By the way, I am (un-antagonistically) curious to know if the claims, that Mexicans are breaking American immigration laws because they cannot feed their families, are literal truth? Or are they just poor and cannot get work that pays so well in Mexico?
I cannot answer the question. I wonder if anyone can, in an objective manner. Are people literally starving to death in Mexico? I don't hear of it; but that doesn't mean it never happens. Nor are all people who choose to come to the USA to find work in the same economic straits; some are no doubt higher or lower relative to the 'poverty' level both in the US and in Mexico (and other nations south of the US border). And what one person sees as desperate and grinding poverty might be quite acceptable to another.
Poverty is a word. What it does to people varies. What it means to a person is based on many things. Nearly anything can be tolerated; people lived through the death camps in Germany during WWII. But what is an acceptable level of poverty, a livable level of hunger? I think that depends very much on circumstances.
One thing I know from personal experience; poverty outside the capital of Mexico and the US border areas is rampant and people live in squalor. I was taken by an assistant US ambassador to a small town two hours drive from Mexico City. There was no 'there' there. No paved roads are one thing; heck, I grew up in towns of 400 that had no paved roads. I'm talking no NOTHING. No proper road leading to the town; just an animal path. No plumbing, no electricity. No phones, no radio, no TV. Animals and broken carts and dirt and dust everywhere. Every person was filthy, they made the beggars I used to see on the US border seem clean by comparison. The smell was not to be believed. There was only one color; brown.
We went there to visit a person who would become world famous in his own right in several years time; I shan't name him. We drove to the edge of town; there was a row of vertical logs forming an impenetrable fence. Men with machine guns manned the gate, which was high in the air. We honked, they appeared. The gate opened, we drove through. Inside, it could have been Kentucky. Green grass and pastures as far as the eye could see; no trace of the village outside could be seen or heard or smelled from inside. There was a stable of Paso Fino horses, a riding ring, hired hands breaking and training them. There were misters everywhere, spraying water into the air. There was a rustic log cabin; or so it looked from outside. Inside, every modern convenience, all done up to look 'weathered' and old, but the marble was marble, the stone was stone, the stainless steel could not be made to look 'common'. When the peacocks wandered past I knew I was in the presence of real power, real wealth. And no, I am not exaggerating. We ate a peasant's lunch; bread made in the village with goat cheese and fresh tomato slices; some red wine. But it was not a peasant's lunch, all the same.
If I lived in that village, and saw my house, my family, and that wall with those people inside, I would probably want better things for my family. Better food and more of it. A floor, electricity. A chance for an education for my children. To get that, there are many of my morals I would violate. I would sell my soul to hell for a better chance for my children. Seeing both, knowing that I could have at least some semblance of that better life by climbing a fence, running across a desert, and picking tobacco all day in the hot sun? Sign me up.
