Millions of people from Latin America cross into America either seeking work or the American Dream. Clearly this number of people has an impact on the US. Some Americans want to ban immigration entirely, others want to give resident illegals full citizenship status. Bush has proposed something in between.

All of this ignores the root cause of the flow of people: poverty in their home countries. The US has a long, bloody, uncomfortable history with its southern neighbors, from the Panama Canal to the illegal war against Nicaragua and the CIA-sponsored death squads in El Slavador and Guatemala. Now, all Central American countries are at least nominal democracies, as is Mexico, but we've abandoned them since. They are democratic, poor, docile, without oil, and like our own poor, irrelevant to the ruling elite in the US.

Children born into poverty face life on the streets starting at 5 or 6 years old, with some of them ending up murdered (60 a month in Guatemala) and others sold into sex slavery. Large numbers end up working in maquilas if they are lucky. With poverty rates as high as 85% (Nicaragua), Central America is teeming with people very happy to make the trek through the deserts and mountains of Mexico to chase the American Dream; theirs, I imagine, is different from my Scottish ancestors' version. I personally know one kid who walked 1400 miles to get to the border; his travelling companion was crushed by the train they had hopped on their way to Mexico City. His friend had fallen asleep and rolled over the edge, and was somehow caught by the train and sucked under to the tracks. He continued on, at one point beaten by thieves, at another threatened at gunpoint by Mexican soldiers. By the time he got to Mexico City he was tired and hungry, ending up at a youth home connected to one he knew in Guatemala. They sent him back to Guatemala.

Until we address 3rd World poverty, 3rd world citizens will continue to seek opportunity where they can find it. America is the logical destination. If their local economies were stable and strong, they would never leave home. I've walked the streets of Managua, of Tegucigalpa, of Guatemala City, and I can tell you they have reason to want to leave. The US, with a minor effort to strengthen its neighbors, can change the lives of tens of millions, simply by assisting these countries with their economic infrastructures and by relieving their debt burdens. Only then will immigration from the South subside. Until then, we have a moral responsibility to treat our guests with dignity and respect. They are not criminals, they are our neighbors.