I used to live in a small city in Mexico with rural farming villages around. I would bicycle through them on week-ends. A few men from a village would take the

I used to live in a small city in Mexico with rural farming villages around. I would bicycle through them on week-ends. A few men from a village would take the long trek to El Norte, work for a few dollars an hour at backbreaking work for eight months and come home. They'd be rich and buy new pickup trucks. Pretty girls would marry them. They'd run out of money and go back on the dangerous trip to El Norte. Kids would be growing up without fathers and the local economy would collapse because Gringo money was driving up the price of homes and supplies above what you could earn on local farms. More and more men had to join them on the way to El Norte for eight or ten months a year in cold or steaming hot dorms crowded, hurting, vermin infested, saving cash to come home. You had to send your menfolk just to survive. It was a permanent exploitation scheme, hurting everyone but rich Gringo businesses. I'd build a wall and enforce the border in a second if I could, just for the good of the migrants. I'm glad more are putting down their buckets where they are and making good. Too bad about the Guatemalan villages the Gringos are draining now in the same way.