Border Issues

Fox News: Boy Killed by Border Patrol

The recent killing of a Mexican boy at the border by US authorities is a tragedy indeed. But, it disturbs me and saddens me that all the Mexican people are unaware, or are conveniently forgetting in this moment all the harsh treatment that Mexican autorities have inflicted upon immigrants at their border with Guatemala. It is the same, if not worse.
Here in Mexico this murder is being splashed all over the news with gory photos making the front pages. It embarasses me to see it, as I´m an American living here in Mexico City. It shames me, but at the same time it angers me that people here could even begin to adopt a self-righteous attitude. And to top it all off, this particular group of Mexicans who were at the border at the time of the incident were throwing rocks at the authorites. Were these people trying to help their fellow citizens who were engaging in an illegal activity (crossing the border), by throwing rocks at the heads of the very people who can arrest them for doing so. Why? And how can they complain about what happened while I´m very sure that if a Guatemalan were throwing rocks at the Mexican officials at the Guatemalan border, he or she would suffer a similar fate.
Central Americans crossing the southern Mexican border have faced various abuses at the hands of Mexican autorities including robbery of their legal documents and their only money, violent rapes to the point of hemmoraging, beatings, being detained without reason in prisons with very poor conditions, some are sold into slavery and thousands of them have just disappeared. The majority of them (of the disappeared) are surely dead. This data comes from CODEHUTAB-Comité de Derechos Humanos de Tabasco (Human Rights Committee of Tabasco).
http://www.codehutab.org.mx/violacionalosdh.html
Central Americans also face the same xenophobia upon entering Mexico that some Mexicans face in the US. The immigrants are suspected of being criminals, and some even think that they are diseased. They are also regulary taken advantage of as workers. They can be hired to work on a plantation for around 40 pesos per day and never receive their money. They also have to deal with being confronted by the horrible gangs in the area. I think the Mexican government has paid some attention to this and has worked on the situation since 2000 because they realized their blatant hypocrisy, but today there are still many deaths and many disappearances as a result of this border crossing. Actually it is said that it is more difficult to cross into Mexico than into the US. The difference is that in the US we have more control over the data. We know how many people die and who dies and how. At the southern border that Mexico shares with Central America, there is not near as much recorded data, especially by the central american countries.
The truth is that througout history many countries have faced this same problem. Whenever a situation in one country is clearly better than another, people come pouring out of the poorer country trying to gain entry into the next country where the grass in greener. It´s happened between Eastern and Western Europe, Venezuela and Colombia, South Africa and other African countries, PuertoRico and the Dominican Republic and pretty much anywhere the grass is greener on the other side. How do we solve these issues? Unfortunately no one has yet come up with a functional, humane solution. Is it possible? It´s not exactly humane to stop someone from trying to have a better life. The incidents that occur at borders around the world are awful. Just keep your eyes open and realize that the US government is not the only one that has this problem. This problem has occured throughout history around the world, and the problem persists around the world today. Maybe the US government just has more eyes on it than most...