Memoirs From the Asylum by Kenneth Weene

(Just one quick off the top of my head suggestion.)

How about, for example, bamboo products, which we tend not to produce in the States but which those of us who are ecologically concerned often prefer. That investment could be supported by the US government giving the product of any local factories set up special incentives, and the products themselves could be-with some thought-be designed to deserve special consideration, perhaps by making them ecologically positive. Using less-populated areas, new refugee towns could be established and American investment could lead to employment and actual economic sustainability. We could help Mexico, which has expressed some willingness to help these people, whom they see less as foreigners and more as brethren but Mexico needs financial help in doing so-far less than the cost of a wall that won’t actually work. If we cannot take all these refugees in, what should we be doing with and for them? First, I have for a long time suggested working with Mexico to set up camps in southern Mexico where they can be processed. Then, too, is the contribution of our war on drugs, which has helped fuel criminality everywhere. And, we have not only not fought the flow of guns into those countries but rather we have encouraged it by allowing our gun manufacturers and dealers minimum oversight. We a long time we did little to nurture regional development preferring to keep a sense of hegemony. We have stood in the way of populist governments that might have brought true democracy to those small Central American nations because we feared that popular government would mean communism and a rejection of the economic colonialism that made many Americans wealthy. We have nurtured those gangs in our cities and then deported the members back to their homelands.

I cannot say they should be welcomed in the States, but I can say that at least part of the terror that impels them to brave hardship and danger has been caused by us.

If our best guests can be trusted, they are doing what other Native Americans did eons past, they are fleeing north away from predators, from then other more aggressive and warlike tribes and now from gangs. Rather they are the descendants of the indigenous peoples who lived in the Americas long before the Europeans arrived. What drives these poor people northward from their homes? Many of them don’t even speak Spanish let alone English.

Memoirs From the Asylum by Kenneth Weene