Just a thought

[Esther]

 "The American Indians found out what happens when you don't control immigration."

[Joyce]

AMEN!

[karen J]

Bingo.  :'(

[Mikey]

That reminds me.  I drove down to San Diego recently and on Interstate 5 near Camp Pendleton there is the below sign posted for both north and southbound traffic.  Many illegals cross the freeway and thus the warning.   I imagine most of you don't see such signs, but they are so common place to us southlanders that we no longer even give them a second thought.  I couldn't remember when the signs went up, figuring it was about ten years ago or so.  When I got home I decided to Google the information.

Back in the 80s a number of illegals were run over and killed while trying to cross that freeway which consists of about 6-8 lanes of traffic where the signs are located.  The sign was posted to warn drivers to keep an eye out for illegals who may dart in front of them.  The signs were put up in 1990, 17 years ago.  It kind of reminds me of some cities that would rather put up a sign stating "bumps in the road" or "rough road" rather than fixing the problem......

[Ky Kim]

I just said the same exact thing to my mom this weekend.

Kim

[happyoutsidegirl]

Like I said before, we have many living here, both legal and illeagel. When the new law was passed all the schools in the area protested cuz most of the parents were illeagel. If we go to a different country better belive we need proper paperwork in order.

[Cindi]

We have mexicans that we employ here at my work, most are legal, but we have had a few slip through that ended up being illegal. 
Anyway, my point is that they have to be the hardest working bunch we have!  I think it's wrong when they enter illegally and I also think it's wrong that they don't learn our language (this really grinds me most).  It's just sad that some of us Americans don't appreciate our freedom and benefits enough to give 100% at our jobs like they do. 
As Forest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that."

[happyoutsidegirl]

I agree totally Cindy. We have all Mexicans that work in our orchards. No doubt they will work circles around most and take pride in what they do.

[Jonna]

I too believe that every country has a right to control who comes into it.  That said, I think the US needs to acknowledge the problem and set up another guest worker program that allows people who want to work to come in legally and also allows them to go home afterwards.  It would go a long ways towards separating the good workers, of whom there are a lot, from the drug runners and people smugglers who are scum in my book.  Then we could come down hard on the creeps while not denying those who just want to work a legal way to do it.

Mexico is a rich country in resources, both human and natural. But they have some major problems with corruption and huge class divisions.  They have a responsibility here too to make their own country more egalitarian so their best and brightest don't feel they have to cross the border to find work.  Some towns in Mexico are completely women and children most of the year, it's not a healthy way to run a family or a nation.

I have to say, learning another language is really hard.  Especially for an adult. I struggle daily with spanish and I appreciate daily the kindness and understanding I get from those who have to try and communicate with me.  It just isn't easy and english in particular has more exceptions than rules and is very hard to learn.  Spanish is pretty regular and follows the rules and yet it is a bear for me.  One of the things I'd most like to see change in the US is more appreciation for other languages.  I think we have a great opportunity here to add a language for our kids and we are ignoring it or fighting it.  Think of the Europeans who almost all learn at least 2 languages as children.  It makes it a lot easier to learn a third language when you are an adult and it makes it a lot easier to see the world through the eyes of another culture.  Something everyone on this planet could improve on.  There were plenty of spanish speakers in the town I grew up in and how I wish I had taken advantage of that and learned from them.  Here in Mexico you will find that the english speakers stick together and many of them never learn the language.  It's sad as they miss a lot.  It does make it easier to understand though that the same thing happens in the US with spanish speakers.  It's just so much easier to stay around people who speak your language than to do the really hard work of learning another one.  Especially adults, for kids it seems to come so easily.  I really wish I'd learned more spanish as a kid.

[Cindi]

Jonna I understand what you are saying about learning a different language.  I think it's great that the local elementary schools are now teaching Spanish at a young age.  I took both Spanish and French back in high school,but have forgotten most of what I learned.  :'(
As I stated in my previous post we do have some Mexicans that work at my work.  We are a construction/excavating business and we even went as far as holding a class for the Spanish speaking workers so they could at least learn the basics.  Like ladder, ditch, and so on.  When we have a worker in a ditch that can't speak English that is very dangerous for him and others around him.  What we do now is try to have a translater with each pipe crew and that seems to help.  We don't ask that they learn the entire language right away, just enough to keep them safe.  I think there is a lot of room for improvement with how the U.S. handles migrant workers. 

[Esther]

So Jonna, your life experience is just the opposite of what we've been discussing. What have you been required to do to be a resident of Mexico?

[GAJen]

Over 50% of the employees at DH's job are Mexican. How many legal I don't know. I know in our little town the white people are treated beneath all others. I'm not a racists but down here most people are.

[happyoutsidegirl]

Jen I find it just a bit hard to swallow the fact that I am slowly becoming the minority here in my own home town. And it's true accros the states. We have some people working with us (CNA's) form the philipiens, talk about your hard workers, and they strive to be good at what they do. Nick and his wife are RN's in there country but have to take a bunch of test to be licensed here. so both are very happy working as aids for now while they go threw this process. They told me that English is there second language and required in all there schools. Even ther 8 year old boy speeks it perfectly.Wouldn't it be nice if that were true for the hispanic schools as well?

[Mikey]

One of the things I'd most like to see change in the US is more appreciation for other languages.  I think we have a great opportunity here to add a language for our kids and we are ignoring it or fighting it.  Think of the Europeans who almost all learn at least 2 languages as children.

Jonna: I agree with much of what you say but I disagree on the language issue in the quote above.  Europeans really had no choice to speak another language because the countries are relatively small, adjacent to each other, and they speak different languages such as German, French, Italian etc... English is most often the second language of choice and is pretty much accepted as the international language.  Our culture in California is rich with Spanish influence and I would like to see Spanish taught in our public schools to all children.  However, I hate the fact that parents who are here illegally are given the option of enrolling their kids in classes that have teachers who speak Spanish.  California is quickly going down the tubes.  Ask anyone who lives here.....who is not a member of La Raza....and if they live in southern California they will likely agree.

My concern is that diversity in languages creates division and isolation in communities.  In the past, immigrants to the U.S. had to learn English in order to succeed.  And the reason they came here was to succeed.  It's a well established fact that Spanish speaking children who are immersed in English only classes eventually do much better in school and in the open job market than those kids who are allowed to have Spanish speaking teachers.  In addition, an entire community will eventually develop in which one would think they were living in Mexico.  I see it here in the LA area in several locations.  In fact the LA Times ran an article about it several months ago where some Mexicans, here illegally of course, left LA for Kentucky because life in LA was like Mexico.  They referred to California as being "broken".  We now have several small communities east of LA that have corrupt city governments, rife with graft, and this occurred because these people were not forced to integrate into our society.  One of these cities is Cudahy which is described in the article as Mexican Border Town.  Here's an article about this corrupt little town: http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/the-town-the-law-forgot/15731/

[Jonna]

Boy, don't you just wish that when two cultures met they would each take the BEST from the other.  It doesn't happen that way though.  I hate to see the same problems of corruption and inherited power that are predominate in Mexico come into my home state of California or any other state in the US.  I think we had our own problems with that in some areas of the US but we have done our best to bring all states together with one standard for government.  I'm thinking of people like Huey Long in Louisiana but I'm sure there are still places where that is the norm. Certainly our response to New Orleans after the hurricane was rife with politics and greed. I don't want to pick on Louisiana but it pops to my mind first.

I'll agree with this Mike, I think all kids in US schools should get their main instruction in english but should also get daily work in another language. Spanish make sense to me since most of this continent and the one below us speak spanish.  The Europeans abilities with language predate the European Union and while distance matters, it's just as easy to stay isolated in a valley in France and never learn another language as it is in the US.  You're right that english is the standard in the world now, which has good and bad points for us in that we aren't under much pressure to learn another language and not knowing another language puts us at a disadvantage in world business.  We need to give our kids the tools they need to be successful in the world, language is one of them.

Here's a joke Europeans love to tell me.

In English, what is the word for someone who speaks 3 languages?

----trilingual

what is the word for someone who speaks 2 languages?

----bilingual

what is the word for someone who speaks 1 language?

----American

Sad, but too true.


As for past waves of immigrants learning english, the adults ... not so much.  I remember my Italian friends whose parents spoke broken english and whose grandparents didn't speak it at all.  It's the kids that will integrate into the culture, we need to make sure that we teach them what that means to us and what our values are.  If it means letting the illegal immigrant kids into the schools, well, I'm not thrilled with paying for it but I'm also not thrilled to have a generation of kids in California that don't know what it means to be an American and don't have the same history and respect for law, women, government service, ...

That's funny about the Mexicans leaving LA for Kentucky because LA was too Mexican.  Funny and sad.  Down here, gringos have a one-upmanship thing with each other about who lives in the "real" Mexico and who lives in a "gringolandia" town.  There are a lot of towns in Mexico where you will hear more english than spanish on the street and where all businesses will deal with you in english and where the US dollar will be accepted along with the national currency.    If you google Ajijic you will find info on one of those towns.  Here where I live there are many like that.  Often ex-pats will start out in one of these 'Mexico-light' towns and then move to a less english centered town as they feel comfortable.  That's kind of what I'm doing.

When we move into an area we bring some things that are good, better treatment of animals, and some that aren't so good, higher prices. There is resentment in areas where there are a lot of gringos that we don't assimilate better or try and learn the language or the culture.  Still, Mexicans are very polite as a culture so you don't get the kind of raw rejection that for instance you could see in those "Californians go home" signs along the Oregon border in the 1970's.

I have no answers, I'm just a retired cop like you.  I want to live the rest of my life in relative peace with people I like around me.  I think I can do that here in Mexico. 

[Esther]

Jonna, what were you required to do to be a resident of Mexico?

[Mikey]

Jonna, what were you required to do to be a resident of Mexico?

Enter the country LEGALLY.... 

[Jonna]

Jonna, what were you required to do to be a resident of Mexico?

Enter the country LEGALLY....    

Yep!  and prove that I could support myself here without taking a job from a Mexican. 

There are several types of resident visas available and some are fairly simple to get.  If you are retired and have an income it is fairly simple to get a retired resident visa (FM3-rentista).  If you want to work here, it is much more difficult and there are rules that to hire you companies must prove there are no Mexican citizens that can do your job and they can only hire a certain percentage of foreigners.  If you open your own business, you can work there but the same rules apply for your employees.

In fact though, I'm not exactly legal.     I still come in using a tourist visa which is good for 180 days and while we've been snowbirding and going back and forth, that's been plenty.  On a couple of occasions we were here longer but we are only 4 hours from Belize and so we could leave the country and return with another tourist visa.  My not being exactly legal is only in intent, I always keep my visa current, as the intention of tourist visas is not for people who live here even part of the year. They want you to get a resident visa which requires a little more paperwork and costs more.  For the first level of resident visa, called an FM3, you need to prove income of  X times the current minimum wage in Mexico City.  Right now that equates to about $1500 US a month.  You need to show bank statements with this much being deposited in your account for the previous 3 months.  Most states will give you a discount on that amount if you own a home here, you prove that with either a deed or a few months of electric bills.  The FM3 costs about $100 US and has to be renewed annually.  The tourist visa costs around $20 US and you have to leave the country within 180 days.   There are some benefits to having an FM3 and we will probably get one in the next year or so.  One is that you can bring in all your household goods duty free, but you have to do that within I think 3 months of getting the visa.  Another is that you can have a US plated car here forever as long as your resident visa is current.  With a tourist visa, the car has to leave the country in 180 days as well.  There are also capitol gains tax benefits if you have an FM3 and sell a house in Mexico that is your primary residence.

The next level of immigrant visa is an FM2, with that you are restricted in how many days per year you can be out of the country.  You also cannot have or drive a foreign plated car.  There are levels of FM2 as well and not all of them have these restrictions.  After 5 years of either an FM3 or FM2, you can apply for citizenship.  It's only 2 years if you are married to a Mexican or from a spanish speaking country.  People born in a foreign country of at least one Mexican parent can apply for citizenship immediately.  You have to pass a test in spanish and in Mexican history.  Once a citizen, you are considered Mexican while in Mexico and cannot appeal to a foreign consulate here for assistance.  The US does allow dual citizenship as does Mexico but both of them do it in a kind of backhanded way. They never say it is OK but you do not lose your citizenship by becoming a citizen of another country unless you go to a consulate and officially renounce it. 

There are real illegals in Mexico (unlike me), some of them are Americans or Canadians who have overstayed their tourist visas and just plan to never get caught.  Some are Central Americans who are hoping to get into the US for work.  Some are Euros who also overstayed their tourist visas.  It's not a huge problem but it is something that is discussed in the news occasionally.  Mostly about the Central Americans who are, by the way, treated extremely badly by the Mexican border patrol, as in beaten, raped and robbed regularly.  The hypocrisy of this is not lost on Mexicans and it is fairly often in the news about some horror or another happening on the southern border.

As I said, I don't have any easy answers and I don't even have a clear opinion on a lot of it. It's a complex problem, world wide, and while I have no idea how to solve it I do know that somehow, someway, this earth is getting very small and we all need to figure out a way to get along.  Jeez! Now I'm disgusted with myself for sounding like Rodney King.  I don't mean it that way, just that it isn't a problem that is going to be easily solved or go away.  I'm not someone who thinks open immigration is a good thing, just the opposite.  But, I want the US to maintain it's position of leadership in the world and I don't think we can do that without enlisting the help and cooperation of our neighbors, otherwise China and India will leave us in the dirt for one thing.  Our 2 nations, Mexico and the US, could both learn a lot from each other. We have things that the other needs, and we do need Mexico for many things not just oil and cheap labor.  We could gain some cultural benefits as well, things like more respect for the elderly, a stronger commitment to children and family but not in that knee jerk way that some in the US mean it, more in the love, caring and non-judgmental support you see here.  We could benefit from less judging of others, something I see way too much of in the US and that I don't see here.  I for one am benefiting greatly from less stress and more naps! 

[Mikey]

We could gain some cultural benefits as well, things like ... a stronger commitment to children and family...

There are quite a few children in my neighborhood and an elementary school is only three or four blocks away.  I see a number of kids walking to school alone but I see two different families every morning who walk past my house with their young kids en route to the elementary school.  In once case, mom apparently walks with the kids to school and dad picks them up.  Both families are Hispanic.  I don't know if they are Mexican or from another country but their kids speak in Spanish to their parents and English to me.  These Hispanic kids are the best behaved in the neighborhood.

[Jerry]

I post on a forum that has to do with acting.  These folks are more liberal than i and the members here, for the most part.  I share and agree with all of you here, but these comments would have been called racist on the other board.
Not easy for me to keep my mouth shut.

[Esther]

Is it racist to point out that there are laws that are being broken by mainly a certain race of people? Besides I don't care if they are Mexican or Russian, they should be following the laws of the country. And our country should be enforcing these laws.

Jonna, that was my point. I heard Rush Limbaugh reading a set of laws a while back. I came in on it after he had started and was hoping that it was a law that was going to be set in place here and enacted. When he got to the end and said it was from Mexico, I about laughed out loud.