"Rio Grande/Rio Grande - I'd swim you but I can't"

[rasmus skotte]

20 years anniversary of Brian Wilson's masterpiece Rio Grande can now be celebrated as a sonic landmark suite - but also for the wrong reasons:
A 16 feet, high 70 miles long wall is being raised in the Rio Grande Valley as a border barrier between Mexico and Texas to keep out illegal immigrants.
But the legislation is apparently also taking the T-act into account which means that they don't have to protect neither the cultural nor the natural environment. Allegedly it will only take trespassers 10 minutes more to cross that border - so what's the point? So in the immortal words of Reagan:
Congress and Mr. President "tear down this wall!" And a few more while you're at it!

[Alex]

20 years anniversary of Brian Wilson's masterpiece Rio Grande can now be celebrated as a sonic landmark suite - but also for the wrong reasons:
A 16 feet, high 70 miles long wall is being raised in the Rio Grande Valley as a border barrier between Mexico and Texas to keep out illegal immigrants.
But the legislation is apparently also taking the T-act into account which means that they don't have to protect neither the cultural nor the natural environment. Allegedly it will only take trespassers 10 minutes more to cross that border - so what's the point? So in the immortal words of Reagan:
Congress and Mr. President "tear down this wall!" And a few more while you're at it!

No matter how many walls they build, they are never going to stop people from crossing from Mexico into the states unless the economic situation in Mexico and other Latin American countries greatly improves. As long as there is rampant poverty in those countries south of the border people are going to keep coming over to the states to look for better opportunities, whether those opportunities actually exist or not. No wall, fence, or group of armed vigilantes (e.g., The Minutemen) will solve this "problem" (is the immigration really the problem, or is rampant racism the actual problem in the immigration debate?).

[lance]

I am not sure if this belongs on this particular forum.

If you ask me, the whole wall thing is one of the stupidest solutions to the immigration problem I could possibly think of.

I will hesitate on calling racism on people living near the border, though, who might have to worry about crime from impoverished border-crossers much more than others. I think that there is probably a racist element there, but it is by no means the whole story.

[Mr. Wilson]

Illegal Immigration is a problem..Mexico doesnt have to be 3rd world nation..The corrupt goverment likes it that way .. It affects us in California in a HUGE way...Where i live i feel like i live in a foreign country + im NOT a racist.

[the captain]

I am not sure if this belongs on this particular forum.

I am sure ... and it does not.

[The Shift]

Maybe US-based posters can verify this but here in the UK we're told that since the election of George W. Bush more Americans have been sneaking over the border to Mexico and living there as illegal immigrants than Mexicans have been crossing to the US. Is this true? CAn it be?

[lance]

You are told by whom?

[The Shift]

You are told by whom?

Darn, called to name sources and I can't...
 

[brother john]

Illegal Immigration is a problem..Mexico doesnt have to be 3rd world nation..The corrupt goverment likes it that way .. It affects us in California in a HUGE way...Where i live i feel like i live in a foreign country + im NOT a racist.

You should try living in my part of London - When I go to work I'm quite often the only white guy on the bus, except for the occasional orthodox Jew and Polish immigrant. I don't like this, but does that make me a racist?

[rasmus skotte]

What I found interesting for THIS forum was just the fact that one of Brian's greatest (and most ambitious) - but certainly his longest song ever, has been given a whole new relevance now - 20 years after. That's all...

[Smilin Ed H]

No, it makes you paranoid.

[adamghost]

I'm as white as it gets, and I find the ethnic diversity and relative harmony in southern California extremely comforting.  Sometimes when I'm touring certain parts of America I occasionally find the lack of diversity unnerving.  Does that make me a racist I wonder?

[lance]

I know what you mean. I used to live in Denver, and then when I would travel to Boulder for a day, I used to get kind of creeped out by all the pretty, rich white people, not to mention the spic and span(by which I mean clean : I am using no racial epithets!!)gleam of that city.

[lance]

Illegal Immigration is a problem..Mexico doesnt have to be 3rd world nation..The corrupt goverment likes it that way .. It affects us in California in a HUGE way...Where i live i feel like i live in a foreign country + im NOT a racist.

You should try living in my part of London - When I go to work I'm quite often the only white guy on the bus, except for the occasional orthodox Jew and Polish immigrant. I don't like this, but does that make me a racist?

I can hear you. In a former life I worked in an all-black office and to be honest, I felt a little weird. No one was rude to me or anything, but no one would really talk to me, either. It was like I was invisible. I did feel uncomfortable and lonely. It wasn't so much race, as I just didn't relate to them--I might have even felt similar in an all white office at that particular job, but the fact that it was all-black(and I was white) was impossible to ignore.