Before believing all of the media hyping the dangers present on the US-Mexico border and in US border cities, consider both sides. Some statistics are actually showing the border and US border cities to be much safer than it would seem considering current public sentiment. The article below is an example of this alternate view.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/us-mexico-border-safety-a_n_598825.html
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Unfortunately, I believe the border still is not a very safe place for the immigrants themselves as they're trying to make the cross into the US. I had a friend in LA that worked at a free medical clinic in a mostly-Latino immigrant community, and she's told me some real horror stories from her patients, many of whom were assaulted and taken advantage of by the "coyotes" they'd paid to help them get across the border.
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised to hear the US side is quite safe, nor am I surprised to hear the media playing up to peoples' fears. People are often frightened by what they don't know... I've noticed in the older generation of my family in LA, they almost always equate heavily-Latino areas of the city with high crime, and they get all huffy about the fact that there are businesses with signs in Spanish going up in their neighborhoods (sort of a "there goes the neighborhood" mentality). In reality, most of the areas are perfectly fine (not that there aren't dangerous areas in the city, but the ones near where I grew up are not bad at all), but people can have a hard time looking past the cultural differences and stereotypes.