by Sheralyn Welch

Created on: January 14, 2009   Last Updated: April 17, 2012

This may be one of the most preposterous questions ever to appear on the Helium website. To suggest that the citizens of Mexico even might be seeking to invade the United States not only insults the intelligence of anyone who knows the history of both countries; it completely ignores and underestimates how devastating poverty is and how compelling this democracy of America still is as an antidote to that poverty.

There will be dozens of articles posted here about Mexican immigration into the U.S., probably citing statistics going as far back as the Alamo. Those statistics will not answer the question of immigration vs. invasion because there is no question that Mexicans want to invade the U.S. So let's explore the reasons why they want to live here.

Let's begin with the enormous poverty of Mexico, the country. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a hard-working young Mexican husband and wife who love their native land, but can't make ends meet because daily wages are mercilessly low. Up to this point, they're strikingly like some of their American counterparts. But here in Mexico, the alternative is never to have children and work for an entire lifetime so you can eat a few meals a day and (if you're lucky) pay for any medicine you might need to live through old age. This all because you were born poor in a poor country.

North of where you live, there's a completely different world called America. It's an amazing place. For instance, there are actually women there who are too busy doing other things to clean their own houses; they're willing to pay you to do it for them for wages far beyond what you can earn here in Mexico, doing jobs much more taxing and far less satisfying. Not only that, but with the money you make in America, you can have children, send them to school, and give them lives you would have liked to live yourselves. This would be a dream come true. And you know for a fact that it can come true because you heard that America was built (for the most part) by people it invited from other countries all over the world.

So now that you've decided that America is where you want to be more than anywhere else; a dream you will work and live for as hard as you can, you set about figuring out how to get to that great place. And that's when you learn a hard lesson: this land of opportunity is full of hypocrites. They paste pictures of the Statue of Liberty (which has invited you to come in the most poetic terms) all over the place, but forget what she stands

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