I write this not to advocate for people immigrating to the United States or to campaign against them. This is a story about a desperate journey that tens of thousands are making, in spite of the cost or consequences. Because they feel they must. It is not about one person or group. I am using the stories of Venezuelans as an example because so many have fled their country and are coming to ours. In 2023, more than 260,000 Venezuelan migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Venezuela’s migrants represent the largest displacement crisis in the world.
We are all immigrants. Imagine being turned away after a harrowing trip across the Atlantic. not being allowed to disembark a rickety sail ship after barely surviving storms and disease.
We are short thousands of houses nationwide. We are short of labor nationwide. Houses need to be built, by labor that does not at present exist nationally..
The median age for American farmers is 60 years, and a number of American farms lack sufficient labor to operate efficiently. In addition, there are questions about our emphasis on farming huge acreages, rather than smaller plots of land. The latter often use less water and fewer chemicals than do the larger US farms; and global warming and climate change are exacerbating current water and chemicals' use.
Our meat processing plants are often charged with using child immigrant labor. In the recent past Eggland , a major producer of eggs, has been raided for illegal use of immigrant labor. Tyson Foods has been questioned about use of immigrant labor.
Where is public outcry about these conditions? How is that the state of Texas can determine national immigration policy? Do corp[orations headquartered in Texas takr any intererst in these matters? If not, why not?
“The country’s precarious economy is heavily dependent on oil prices, which tend to be unstable. That coupled with Venezuela’s corrupt government has begotten an economic disaster compelling millions of its citizens to leave.”
Venezuela has been politically, economically, and even militarily assaulted by the US government for decades because it won’t submit to American capitalist hegemony. Most of Venezuela’s problems have been created by US interference. The migrant crisis is largely a byproduct of US political interference, compounded with abrupt climate change that has made growing food nearly impossible in Central America.
Chickens are coming home to roost and our homegrown racists don’t like reaping what they’ve sown over five+ decades.
What it seems like is that what you see are undocumented foreign nationals and what I see are refugees in dire need of help. So I don’t view it as a matter of anyone having a right of being able to break our laws . I see it as human rights and our responsibility to help anyone In need. I know there are those that cheat but I can’t use that as justification to not help all the rest .
I am very sorry to hear about your unspeakable losses. Immigrants build this country. Therefore, I have no problem with immigrants. I guess the only thing I can say is we got a major crisis at the border and I hope in someway very quickly it gets resolved. And I certainly know that it could’ve been just a regular citizen as well. I guess in the end, he got what he deserved, and I went through along rehab and recovered the best I can. I made new goals and I am doing OK. Thank you for your support support.
This is absolutely heartbreaking, not unlike most of the world news these days. I have no answers. I do know that if a family somehow made it to where I live, I would do everything possible to help them. But I am only one person ...
The US lacks a cohesive vision for helping countries in Latin America like Honduras, the second poorest country and one were caravans of people form to walk to the border. Every for to eight years a new administration puts together some plan created by politicians who do not know much about Latin America. US policies rarely support a plan that would help these countries to control corruption and entrenched elites. The result is always the same: more corruption, poverty, lawlessness and migration to the US. It’s obvious that the help needed is like a Marshall plan that would help countries like Honduras, my country of origin.
This is really a horrible situation and made even more depressing when one goes back and looks more deeply into the United States part into this oil and the government there. We hold responsibility regardless because we are more well off and should help those less fortunate but we also as a nation helped to cause the crisis that the Venezuelan people are facing right now. But even if we held no responsibility we still need to help because we are in the midst of this crisis and that means we have to face it and respond with urgency and compassion!!
Immigrants need a safe place, shelter and food on the Mexico side of the border until their applications to either country can be processed. It would have to be considered a neutral zone with protected borders. Would Mexico donate land or parcels of land on which both countries can collaborate on building shelter, safe living conditions and food? Future considerations would be based on whether cartels and government corruption in their home countries can be eliminated through sanctions, drug busts, etc.
Virtually all of the most pressing issues we face today, including the crisis at the border, reflect the bleeding-out and rotting-out of democracy that escalated in this country in the 1980s with "trickle down" economics.
Although the border problem had been a persistent one going back to the 1920s, it was Reaganomics that bled away the funding that had previously propped up a relatively efficient system for dealing with it. More and more of the public wealth once invested in governance was transferred into the private pockets of major donors.
The crisis on the other side of the border began, of course, generations before it began to be a crisis on this side. Its roots were deep in centuries of imperialism and colonialism.
In the last hundred years plus, these countries were targeted by many of the same bad corporate actors who now bankroll the internal assault on US democracy. US corporations were a malign presence throughout Latin America, exploiting other people's labor, siphoning off their wealth and resources, destabilizing their governments, supporting the targeted (sometimes violent) destruction of reform movements and leaders in order to install corrupt, corporate-friendly puppet regimes in power.
That created the conditions for the sheer human misery that has sent countless people north in hope of something--anything--better than what they had at home.
For a long time, in a corrupt way, it worked relatively efficiently. But the destabilization south of the border began to escalate and intensify at the same time our own country fell into decadence in the 1980s, to be destabilized and hollowed-out by the "trickle down" crowd, with everything made far, far worse by the "War On Drugs" that has destroyed neighborhoods, communities, cities, even whole countries, while leading to the rise of the cartels, who have taken their place among the world's most consequential corporate actors with annual revenues in the tens of billions of US dollars.
At the same time, among many other dire impacts, the transfer of public wealth into private pockets began to leave the apparatus of border control and the adjudication of pleas for legal entry catastrophically underfunded or defunded, understaffed, marginalized.
This meltdown of good government was all accompanied by a cacophony of Limbaughism and Gingrichism and Murdochism and, most recently and lethally, Trumpism, as the right made violently provocative racial claims and attributions to distract attention from the deeper reality--that the defunding of US infrastructure in order to transfer the nation's wealth to its wealthiest one percent is bad for everybody but the one percent.
They live in opulent retreats, with well-funded, well-equipped private armies to keep them safe from the world they have created. The rest of us don't have that luxury: and besides, we no longer have the money to pay for good government--it's all been "privatized" into the ether.
Barring some great awakening among the American people, this issue will not be resolved: it will continue to be political fodder, benefiting violent anti-democracy elements on both sides of the border, while ordinary human beings continue to pay an escalating price in terror, pain, and pointless death.
Spot on. We are a nation of ignoramus citizens who are extremely unaware of history of/ workings of politics but experts in sports and celebrities, hence the adoration of orange clown as entertainer! (Also with little knowledge but ability to tap into public feelings of rage, helplessness, victimization).
Dear Dan Rather, what would we thinking, caring Americans do now without your factual, compassionate reporting about the brutal realities brave immigrants are facing “against all odds” as they reach the Trumpian-led, Abbott-ordered brutalities at our border? It’s heartening to read the great responses of your growing army of readers, who reflect precisely my own reactions to your great journalism. Please continue your campaign to arouse and arm a “better America” to act and vote responsibly in Nov. ‘24!
Well stated, Dan. Immigration legislation is long overdue. This issue has been kicked down the road by several administrations, with Republicans seeming to be the least willing to compromise on any solutions. And we shouldn’t rely on the Executive branch to manage/solve this problem. Congress legislates; the Executive branch enforces the law. Furthermore, the average US citizen doesn’t understand the larger global issues behind these large migrations of people to our borders. Certainly, we all want our borders to be secure and want people to come here legally. But what Greg Abbott and his ilk are doing cannot be the solution.
Dan, I'm really sorry that you do not understand the difference between stupidity and appropriate behavior relative to the potential of the human intellect. Stupidity is in charge of this nation and most nations. There are answers to social problems, but they cannot and will not be found in religion, tradition, the law or any other conventional approach to the solutions.
We are all immigrants. Imagine being turned away after a harrowing trip across the Atlantic. not being allowed to disembark a rickety sail ship after barely surviving storms and disease.
We are short thousands of houses nationwide. We are short of labor nationwide. Houses need to be built, by labor that does not at present exist nationally..
The median age for American farmers is 60 years, and a number of American farms lack sufficient labor to operate efficiently. In addition, there are questions about our emphasis on farming huge acreages, rather than smaller plots of land. The latter often use less water and fewer chemicals than do the larger US farms; and global warming and climate change are exacerbating current water and chemicals' use.
Our meat processing plants are often charged with using child immigrant labor. In the recent past Eggland , a major producer of eggs, has been raided for illegal use of immigrant labor. Tyson Foods has been questioned about use of immigrant labor.
Where is public outcry about these conditions? How is that the state of Texas can determine national immigration policy? Do corp[orations headquartered in Texas takr any intererst in these matters? If not, why not?
“The country’s precarious economy is heavily dependent on oil prices, which tend to be unstable. That coupled with Venezuela’s corrupt government has begotten an economic disaster compelling millions of its citizens to leave.”
Venezuela has been politically, economically, and even militarily assaulted by the US government for decades because it won’t submit to American capitalist hegemony. Most of Venezuela’s problems have been created by US interference. The migrant crisis is largely a byproduct of US political interference, compounded with abrupt climate change that has made growing food nearly impossible in Central America.
Chickens are coming home to roost and our homegrown racists don’t like reaping what they’ve sown over five+ decades.
What it seems like is that what you see are undocumented foreign nationals and what I see are refugees in dire need of help. So I don’t view it as a matter of anyone having a right of being able to break our laws . I see it as human rights and our responsibility to help anyone In need. I know there are those that cheat but I can’t use that as justification to not help all the rest .
Our country needs to get over the politics and begin governing. Hold your leaders accountable or the bull will continue!
I am very sorry to hear about your unspeakable losses. Immigrants build this country. Therefore, I have no problem with immigrants. I guess the only thing I can say is we got a major crisis at the border and I hope in someway very quickly it gets resolved. And I certainly know that it could’ve been just a regular citizen as well. I guess in the end, he got what he deserved, and I went through along rehab and recovered the best I can. I made new goals and I am doing OK. Thank you for your support support.
This is absolutely heartbreaking, not unlike most of the world news these days. I have no answers. I do know that if a family somehow made it to where I live, I would do everything possible to help them. But I am only one person ...
The US lacks a cohesive vision for helping countries in Latin America like Honduras, the second poorest country and one were caravans of people form to walk to the border. Every for to eight years a new administration puts together some plan created by politicians who do not know much about Latin America. US policies rarely support a plan that would help these countries to control corruption and entrenched elites. The result is always the same: more corruption, poverty, lawlessness and migration to the US. It’s obvious that the help needed is like a Marshall plan that would help countries like Honduras, my country of origin.
This is really a horrible situation and made even more depressing when one goes back and looks more deeply into the United States part into this oil and the government there. We hold responsibility regardless because we are more well off and should help those less fortunate but we also as a nation helped to cause the crisis that the Venezuelan people are facing right now. But even if we held no responsibility we still need to help because we are in the midst of this crisis and that means we have to face it and respond with urgency and compassion!!
Let them come. Tear down the wall. Inviting people in that much of a threat?
Immigrants need a safe place, shelter and food on the Mexico side of the border until their applications to either country can be processed. It would have to be considered a neutral zone with protected borders. Would Mexico donate land or parcels of land on which both countries can collaborate on building shelter, safe living conditions and food? Future considerations would be based on whether cartels and government corruption in their home countries can be eliminated through sanctions, drug busts, etc.
Virtually all of the most pressing issues we face today, including the crisis at the border, reflect the bleeding-out and rotting-out of democracy that escalated in this country in the 1980s with "trickle down" economics.
Although the border problem had been a persistent one going back to the 1920s, it was Reaganomics that bled away the funding that had previously propped up a relatively efficient system for dealing with it. More and more of the public wealth once invested in governance was transferred into the private pockets of major donors.
The crisis on the other side of the border began, of course, generations before it began to be a crisis on this side. Its roots were deep in centuries of imperialism and colonialism.
In the last hundred years plus, these countries were targeted by many of the same bad corporate actors who now bankroll the internal assault on US democracy. US corporations were a malign presence throughout Latin America, exploiting other people's labor, siphoning off their wealth and resources, destabilizing their governments, supporting the targeted (sometimes violent) destruction of reform movements and leaders in order to install corrupt, corporate-friendly puppet regimes in power.
That created the conditions for the sheer human misery that has sent countless people north in hope of something--anything--better than what they had at home.
For a long time, in a corrupt way, it worked relatively efficiently. But the destabilization south of the border began to escalate and intensify at the same time our own country fell into decadence in the 1980s, to be destabilized and hollowed-out by the "trickle down" crowd, with everything made far, far worse by the "War On Drugs" that has destroyed neighborhoods, communities, cities, even whole countries, while leading to the rise of the cartels, who have taken their place among the world's most consequential corporate actors with annual revenues in the tens of billions of US dollars.
At the same time, among many other dire impacts, the transfer of public wealth into private pockets began to leave the apparatus of border control and the adjudication of pleas for legal entry catastrophically underfunded or defunded, understaffed, marginalized.
This meltdown of good government was all accompanied by a cacophony of Limbaughism and Gingrichism and Murdochism and, most recently and lethally, Trumpism, as the right made violently provocative racial claims and attributions to distract attention from the deeper reality--that the defunding of US infrastructure in order to transfer the nation's wealth to its wealthiest one percent is bad for everybody but the one percent.
They live in opulent retreats, with well-funded, well-equipped private armies to keep them safe from the world they have created. The rest of us don't have that luxury: and besides, we no longer have the money to pay for good government--it's all been "privatized" into the ether.
Barring some great awakening among the American people, this issue will not be resolved: it will continue to be political fodder, benefiting violent anti-democracy elements on both sides of the border, while ordinary human beings continue to pay an escalating price in terror, pain, and pointless death.
Spot on. We are a nation of ignoramus citizens who are extremely unaware of history of/ workings of politics but experts in sports and celebrities, hence the adoration of orange clown as entertainer! (Also with little knowledge but ability to tap into public feelings of rage, helplessness, victimization).
hi Dan
Dear Dan Rather, what would we thinking, caring Americans do now without your factual, compassionate reporting about the brutal realities brave immigrants are facing “against all odds” as they reach the Trumpian-led, Abbott-ordered brutalities at our border? It’s heartening to read the great responses of your growing army of readers, who reflect precisely my own reactions to your great journalism. Please continue your campaign to arouse and arm a “better America” to act and vote responsibly in Nov. ‘24!
Well stated, Dan. Immigration legislation is long overdue. This issue has been kicked down the road by several administrations, with Republicans seeming to be the least willing to compromise on any solutions. And we shouldn’t rely on the Executive branch to manage/solve this problem. Congress legislates; the Executive branch enforces the law. Furthermore, the average US citizen doesn’t understand the larger global issues behind these large migrations of people to our borders. Certainly, we all want our borders to be secure and want people to come here legally. But what Greg Abbott and his ilk are doing cannot be the solution.
Dan, I'm really sorry that you do not understand the difference between stupidity and appropriate behavior relative to the potential of the human intellect. Stupidity is in charge of this nation and most nations. There are answers to social problems, but they cannot and will not be found in religion, tradition, the law or any other conventional approach to the solutions.