I know a kid, a nice kid, who has been here in the States since he was 2yo--parents deserted him for parts unknown....they never bothered to get the kid his papers...being young (dumb?) the kid never got his papers either...now turned 18, he sits in jail awaiting deportation to a country he knows nothing about...Mexico.. I know another kid, M**, the younger brother of my "adopted" grandson J**--M** insisted on going down to be with his crackhead Mom in Juarez...J**, who has spent most of his life trying to keep M** out of trouble, felt like he needed to go with M** so as to look after him (J** knew the mother wouldn't)  I begged J** not to go--J** enlisted in the National Guard instead.  Now he is gravely concerned:  he has not heard from his younger brother nor his mother...the war on the border is mostly all about drugs...it was drugs that messed up the parents of the first kid, the one sitting in jail without papers...it was drugs that tore up the home life of M** and J**.....I hate drugs.....

Cannalee... As much as the plight of those young Mexican children tears at your heart, it's not the drugs. It's a society that has created an environment where people are desperate to self-medicate and a system of laws that force people to seek that medication in the dark corners of civilization. Drug laws - drug law enforcement - vast prison populations - greed... they are the culprits.

We create maquiladoras for cheap labour for our multinationals and our lifestyles.  Then we arm the border so that the social problems the maquiladoras create won't sully our own soil, with no thought at all to the suffering of our brothers and sisters on the other side of that imaginary line, or what our role was in creating them.

Good point... "Free" Trade. The maquiladoras are virtually abandoned now since the trans-nationals found cheaper labour elsewhere, leaving millions of displaced Mexican labourers to fend for themselves.