Immigration Part 3: don Carlos Armando

Don Carlos Armando is one of the teachers I have the pleasure of working with in Caluco. He's a dedicated teacher who is very knowledgeable, intelligent, and caring. Although he's an English teacher, he actually majored in Castellano, the official language of El Salvador. In addition to his linguistic skills, he also knows a fair bit of history, politics, and he's a skilled guitar player to boot. I enjoy talking to Carlos Armando partly because both his Spanish and English are very clear and easy to understand, but partly because he's so very intelligent and I've learned a lot from him.

Last Friday, we had a conversation that began with talking about language and linguistic differences and socio-linguistic evolutions and ended up talking about immigration and politics. We talked about some of the reasons that people would choose to immigrate to the U.S., and of course, the big reason was money. People want to go and work and send money back to their families. There are always jobs done by mostly migrant workers, like construction and field work. Even here in El Salvador, a lot of work in the fields is done by folks from Honduras who want to earn more money to send back home to their families. At any rate, we talked about some of the U.S. policies and how the U.S. tends to send aid to countries ravaged by war, even by its own troops like Iraq and Afghanistan. Armando said that if the U.S. feels so strongly about immigration and doesn't want so many people coming into the country, why doesn't it send aid to the countries people are coming from? Because people won't want to migrate if they feel safe and comfortable at home in their own country, so why doesn't the U.S. help the poor countries of Central America?
I had no answer to that question, though in my mind I was thinking, "probably because there's no oil here."
I mean, really, the last time the U.S. "send aid" to El Salvador, it was to arm the government for war, but the war was against its own people. It was during those same years that the biggest flood of illegal immigrants from El Salvador ran to the U.S. seeking freedom and safety. Of course, now, there are folk from the Peace Corps working here in El Salvador, and that's certainly some aid from the U.S., yet it's not quite as widespread as bombs, guns, and bombing jets are. Surely it would cost less than those arms to provide rations for all the starving people here.
I don't claim to know a lot about politics and I don't claim to have the answers to immigration policies and world peace, though I wish I did. I've had many conversations and seen many things here that have given me a lot to think about.