Hey Mark,
Sorry this has taken so long to answer....I've been so busy this week helping get Emma to and from basketball camp, spending time with Becky and Linda.
I don't think you can compare yourself to the people coming across the borders illegally...and the Cambodian government is not paying you to stay there. Anyway...the kids are coming from Guatemala....they say 90,000 will have come across the borders by the end of the year. Some are alone and some with their mothers. When they are apprehended, if they have relative in the states, they are given a bus ticket to their relatives and an order to appear for a deportation hearing. Now...how many do you think will come back to Texas or Arizona for the hearings? What is going to happen to the kids with no parents?....no one seems to know. "O-Bobo" wants 4 Billion, thats with a "B" , from congress to take care of all these people. I guess what bothers me is we have so many kids, right here in our community, that need help. Like the ones our church feed everyday and your Dad helps with after school. Don't know whats going to solve this problem.
OK...I'm going to getting some cleaning done that I've neglected all week....this I do have some control over. :)
Love Mom
my dear mom,
i was just thinking about you today. how things change, and how time flies. how i loved the village people in battambang three years ago, more. and that i had forgotten the stress of the us. the previous return trips were for games of scrabble and games of keeping the hut in order. it was not until i came to hawaii with a plan to work and save money there that i realized how much trouble the country is in. i met countless people who live in their cars and get thrown out of parking lots by the police at 3 am. imagine. i found it easy staying at beach campgrounds, showering and driving away before the park rangers arrived. but i have a lot of experience with staying a step ahead. i really felt sorry for the people in hawaii - doesn't that sound crazy? it's supposed to be paradise. rich and poor alike are stressed. with the knowledge that i could live comfortably in a nice house in cambodia and already had a job there, i hastily returned!
but information can cause indigestion. guatemala is in central america, and it is one of the many countries the CIA, executing us foreign policy, has destabilized. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Guatemala#Guatemala_1993
i know that talking about politics is taboo. but it seems like you don't realize that the CIA was an important cause of the economic instability in guatemala directly from the 1950s to the 1990s. taxpayers in the usa are indirectly responsible for the problems leading to the people fleeing guatemala. i was confused when you said people were coming from south america (they too are indeed,) but guatemala is central america.
during my studies of genocide, which was one of the things that brought me to cambodia, i read a book about the CIA covert training of the militia in nicaragua, which led to horrible atrocities there. when i left tucson the last time, the receptionist at the hotel by the airport was from nicaragua. she went on and on about how grateful she was to have a job in the usa, and a chance to work hard and have a better life. she had no idea that the usa was responsible for the terror in her country. she is one of the people in the usa who make prices "reasonable" for americans who stay at hotels like the "hampton suites" or whatever. she IS aware that most americans wish that she would "go back to her country."
since i was a kid my visionary father has told me that all my problems i have brought upon myself. if we carry this reasoning forward, the same applies to the usa. the CIA working abroad has engineered coups all over the world. at "home" the NSA is now violating the privacy of all americans as revealed by a software engineer named "snowden."
in the country where i now live, nixon and kissinger killed 600,000 cambodians in a secret and illegal war crime bombing inside the sovereign nation of cambodia without a declaration of war from congress as required by the constitution. that was overshadowed by the watergate issue and ford's pardon of the war criminal richard nixon. later the post office printed a stamp to honor the war criminal.
the usa was founded on the principle of freedom for those who seek it. safe refuge. asylum to the oppressed. i was a little disturbed one afternoon after lunch when i heard papaw say that "we don't need these haitian boat people coming up to florida and giving everybody aids." he was such a kind soul. it's hard to believe those words came out of his mouth. I guess the native Americans didn't need Europeans (or ancestors) coming to the Americas and bringing their war, disease, and special brand of deceit and genocide. But that's what happened. and that's why my white grandfather grew up in America instead of Europe. and I guess African Americans might suppose that their countries might be on a more equally developed economic footing if our ancestors hadn't despite their cultures and transporter millions of them to the Americas as slaves. but that's the way it happened. so maybe we should go easy on the kids from Guatemala and not "apprehend" them, but show them some kindness.
america has become a business. people in cambodia still want to go there. i try to warn them that 90% of americans have guns. there were 2,500 violent crimes reported in flynt michigan, a city of 100,000. there certainly are some beautiful places to visit in the usa. but i wouldn't want to live there. :-)
i hope you can find the humor in this. but i fear that you are focused on conservative news media. guatemalan people are human beings. their way of life was disrupted by the CIA, just as the people of iraq, afghanistan, iran, argentina, venezuela, and many others were. why they want to come to the usa can only be answered by their ignorance of the fact that the usa is the great colonizer, the police of the world behind the bullet proof shield. ignorance is what drives it all. that is the sad reality.
but, look on the bright side. we will all be dead soon, and this epoch will be forgotten.