess the principle thing is the principles of the America. For me, a worker needs to validate himself by working hard and being of use to the employer. If he cannot do that, or refuses to voluntarily do that, we break the thing when the government enters in to FORCE THE EMPLOYER to give the worker what he has not earned.
Another principle that has been ignored is that we don’t go for the cheapest thing out there, but there are other considerations that should enter into the mix. Quality, where the product was produced, how the company treats their workers, etc. In China there are government factors that use convicts to work long, hard hours for just a bowl of white rice as they pay. This is slave labor. Yes I want a pair of shoes that cost $30 instead of $300, but I cannot bow to that. Equally the US manufacting people need to step up to bat and make excellent quality products.
What amazes me is how people with nothing do great things. For example, Germany has few natural resources, but they buy steal on the world market, and make a wrench, and then sell it for 100% what a US wrench costs (the entire tool industry is like this). Why? How do they get away with it? When I worked construction, people looked to these high quality tools. They paid through their teeth for them, and then were extremely content that they had a set of German precision made tools. I bought a wrench one time from China and it broke the first time I tried to put some real stress on it. I was educated on the matter. After buying 2 Chinese wrenches, I paid three times more for a high quality wrench that never broke, and had a lifetime warranty.
America fell behind in the production thing years ago because there is not a good price on American products, and there is no quality, and the workers force the companies to pay high wages. The government then came in and added so many useless, senseless money consuming rules that our American companies cannot make anything anymore.
Getting back to the immigration issues for Mexico, there are a lot of immigrants that are working through the system legally. What message do we send to those people when we give amnesty, and while they paid $10,000 of dollars to the US Immigrant and Naturalization people, others get in free? Many Mexicans I know of here in Orlando want to finish the legal path they have been pursuing for the last 5-10 years and be citizens. It is galling to them what Obama wants to do.
Trump on the other hand wants to deny these people who are seeking legal immigration. What will happen then? Illegals will still get across the border despite Trumps wall. They are crossing at the bordering crossing now through bribery, so will that stop? No. Only those seeking legal immigration will get hit by Trump’s ideas, and so everybody will seek crossing illegally and living here illegally. Note that the US gives tourstist visas out, and once in, they just disappear and don’t leave.
Trump hasn’t a clue on this issue, and his use of illegal foreigners in his companies just makes the man the biggest hypocrite out there, and the fools that vote for Trump are shamed by voting for this type of man.
Our Southern Neighbor
On another hand, Mexico is our neighbor. We have an extended southern border with them. There is a tremendous daily traffic back and forth for workers along the border, and Americans getting cheap services and cheap goods. With NAFTA and trade back and forth, we need to remember that this is a two way door. Yes, Mexico depends on the US, but the US also depends on Mexico. They buy a tremendous amount of our goods. So destroying that relationship in order to get into the presidency does not seem anything like anything wise, Mr. Trump.