Thread: Conditions, Health Risks Sicken Colonias Residents

PHARR — Laura knows what comfort feels like: Before leaving Reynosa, Mexico, for Texas a few years ago, she lived with her in-laws in a house with bedrooms and flushing toilets, with electricity and a leak-free roof. Now, the 23-year-old — since deserted by her husband — pays $187 a month to live in a dirt-floored shack that is part broken-down motor home, part splintered plywood shed. She bathes her five runny-nosed, half-clothed children, all under 10, with water siphoned from a neighbor’s garden hose. And she scrubs their diapers and school uniforms in the same sink where she rinses their dinner beans.

As she glanced sheepishly at her feet, Laura, who declined to give her name because of her immigration status, pointed out the family’s bathroom: a makeshift outhouse, only yards from the large trash pile her youngest children scale like a mountain. She would return to a better life in Mexico, she said, if she were not sure her children would have a brighter future in the United States.

The conditions in which Laura and her children live are common for the roughly half-million people living in Texas’ colonias. These impoverished communities are found in all border states, but Texas, with an estimated 2,300 colonias, has the most. First established in the 1950s for migrant workers, many of the colonias (Spanish for neighborhood or community) were created by unscrupulous or predatory developers.

Along the 1,248-mile Texas-Mexico border from El Paso to Brownsville, in communities with names like Agua Dulce and Mexico Chiquito, the overwhelmingly Hispanic residents of these colonias tell identical stories: of migrating with dreams of safety and prosperity, of getting swindled or misled into buying worthless land with no modern infrastructure, of sticking it out so their children — most of them American citizens — will get educated.





And of getting sick.

At last count, nearly 45,000 people lived in the 350 Texas colonias classified by the state as at the “highest health risk,â€

Why are these colonias allowed to grow and spread on USA soil ?

The solution is to buy them out and send the IA's back to Mexico.It would save US taxpayers a bundle over time and stop the spread of Colonias.

Their children can go to school in Mexico since it appears the conditions never change from one generation to the next in these hell holes much worse then Mexico. Instead they seem to grow because of the promise of free schooling/welfare for children born in the USA of Illegal Mexicans.

Colonias? Does that mean colony as if these invaders are colonists?

W

Despite explosive population growth in the region, Smith said

This says a great deal!

BIRTH CONTROL, BIRTH CONTROL, BIRTH CONTROL!

And if you find that low-life that left his wife with 5 children, neuter him! before sending him and the whole kit & kaboodle of them back to the home country of the parents.

BOO HOO HOO go to some places in eastern KY.W.V. VA.and other states you will see same things going on there with true AMERICANS struggleing to make it and their legal citizens.Due to the economy jobs loses and proud people they are you dont hear these people crying out.She needs to go home to mexico and take the 5 anchors with her.There is alot of people right here that need help but cant get it because illegals are robbing them blind.So BOO HOO HOO to the illegal woman.

Originally Posted by duckman

BOO HOO HOO go to some places in eastern KY.W.V. VA.and other states you will see same things going on there with true AMERICANS struggleing to make it and their legal citizens.Due to the economy jobs loses and proud people they are you dont hear these people crying out.She needs to go home to mexico and take the 5 anchors with her.There is alot of people right here that need help but cant get it because illegals are robbing them blind.So BOO HOO HOO to the illegal woman.

You got that right!