Margarita's Letter to George Bush

Twelve year old Margarita Rodriguez has a campaign to collect one-million signatures on a letter to George W. Bush, because she's heard that thousands of immigrants could be arrested, charged with felonies and deported along with their children, who incidentally were born here, if they are caught living undocumented here in the US. I think this is a noble effort by one so young and deserves all of our attention. It makes me sick to think that children have to be worried about being rounded up, humiliated and treated lord knows how -- all because their parents chose to come here looking for a better life.

Then there is the whole issue about why come here looking for a better life? What is so bad about Mexico, Central and South America or other immigrant's countries of origin, that makes people risk their lives to come here under very scary conditions? Most of the time people trying to reach our land paved with gold have to deal with some very unscrupulous or unsavory characters like the so-called coyotes (people who illegally smuggle folks across borders for a living) who have not only been known to take peoples money and then leave them stranded in the desert, or in some abandoned truck with no water, food or ventilation, or even worse, have outright murdered them. This business is a sad state of affairs with all kinds of crooks involved and so it makes one wonder why anyone would take such risks. However, if you visit these countries you start to get a sense of what is really going on. Globalization has not only brought more poverty and suffering there but also the propaganda about supposedly just how great it is to live in the US of A, shown via cable TV, has reached almost every corner of this globe. One can experience the promise of bling bling right in their own homes!

Laws like NAFTA (the North American Fair Trade Agreement) which was touted as the answer, to bring jobs and other opportunities to Mexico, has done nothing of the sort, rather it has only made the rich richer and the poor, well you know. The gutting of resources of "third world" countries by the super powers has gone on for too long and it is going to take leaders like Chavez, Morales, Bachelet and Da Silva to start to make a difference in their own countries. This will not be easy at all as there has been over 500 years of pillaging and plunder. Hopefully we will also be seeing a regime change in Mexico, the presidential elections are coming up in July, which will start to make a difference there. In the meantime we need some immigration laws that work. Making families felons or putting up bigger and uglier fences is not the answer at all.

If you want to help little Margarita Rodriguez get her message across to Bush please go to the page given above, click on the title of this post, and sign it. While I think much more has to be done, it's great that this child decided to take action to protect herself and her family and/or friends and community and it is important to support young people who are trying to make a difference in our world. It is also important to support the people who were brought here on false pretenses and promises because their was little or no hope of a job in their own countries due in large part to our economic systems that feed off of theirs!