A complex tragedy at the border

[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Twoller

You need to post a link to the original article.

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention, this is the first I've visited the thread since I posted it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...3776799.column

Hector Tobar is an LA Times columnist.

[ilbegone]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...3776799.column


Here are some of the truths I referred to, perhaps lost in skimming the article for something to disagree with.

As I said, I disagree with Tobar's conclusion. I also believe that our borders should be secure, employers of illegal aliens punished, and illegal aliens deported. That doesn't conflict with the truth in the article.

I've lived in Mexico and I have family in Guatemala. I've been to the urban neighborhoods and the rural villages of adobe and cinder-block where migrant journeys begin. But I wouldn't apply the word "atrocity" to what I've seen, not in the sense that Frey means.

Comparing the deaths at the border to massacres of Darfur makes for a poor analogy for lots of different reasons.

But there's something about the way he and a lot of other people see the issue of immigration that deeply troubles me.

As a son of immigrants, I just don't buy the constant portrayal of immigrants... as either victims or victimizers.

"I know that they have free will," Frey said of the migrants. "But I don't know that they have a free choice."

Actually, nearly every adult who undertakes the journey does have a choice.

In other words, many choose to go on la aventura, as it's popularly known, because it's the easiest avenue to social mobility. It's not the best choice in the world. It might be desperate or reckless, but it is a choice.

The dead migrants in that El Centro cemetery weren't driven to their deaths by soldiers with guns, as in Bosnia, or by killers armed with machetes, as in Rwanda.

That's why I couldn't say it is an atrocity. It's a complex tragedy born of inequality, yes...

But it's a risk people take, often knowingly and often from human motives as universal as restlessness and ambition.

"This is really only a small slice of the immigrant story," I told Frey.

Whether they come here to make some money in construction and go back to Mexico (but never do), or come here to make money selling black tar heroin and return to Mexico (but never do), it's all about what Tobar calls social mobility, often illiterate peasants and urban poor becoming middle class or even wealthy - an improbable if not impossible goal in Mexico.