"W. Kiernan" wrote:
> No, they are so poor. They're not stupid or deluded, they've come here
> for the cold hard cash. People come from East Asia, and Mexico and
> Haiti and Cuba, to the U.S.A., because in the U.S.A. they can make a
> whole lot more money and have a whole lot more material goods than in
> their native countries. You see the same thing in the Middle East,
> where "guest workers" from poor countries sell themselves into virtual
> slavery in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, because the pay is comparitively so
> high.
Most immigrants from the south including the 'illegal' variety want to earn the cold US cash to support their families back home. The US dollar goes a long way in places Mexico, DPRK, Haiti or Central America. One person earning $8 an hour working 30-60 hours a week can support a whole family back home. Many of the immigrants (mostly the illegal ones) only work and reside in the US seasonally spending the other months in their native countries. Dollar remittances from abroad are the single largest component of FX in most of the smaller countries and are significant in larger more prosperous (relatively) countries like Mexico. Most of the FX in DPRK comes from Koreans working in Japan. I've met people in some of these countries were family members all pitch in to send someone to the US where dollars are earned and sent home.
Sam Pawlett