Coming Soon to a Border Near You...

Americans beware: the fate of Gaza can become your fate as well. With Gazans "securely" bottled up in their little sliver of a ghetto, the PLO's putative control has faded. Sure, they got the pretty uniforms, but that's about it. For effectiveness, Hamas owns the streets, the adrenal glands, livers and guts of the people. (Note to G.W. Bush: Hearts and minds are entirely unnecessary to own in this part of the world; fear requires no thinking!)

When Israel ruled Southern Lebanon, hundreds of Lebanese crossed the borders every day, picked up at the border by Israeli busses, and ferried off to Israel to work at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, in the industrial zone all up and down the coast, and even down to the orchards near Hadera. The money they brought in bought the Lebanese security, the Israelis a cheap labor force, and generally speaking, good relations with the locals. A win-win for both sides. Of course, that's all in the past now. Those thousands of Christian families are now living under the shadow of poverty and terror, families that didn't move to Israel after Israel's cowardly withdrawal "purged" by the terrorists that moved into the power vacuum.
Americans need to worry about a Hamastan in the Western Hemisphere. Don't laugh before you think about it for a minute. There are lots of poor people with little reason to stay where they are in South and Central America, and a big, rich country up north. If Bush and his Congress deliver on their GOP-inspired promise of closing the borders to illegal immigration (usually with some references to Al Queida and terrorists), Mexico is left holding the bag. With almost one in three Latin Americans under age 15 and one in four making under $2 a day (according to the PRB's latest stats), dealing with the millions on young Mexicans, Guatemalans, Peruvians, Columbians, Venezuelans, etc. already illegally within Mexico's borders.

That makes President Fox the oppressor, puts lots of disgruntled, poorly educated and lively folks with plenty of excess energy and time on their hands on US borders. This has the very real ability to destabilize Mexico, since the Mexican economy already depends on the funds Mexican immigrants wire down from America to their families back home.

If Bush is worried about immigration helping terrorists, then he'd first better think about how many, not how few, immigrants he can afford to let into the United States. Besides, how are we supposed to open a Home Depot every 43 hours and at a Wal-Mart almost every day without all that cheap labor, let alone the McMansions being thrown up en masse?

Start taking notes, folks. The delusional worries about the Southern US border today may become the reality because of, not in spite of, our current government's policies towards immigrant or migrant labor.

Oh, despite all that: Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Kwanza Greetings, a belated Eid ul-Adha, an orgiastic Saturnalia, and a Festivus for the Rest of Us!