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One perspective on the issue of illegal immigration
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PUBLICIDAD



Waldo Benavidez

Thirty-seven million--that’s how many people are living below the poverty level in this country, according to the latest U.S. census. Sixty per cent (60%) or more are living without health insurance. Five dollars and fifteen cents ($5.15) is the federal minimum wage; an amount that has not been raised in nine years. Our manufacturing base is rapidly disappearing! Home mortgage foreclosures are becoming the norm, with Colorado being the state with the most foreclosures. We import more goods and products than we export; thus making the U.S. a huge debtor nation to foreign countries.Corporations close manufacturing plants in the U.S., and those jobs along with high tech jobs are out-sourced to foreign countries; all this is done for “cheap labor.” The Bush administration is waging an illegal and immoral war in Iraq.We are fast becoming a “service economy.” We find ourselves laboring under an alliance of Bush and his corporate cronies together with open-border advocates who push for a global economy at the expense of the American working men and women. This multi-faceted alliance is in bed with the Bush/Cheney idea of a “New World Order,” which would eliminate all borders and exploit people’s labor for profit. A third world country run by an oligarchy is the kind of government that exports their citizens as if they were a commodity and fails to take responsibility for them.

Mexico and the U.S. should become economic partners for their own mutual benefit and not be subordinate to multi-national and corporate interest whose only interest is “Cheap Labor” with world-wide and high profits as their bottom line!I love the country of Mexico. It is a country rich in culture, history, natural resources and good people, but it also has its “dark side!”Mexico needs to invest in its people, who are its greatest asset.

Editor’s note: Waldo Benavidez is the Director of the Auraria Community Center and a local community activist.