A lot of people seemed worried about our border situation, but before trying to pass more bills or build fences or replace useless Senators, maybe we should look at the core of the problem. With reportedly over twelve million illegal immigrants in this country, it’s hard to believe that so many people would knowingly break the law. Maybe they don’t know they’re breaking the law.
That’s why we need to focus on communication.
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Most illegal immigrants are Mexican, and if you’ve ever been to Mexico you’ll notice there is a communication problem between them and Americans. If you ask a Mexican a question, he will often respond with “Sea! Sea!” You’ll look to the ocean, see nothing of note, and wonder why the Mexican ignored your question and started shouting about a body of water.
This is a common misunderstanding.
In Mexico, people tend to speak Spanish, and in that language “Sea” doesn’t mean “a relatively large body of salt water completely or partially enclosed by land” but instead means “yes” (and they spell it “Si”). Not only do Mexicans have different words for things and spell them differently, they often put little squigglies over letters for no apparent reason. Thus, if you tell a Mexican “Please only legally cross our border,” for all you know he could be interpreting your words as “Come on over for free pie.”
So let me ask the obvious question: Are our border signs printed in Spanish? Has anyone checked on that? Because if we accidentally put the sides facing Mexico in English, then the target audience won’t be able to read them and Mexicans will wander by with no idea that they’re illegally crossing a border.
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So language may be one barrier keeping us from solving the illegal immigration, but communication isn’t just language — it’s also culture, and our cultures are quite different. For instance, Mexicans respect the mustache and tend not to listen to the less whiskered. Also, what we call football with all of its tackling would seem quite scary to Mexicans who consider football to be a game where a round ball is gently nudged around by their feet. With such steep cultural differences, maybe that’s what keeps Mexicans from recognizing our border.
Maybe Mexicans don’t understand the concept of a border.
For all we know, South America could be filled with volatile feudal states in which they’ve given up on static borders. Thus, down there, they could be used to wandering from country to country without upsetting anyone. What America needs to do is start a border awareness campaign in Mexico. We can distribute maps with our southern border drawn in red so Mexicans understand there is an invisible line there we consider important. We can also distribute pamphlets (again, make sure these are in Spanish) that explain why a border is important to us and warn them that crossing our border without permission is considered a crime in our country. Also warn them that police officers in our country tend to shoot criminals in the head and dump the body in the bay to avoid paperwork. I’m sure the average Mexican will respect our border when made aware of it and how important it is to us.
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But we don’t need to tackle this problem alone. With so many people leaving Mexico, this problem has to be of great concern to their government. Again, there is an obvious question I feel the need to ask: Has anyone informed the Mexican government that so many of their citizens have left their country?
We need to sit down with the Mexican government and explain this to them (and make sure we have Spanish translators with us so that they understand what we are saying). I’m sure when the Mexican government finally finds out about this problem, they will be very concerned. Perhaps they’ll say, “Thanks for telling us this. We were wondering what was happening to our people. We have many jobs in Mexico unfilled because people have just been disappearing. Now that we are aware of the problem, we shall solve it to the benefit of us both.” This will be said in Spanish, so it will sound like something else.
With proper communication, we can solve the problem of illegal immigrations without more laws and bills. Plus, more importantly, we’ll gain a new friend in Mexico. Then, in the future, we can team up with them to solve problems that can’t be handled by America or Mexico alone — such as a cybernetic version of Hitler leading an alien invasion.
