Oscar Arias is a lefty of the “hold hands and sing kum-ba-ya” variety. You have many such people in Costa Rica (which is a welfare state/tourist park/retirement center rather than a country).
The article misspelled mierda.
All these problems Latin America has inflected on themselves with their tendency to look for a savior in some caudillo like Chavez, Peron, etc, lack of rule of law, and anti-capitalist attitudes. Only when these attitudes change, which would require a major shift in culture, will Latin America enjoy a semblance of prosperity.
Let's play one of my favorite games: "Agree with the title of a leftist article." The prerequisite is that you can't read the article first.
Yes Latin America deserves better than that. Its people must choose leaders who believe in personal freedom, property rights, the free market and eliminating government corruption and nepotism. Quality of life will increase, eliminating the current need for us to build a wall. Unfortunately, the people in Latin America tend to vote for socialists who ruin their economies, or allow dictators to take over and loot their economies.
America deserves better than to be overrun by illegals who aren’t interested in becoming Americans...
Of course they deserve better than a border wall! They also deserve a mine field north of that wall with snipers posted at regular intervals. If mines are too cruel then perhaps a mountain lion habitat in the same area would work.
President George W. Bush, March 12, 2007 Guatemala City
Then why haven't you put troops on the border instead of putting the very people who are trying to stop this in jail (Ramos and Compean)?
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apparently, drug trafficking, just like AIDS, is caused by a lack of funding.
Latin America deserves better than the communist thugs that they have for leaders...
So Oscar is basically saying “Don’t build a wall, just send us the money”.
It’s like a gated community — to keep the criminals out.
No kidding.
drugs and illegal immigration...are symptoms, not diseases. The disease itself, the cause of these visible effects, is poverty...
He needs to read Hernando de Soto. You can't understand the causes of poverty if you don't understand the causes of wealth. The key to a prosperous society is simple, if difficult to give birth to.
It requires rule of law, first and foremost.
It requires individual freedom, so that men are free to do what they know to do, to make decisions as they themselves know to make them.
It requires legal clarity, so that all sides of a dispute know what the legal ramifications are.
It requires a transparent and honest court system, so that everyone rich and poor alike can accumulate the fruit of their labor and see their assets protected. Land needs to be protected with legal titles, and those titles need to be respected. This is one of the most important issues; in much of latin america the poor do not have title to their land, and can not accumulate wealth because of it.
A populist dictator who seizes and redistributes wealth is the worst thing that can happen, because the only way to be protect your assets in such a system is to have friends in high places, which completely undoes rule of law and all the protections that are necessary for anyone to accumulate wealth. Populism causes oligarchy, it guarantees it. Every time. Populism makes oligarchy necessary.
This writer doesn't know that, so he doesn't understand his own history, how generation after generation, revolution after revolution, they always find themselves right back at square one. Their solutions to the problem are the cause of the problem.
The Mexican government must stamp out corruption among the Mexican government, Mexican police, and Mexican military. End the crossings by the Mexican military escorting Mexican drug smugglers NOW.
If you give them more money, it is just going to feed more corrupt officials.
“But for every mile of that fence, 2,500 young Latin Americans could receive monthly $100 grants to cover the costs of staying in school so they can get good jobs.”
So now we need to be paying Mexicans to stay in school so they can get better jobs when they come to America. So much for them taking the jobs that no one else wants.
How uncouth.. Can we get some of those broken bottles that they use to top fences with in Latin America to do the project right?
What have they done to “deserve” anything other than what the tyrants they tolerate have afforded them? Is it true that 1/3 of the US prison population is an illegal as I’ve heard on radio commercials for Michael Savage?
Yep, they do deserve better than a border wall, they deserve .50 caliber machine guns, army patrols at regular intervals and shoot on sight orders. That is what they deserve. Bob Barr can go suck an egg.
This is what I have noticed about Oscar Arias and his fellow travelers.
1. It is America’s fault Latin America is an impoverished hell-hole.
2. No Latin American leader is ever responsible for the corruption and feudalism that permeates their countries. The people are never responsible for transforming their own societies.
3. The US is the devil; therefore, we must colonize America and make it as corrupt, backwards and feudalistic as the rest of Latin America.
4. Keep sending US taxpayer money to sustain this system of guilt, corruption and blackmail.
What's even more galling is that Mexico border agents are allowed, by law, to shoot at Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan poor people try to cross their border in an effort to find higher paying jobs.
Mexico's GDP is over $1 TRillion, their per capita income ($10,000 USD/yr) is well over the global average (ie, they ain't actually poor), and the average for their poorer neighbors to the south is about 1/3 their income.