“Well, it’s more complicated than that.”

Yes, it is more complicated than that. And it’s amazing that the US media spends so little effort trying to explain or illustrate the complications.

[1]

Here are some links to help explain the complications:

[2] Profligate Water Use in the US Is Fueling the Flight of Mexicans Across the Border

[3] Red Snow Warning: The End of Welfare Water and the Drying of the West

Mexico’s Entitlement to Colorado River Water
Transboundary Issues of Water Allocation

 One of the complications of this story is that the US has taken more and more water of the Colorado River causing farming south of the border to suffer.  Subsistence farmers who can no longer get water from the Colorado River follow the water north and do what they have done for decades, they labor in agriculture and irrigation.  But now they do it on corporate truck farming operations in the US to provide cheap vegetables  to the US food market.

 Another complication is that US demand for drugs creates a wildly profitable illegal business south of the border.  And to balance the flow of US dollars to Mexico for the drug trade, we sell guns to the narco-traders.   These guns are coming across the border now with the drug cartels and creating havoc and mayhem in cities from El Paso to Tijuana.  Generally speaking, these violent criminals in the drug trade and the undocumented workers who come north looking for a job to feed their families are apples and oranges.  But the US reaction and analysis of these complicated problems won’t take the time to acknowledge that this is complicated.

What a mess.   There are solutions available, but they require that you identify the various problems accurately.   Lumping all of this together with a get-tough approach on illegal immigration is a simple-minded soundbite. We can do better than that.

“It degrades me as a human being,” Mayer said, “when I can’t be compassionate to another human being.”

[4] clipped from [5] www.washingtonpost.com In Arizona, ‘Los Samaritanos’ leave water and food on trails used by immigrants GREEN VALLEY, ARIZ. — “Somos amigos,” called Shura Wallin, ducking low into the shade beneath the highway overpass. “We’re friends,” she said again in Spanish, calling out to anyone who might be hiding. “Don’t be afraid.” At a time when state and federal governments are focused on tightening the border to keep out immigrants who cross illegally from [6] Mexico, Wallin and her colleagues help people who make the trip. They leave water and food along well-known foot trails. They distribute maps showing the water sites and search for trekking migrants. Sometimes, they find dead bodies.While the debate goes on, Wallin and a group of 140 volunteers who call themselves Los Samaritanos work against brutal heat and an unforgiving desert landscape where 61 migrants died in the seven months that ended April 30. In a region split by the increasingly fortified U.S.-Mexico border, they say they are doing moral deeds in the face of a simple reality: Migrants keep coming.”Most of the people we find are broken, beaten down, sobbing, so lonesome, broken. They just want to go home,” said the Rev. Randy Mayer, pastor of Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, Ariz., home to Los Samaritanos. “We’re just trying to stop people from dying. Somebody will say, ‘What don’t you understand about “illegal”?’ Well, it’s more complicated than that.” “I can’t live here knowing that people are almost literally dying in my back yard and not do something to help,” she said during a recent search mission that took her south to the Mexican border town of Sasabe. “We try to convince them that it’s dangerous and tell them to go home,” the official said. “But they say, ‘It’s the United States.’ ” On many Sundays, a man stands outside Mayer’s church and protests the rescue and relief efforts. He wears a sign that says “Good Samaritan, Bad American.” After 12 years working along the border, Mayer is mindful of the complexities of the national immigration debate. But as he sees it, he is facing a moral imperative. “It degrades me as a human being,” Mayer said, “when I can’t be compassionate to another human being.” [7]