On illegal immigration.

So there's a lot of talk about illegal immigration in the news, and that can only mean one thing: elections is coming, and white peoples votes! Apparently, some American explorers recently crossed the Rio Grande and discovered a new country which we are temporarily calling "Mexico," as an homage to the great American state, New Mexico. Final naming rights for this newly-discovered country will eventually be sold to a corporate entity; Verizon Wireless and DHL are currently favored by industry analysts. This new country is characterized by a warm, arid climate, spicy food, and rampant poverty.

Naturally, there is talk of building a fence that spans the length of the Mexican-American border. (Not to be confused with an American of Mexican descent who is renting a room in your house: a Mexican-American Boarder.) As if the barren desert, Border Patrol, and vigilante Minutemen weren't deterrent enough. I've read about Mexicans who have been smuggled across the border inside the gas tanks of cars, so it's hard to imagine what effect a fence is going to have on people who are that determined to get into the country. If the entire Atlantic Ocean didn't keep the first wave of immigrants out - to say nothing of the crippling fear that they might fall off the edge of the earth - then I don't see a fence as doing much more than make the Real Americans feel like their soon-to-be-re-elected leaders are on their side. Which is, obviously, the point.

It seems typical of a country that blames the entire Abu Ghraib scandal on Lyndie England to look at economic inequities in America and blame them on the guy who crosses the border looking for a better job. But addressing systemic problems in our economy, and the global economy, isn't sexy, and illegal immigrants can't vote. And if there's one group of people politicians like to dump on in order to get votes, it's people who can't vote. (See: Defecits) So, speeches will be made and some kind of fence might be built; and if we're lucky, it will keep greedy Mexicans from sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night to steal our jobs from under our beds. Instead, they can patiently wait for NAFTA to kick in on their side of the fence, in good old Verizon Wireless. I mean, Mexico.