Sometimes, there’s just too much news out there to do strips on. So I thought it might be fun to allow the critters do straight blog posts from time-to-time in a segment we’ll call –
Hola, McRingtail here. This article made me want to mine the border today. (Background here.)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican Senate committee passed a measure Wednesday urging President Felipe Calderon to send a diplomatic note to the United States protesting the deportation of an illegal migrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year.
The committee also approved a scholarship to help her 8-year-old U.S.-born son, Saul, who is an American citizen and stayed in the United States.
What, no good schools south of the border?
“We cannot remain quiet in view of this injustice and must ask for firm action from our authorities,” Mexican Sen. Humberto Zazue said.
He accused the United States of violating international deportation accords by denying her access to the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.
I found this story fascinating for two reasons. First, who knew that Mexico had a senate? I thought they were a dictatorship ruled by whichever Telemundo actor was voted hairiest.
Second, now that I know more about Mexican civics, it explains some things. For instance, why Mexico ’s chief export is its own countrymen. It’s not just that when legislators are focusing on injustices like there actually being consequences for, you know, illegally entering the United States, there’s not much time left to worry about the root causes that sent her and millions of others north in the first place. Things like underemployment, a poverty rate of 40%, drug violence, and government corruption.
It’s also the official sense of entitlement that the United States can and should be a flop house and surrogate welfare provider for Mexicans. And not even a “thank you” or an “I’ll call you” for our trouble.
Or, for that matter, an apology. Yes, of course, Americans are very happy that their produce is a few cents cheaper thanks largely to cheap, plentiful and illegal foreign labor. But I think if you take into account the costs illegals (including but not limited to Mexicans) impose on American society in terms of crime, prison space, welfare rolls, drains on health care, and so on, we really are the net losers here. Looking at the cost-benefit to the American economy — not to mention social fabric — we’re not talking a symbiotic relationship here as much as a parasitic one.
On second thought, screw an apology. I’d rather they pay reparations.
