Tentative Plans to Stem the Tide
The ENTIRE point of helping other people with their problems is to put a stop to the problems.
If the US stops making life harder for Mexicans living in the already dry northern part of Mexico, maybe they stop pouring over the border and dying in the deserts of the US.
America could also institute a work visa for Mexicans who want to work in the US but not live there.
Plenty of Mexicans want to work in the US part of the year and take their relatively high American wages home to Mexico to live. They don't want to move there.
I read an article years ago about a guy doing construction work six months a year in the US and sending most of his money home. He spent six months a year unemployed enjoying life in Mexico with the wife and kids and six months a year earning a lot more than he could in Mexico.
His only beef was he couldn't do that legally.
That's it.
And like some comedian joked, illegal immigrants aren't taking "our jobs." They are taking jobs Americans don't WANT.
American construction companies have trouble getting enough young white men to fill their crews. They hire illegals because it's the only way to get the job done
Work visas would not reward them for bad behavior. It would fix one of the problems causing bad behavior.
AND it potentially prevents a future war between the US and Mexico.
Right now people like Trump are pissed that people are willing to risk dying in the desert for a better life. At some point Mexico may decide to make Americans die for our behavior instead.
If Mexicans are dying anyway over this shitty situation, why not do so in uniform and for a goal that might fix it?
Personally, I would like to see a peaceable solution before they hit that point.
The US is wealthier than Mexico. That is tied in part to better average education level.
Instead of being jerks about this and also without falling for the problematic answer of "we should GIVE them resources", we can invest resources in figuring it the out and helping them find technical solutions.
But even if the US doesn't care at all about Mexico, if only for ecological reasons, the US should be finding ways to stop draining the Colorado River.
The mouth of the river has been ecologically changed by the practice of drawing it down excessively for decades. In other words, that area has been seriously damaged ecologically.
The Salton Sea (in Southern California) was expected to dry up when it was formed. It's actually a periodic lake that Indigenous peoples had stories about from their ancestors and it was dry when Europeans arrived.
Then an incident involving the Colorado River filled it again and it was expected to dry up sometime last century but agricultural runoff keeps supplying it with enough water to prevent that.
The US grows a lot of almonds in California. It's a tree that needs a lot of water being grown in the desert because they strip-mine the Colorado River of water.
Agriculture uses a lot more water in California than residential development does but people harp on trying to cut residential use like that's the problem.
Meanwhile when I lived on a military base in the High Fesert, I couldn't leave cactus behind that I had planted in my backyard but was REQUIRED to maintain the grass in the backyard while I lived there.
And Nevada has golf courses.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep grass alive in 115 degree heat and 6 inches of annual rain where shrimp hatch out in the dry lake beds when you get an inch or two of rain that makes them actual lakes for a few weeks?
Our yard wasn't too bad. Our neighbor in the same duplex got more sunlight during the hottest part of the day and replanted his grass repeatedly. He couldn't keep it alive.
It's free, financially speaking. Military members can go get sod or grass seed for such on base projects by flashing their ID. But it's a time and energy burden for the families living in base and it's environmental idiocy.
I'm not familiar with Mexico, but I'm guessing Very Basic Water Infrastructure would help in some places.
Trees attract rain. If tree urinals would help the arid northern part of Mexico near the US border, it might draw more rain to the area. I used to camp by a river and the answer was "Don't wait for the rain to stop in the morning. Pack up and walk away from the tree-lined river. You will be walking out of the rain nine times out of ten "
Transpiration is a factor and I'm not sure what else. But tree urinals should help mitigate local issues by moderating temperature extremes and attracting a bit more rain.
On average, 40% or more of the precipitation over land originates from evaporation and the transpiration of water from vegetation. Forests like the Amazon don’t merely grow in wet areas; they create and maintain the conditions in which they grow by increasing rainfall and reducing the length of the dry season.
That's a big difference. You can potentially double or nearly double the rainfall by adding trees. And in very underdeveloped areas, you can initially water them with urine and improve infrastructure that way and hygiene and potentially food security if you plant fruit and nut trees.
Tree urinals may be a place to start improving things for Mexican villages to stem the tide of illegal immigrants dying in the desert.
You may be able to use three of the four Development Recipes I've written elsewhere. The first one links out to stuff like very basic water infrastructure and stuff on r/housingworks.
You could translate all of it into Spanish AND any Indigenous languages or other languages that are pertinent to the targeted areas.
Get demographics on the illegal migrants and target where they are coming from. They don't all come from the dry border areas. Some come from other South American countries.
The primary goal should be technical assistance, not money per se. Add information and expertise and just enough money or material resources to get things going in very distressed areas.
This is not intended to be "charity" where rich people give money to poor people because, awwwww, poor baby. It's intended to help stabilize their economy because the global economy has become destabilized and it's fostering issues like this.
Metrics for success:
1. Reduce illegal immigration into the US.
2. Reduce migrant deaths.
3. Avert a potential war between the US and Mexico .
They may also need some help developing sustainable sources of income. But tree urinals using fruit and nut trees will help feed them without ANY money per se. So my focus is not on money per se because money per se is a poor metric overall.
Poverty is expensive. That's the entire problem with poverty: you need more money than you can come up with because something is fundamentally broken.
Footnote
Originally published elsewhere on October 16, 2024. Edited slightly.
