Disturbing

I watched an interesting show on PBS last night. It was about illegal immigrants from the perspective of the women who get left behind in Mexico. The poverty in Mexico is crushing. How anyone can see something like that and wonder why Mexicans go where the jobs are is beyond me. Wouldn't anyone do whatever had to be done to feed their children?

Anyway. The most interesting part was just at the end. Printed across the screen was the information that 1.3 million Mexican farmers have been put out of work by the export into Mexico of American corn.

It isn't that American's can grow the corn cheaper (we pay our workers more, right?), it's that our government subsidizes our farmers in effect encouraging them to export very very cheaply. This is a good article.

What disturbs me is that our government actively encourages the distruction of Mexican jobs, farm land, even marine life by exporting corn to a corn-based society. And then we have the nerve to be up in arms and consider building a Great Wall of China-type wall around our borders because the Mexican ex-farmers want to come here to pick our corn?

Think about that a minute.