Fox will be out of office soon enough. His term is almost over, I think in a few months, and they are having elections soon. The guy leading in the polls is an ally of Morales and Chavez.

Whether or not you are in favor of Socialism, you have to recognize that wealth redistribution is certainly needed in a country like Mexico where the average person is extremely poor while all the wealth in the country is in the hands of a few. If things get better for the average person in Mexico, you can bet that not as many of them will be coming to the US anymore. We don't see hoards of Canadians trying to sneak across the border from the North.

So things should get better over time on their own, regardless of what kind of crap legislation Bush and his rubber stamp congress decide to push forward.

Also, something interesting I heard the other day on Larry Kudlow's radio program. And for all those who don't know who he is, he is the very conservative host of "Kudlow & Company" on CNBC. Apparently during Clinton's 8 years in office, every year between 300 and 500 companies were prosecuted by the Justice Dept. for hiring illegals. Under the Bush Administration, there has never been even 100 prosecutions in a year, and last year (2005) there were two. Yes, you read that right -- two (2). First time in my life I ever heard a conservative radio talk show host say something good about Clinton. I was rather shocked. LOL

I think a lot of folks will be shocked this November, including the First Lady, "who just doesn't believe the polls".

But I would be careful about suggesting that some sort of socialist wealth redistribution is the answer.

I was in Berlin during the first elections they had in 1991. Have you ever seen a Trabant up close? East Berlin looked like something right out of the novel 1984. Streetcars ran with windows smashed out, stores were empty, the villages smelled of coal fumes, and the highways were the same ones that Hitler built.Trust me, socialism saps all hope, will and motivation from a society. Don't promote socialism until you've seen it up close.

Take a look at what is happening to Zimbabwe since the Afrikaners have had their land "re-distributed". A former exporter of beef and grain, people now starve in this country.

If you are a true Marxist, then it could be argued that the best we could do to foment a peoples' revolution in Mexico is to seal the border, and repatriate the illegals, including the Mexican gangs we have given military training to courtesy of the US taxpayer http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-army15.html

If you want a peoples' revolution, you have to be in the country that's having the revolution.

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I'm certainly not in favor of the kind of totalitarian socialism that was practiced in the Soviet Union.

If a country is very poor, the only way for them to turn things around is to profit from the natural resources in their country. If they cannot profit from their own resources, then what options do they have?

In many of the poor countries in Latin America, the problem is that all of their valuable resources are owned by foreign companies. During the 20th Century, many of these countries has fascist dictators who were puppets of the CIA, and they were bribed into selling all of their countries resources away -- mostly to private American corporations.

The only solution now for these countries is to nationalize these resources like Bolivia is now doing. Keep in mind these countries are not kicking out the foreign corporations like was done in Cuba or China when they turned communist. What they are simply doing is requiring these countries to turn over ownership to the state and then they negotiate a profit-sharing situation that is acceptable to both sides. What we are seeing in both Venezuela and Bolivia, is that the foreign corporations, while they are not too happy with this situation, they are staying anyway and accepting the government's terms because even the small profit they are being allowed to keep makes it worthwhile for them to be there. And meanwhile, the government then is able to raise money which they can spend on infrastructure, health care, eduction, etc.

The basic principle here is that when a country is poor, they need an influx of money to turn things around. Mexico is certainly in that situation now. This is why President Fox opposes our border control plans. Currently, the biggest source of money coming into Mexico is immigrants in the US sending money back home to their families. And because Fox is a conservative who is not in favor of nationalizing any industries, he really has no other solutions to get money coming into his country. Even the tourism industry in Mexico is mostly run by foreign corporations, meaning that money spent by tourists in Mexico then is sent back out of the country.

To HELL with Fox,Morales and Castro wanna be Chavez!

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YankeeBimmer=Brute Yankee Power

I'm sure all of those guys would love if the President of the United States took that additude. Unfortunately, American presidents have been meddling in the affairs of their countries for years and cannot manage to keep their hands off.

For the most part, with the exception of Fox, all those other leaders want is for the United States to bud out of their internal affairs and leave them alone.

Fox, on the other hand, wants unhappy poor Mexicans to be able to come to the United States. Otherwise they may actually stay in Mexico and the government there will be forced to actually address the problem of why so many people in their country are dirt poor.

You cannot address the problem of illegal immigration without addressing the economic problems of Mexico. The two problems are related and must be addressed together. Any solution to the immigration problem that does not address the economic problem is simply not going to be effective.

Fair enough--illegal immigration and economic problems in Mexico are related, but we have already created an apartheid system here in the US because we refuse to force people to become fluent in English...we basically perpetuate the cycle of poverty. We must stem the flood of illegals (that's IL-legals, not legals) because the collateral negative impacts can no longer be tolerated....end of conversation.

I would argue that a lawful, regulated, well managed guest worker/immigration policy would actually INCREASE $USD remittances to Mexico, because legal guest workers (and American employers) would be able to interact more efficiently in the economic process on both sides of the border.

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Agreed. What we also need to do is pressure Mexico to have proper labor laws and a livable minimum wage. The problem is that even mowing someone's lawn in the US pays more than a normal job in Mexico.

The Mexican government is affraid if they pass labor laws and raise wages, then foreign corporations will leave, so that is why they are reluctant to do that. Ross Perot predicted this problem 15 years ago when we were first discussing NAFTA. NAFTA and the other free-trade agreements need to be rewritten to only apply to countries that have proper labor laws and a livable minimum wage. Then these countries will have no choice but to comply, and the corporations will stay because they will either have to pay a decent wage to workers, or they will have to pay a tarriff to import their goods to the countries where they wish to sell them. This will also solve the problem of out-sourcing jobs from industrialized countries to the Third World.

As you would guess, doing this would be excellent for everyone except for the corporations, which is why their our government refuses to even discuss doing anything like this. This is also why they refuse to prosecute businesses that hire illegals. As long as our government is bought and paid for by the corporations, this problem will never be solved.