by Justin M. Ruhge
Justin Ruhge
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Hispanic Link News Service regularly presents analyses and perspectives of Hispanic authorities and pro-immigrant activists on the issue of U.S. immigration. Today begins a two-part series by Justin M. Ruhge, a retired aerospace executive now living in Lompoc, Calif., whose countervailing views reflect those regularly expressed by some of our readers. Ruhge is an officer with I.N.C. — Initiatives for National Change).
The growing border encounters with more and more illegal aliens of up to a million a year is only the tip of the socio-economic problems in Mexico. Nearly 70 years of PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) dictatorship has resulted in a two-level caste system of very wealthy and very poor. The last revolution, which was to reduce the power of the patrón system and redistribute the wealth to the poor, has failed. The country is corrupt and degenerate.
The present retrograde system exists with a huge population explosion, the result of which is to force the Mexicans deeper into poverty and to force a “run for the border” by ever-growing numbers of Mexicans who cannot get jobs, food or education there. Any small gains in quality of life in the past 70 years have been wiped out by the population explosion and a general lack of new development for the majority in the country of Mexico.
The majority of Mexicans who come to the United States are uneducated and unskilled Indians. They are not the well-educated and well-dressed blondes that you see on Mexican TV every day. They do not know how to read or write Spanish, not to mention English. So why do we print the California ballot in Spanish?
Education in Mexico is just for the rich. Two-thirds of its people have no education above sixth grade. Most Mexican schools run two sessions a day instead of the one we have in the United States because they do not have the facilities or the teachers or the funds for more of both. Mexicans who go to school at all get only half the education.
Frequent visits to Mexico by this writer over the past 50 years show little improvement in the infrastructure throughout the country. It is equivalent to the United States in the 1930s. Yet here is the most advanced country in the world, the United States of America, aligned with Mexico on an equal basis through NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement — a horrible mistake.
Mexico has a poor civil rights record. Any citizen can be treated harshly by murder and imprisonment by judges and police appointed by the only party for 70 years, the PRI. Yet, this longest enduring dictatorship in the world and most backward banana republic is shored up by loan guarantees and business from the most democratic and advanced country in history, the United States. Why? The Mexicans love our money but they hate us for it!
The United States has spent billions to undo dictatorships like Russia, Germany, Japan and all the Eastern Bloc nations that were communist, but we do nothing to eliminate the Mexican dictatorship on our doorstep.
Why is that? Could it be that our leaders do not want to lose the great source of dope so close at hand to the American and Canadian markets? Is that why NAFTA was really pushed through Congress, to improve the supply lines? Hispanic Link.
Next week: Part II. The United States must act quickly and decisively. (Readers may contact the writer by email at jaruhge@hotmail.com).
