RE: Caravans
November 6, 2018 at 7:52 pm
(This post was last modified: November 6, 2018 at 8:14 pm by CapnAwesome.)
(November 5, 2018 at 3:47 pm)Tizheruk Wrote: Says the person why isn't in the caravan and has never talked any of them .....
Neither have you. That doesn't bolster your point in the least.
But you know the difference between you and me.
I lived in central America, I speak Spanish, some of my family are Mexican. My father lives in Mexico. I've spent a total of a year and a half in Latin America. I've spoken to hundreds, if not thousands of people in central America in my life. Many of them talked about wanting to go the the United States and I never heard, not even a single time, that they wanted to go there for reasons of safety. It's almost universally economic reasons.
I know this sounds insulting, and it's not meant that way, but the position that these people would come all the way up here by foot for safety reasons is an ignorant one.
I mean it in a literal sense, not as a slur to imply stupidity like people on the forums do. Only someone ignorant of central America, Mexico, and the view of America by central Americans, and the long history of people caravaning to the US (I actually saw one in 2011 at the Guatemala/Mexico jorder), could believe that this caravan is motivated by saftey over economics. It just doesn't make sense on a number of levels that I've already covered. I genuinely don't understand why you guys are so insistent in sticking to this fable, when you don't even know basically anything about the region.
Yes I haven't talked to anyone in the caravan, but unlike you I have talked to tons of people, I their own language and in their own country about the US. I'd throw out a wager that you haven't done either, and if you've even been to a Latin American country, it was on a gringo style vacation in a resort.
So I'm just going to urge you and jorg to sit back and consider what you actually know. Not what you've heard lately in the media, but what you actually know about the situation.
(November 6, 2018 at 11:27 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:(November 6, 2018 at 10:08 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: Except that violence isn't rampant in all of central America. So everything that follows that falls apart.
As I pointed out, there are countries there less dangerous than the US.
Work and wages are the only thing that makes America a more attractive option than Costa Rica or Nircaragua.
To me it's amazing to hear people who have never been to any of these countries speak as though they know anything about them.
Except for the fact that the latter part doesn't depend upon that, and the first part doesn't depend upon violence being rampant, only upon conditions being worse in central America than in the U.S. So, your argument still fails. And I still have yet to see a valid argument beyond this as to why they aren't refugees. So, no, you still haven't provided a valid argument.
Additionally, as pointed out in the article quoted earlier, there are reasons for joining and staying with a caravan which don't have to do with the economics or the existence of especially dangerous conditions. Being a part of a caravan becomes something that has its own inertia for reasons having nothing to do with what you've stated. So, on that score, your "there are better alternatives" argument, which doesn't lead to the conclusion that they aren't refugees anyway, simply fails for yet another reason.
Well I already gave the reasons they aren't refugees. They don't meet the conditions for it.
My argument doesn't fail at the least because you ignored the key element. Costa Rica is 5000 miles closer and speaks the same language. Nobody is like "let's walk an extra 5000 miles to go to a more dangerous country, where the army may shoot at us at the border wall"
That makes no sense at all.
If you wanted to say they were economic refugees, in the sense that their economies are so bad for the working class, that they have to come to the US. That's fair, and I think we should take them. There is pretty much a labor shortage in the US, so we could use them.
But the idea that they are refugees in the way the U.N. defines it is total nonsense. It just doesn't line up with logic. As in the 'what would you do in that situation?' if violence was the key element to their plight.
Certainly not walk an extra 5000 miles. It's actually sort of insulting to them, to think that they aren't acting rationally.
Minimum wage in most of these countries is around 10 dollars a day by the way. That's why you'd walk 5000 miles. Not to mention Mexicans won't hire people from central America anyway. Its the only rational reason, you'd make that walk.
(November 6, 2018 at 11:48 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: There are plenty of safer countries in South America that Hondurans could reach if they didn't mind walking through crime-infested Nicaragua to get to them.
Nicaragua is a safe country. I hitchhiked through there. They have as low a murder rate as the US. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostong...I/amp.html
An El Salvadoran told me 'there is no crime in Nicaragua'