[inaudible conversations] >> thank you. this theater seats 340 and every seat is occupied. i want to welcome you to the second annual tucson festival of books. my name is tom miller. this panel was called the u.s. mexico border living and writing on the edge. so if there's anyone here for the workshop please check your schedule. our panel this afternoon here at the university of arizona

student union gallagher theater consists of david from the east coast, margaret a well-traveled tuscsonan. and that's arizona, not argentina is that correct? thank you. we will begin to the panelists very soon but first we have some housekeeping announcements from our sponsor. this eve and will last for one hour including questions and answers from these microphones at the end of the aisles. for the time being please hold your questions. believe me, we will be getting to them. at the conclusion the panelists and myself will go to what is called the mad and media signing myriad number one tent be. got that? mad and media center tent 1 b. it's about 100 steps down to the right. we will sign books for you there. you can pick up the book at any of the vendors. for those of you watching at home these books are available

at the local bookstore and you no longer have a local bookstore through the online bookstores. further, when you are back in front of a computer please go to the tucson festival of book web site and complete the survey for the festival in general and this session in particular. and most important that the count of tree all cell phones off. one, two, cell phones off. okay. so enough of the housekeeping. once there was a dog, the dog lived in malaya, a well-to-do suburb of san diego. she was a french poodle. she had tight white curls and thick eyebrows. she even had a hint of perfume about her. every day the dog went from leah all the way. one day the dog gathered around where did you come from, the main achievements asked. i come from la hoya. what sort of place to you live in? i have a little wooden house and

a chart to run around in. how about your food? in the morning my master puts dog food in my dish it even has my name on it. it says oh-la-la. for lunch and get table scraps and for lunch can of dinner. once a week after they gave me i get a pill for my coat. very impressive said the months of tijuana. but tell us if you live in a little house in la hoya with a big yard to run around in and three good meals a day, debate weekly, have a call for your coach, why did you come to tijuana every day? well, said oh-la-la, she turned her head sideways, to bark. [laughter] i tell you the story of oh-la-la for a number of reasons. first we are dealing with a fragile topic today one of gravity and profound implications and this may be your last laugh of the day. to me there are too borders.

one is the quantitative border of statistics, the board of the 90% america knows about, how many migrants died in the desert, how many border patrolmen have been assigned to this sector? how much money homeland security is pumping into border protection, how tall the new wall was going to be, how many mexicans tried to cross, how much smuggler charges to bring them across, how many tons of marijuana have been picked up. things like that. that is the quality of order, the north-south border everybody knows. then there's the qualitative border. it's the border that the 12 million people who live on both sides occupied what i call the third country between the united states and mexico. it's a country 2,000 miles long and very narrow. it's the border of culture, the border of the frontier, the border that has family ties and spirituality. it's the border was legends and myths live from generation to

generation, where sports and arts, music and even humor play a role with a measure of camaraderie. it's the one you hear on the a and radio. it's the one you hear on the jukebox is. it's even the border of long view. it was in that many years ago you could see women on one side or the other actually hanging their clothes to draw on the border fence. it's the border of laundry. that, ladies and gentlemen, is the permanent border, the quality of border. a narrow band of miscegenation and there are those of us who wouldn't have it any other way. today's panel is exceptionally well qualified to talk about this permanent border. they spent an enormous amount of time in this third country watching a day after day and their conclusions are worth listening to. a few words about our first panelist david. after graduating the u.s. naval academy three years ago, he served in the marine corps in iraq as a convoy commander and intelligence officer among his other jobs for his service in

iraqi was awarded the commendation for valor and purple heart treated since leaving active duty he worked as a journalist from far off zones such as kenya, ethiopia, vietnam and gulf coast of the american south. his first book was quote quote blood stripes bill war in iraq," awarded a prize by the military society of america. today he's here to talk about his more recent book, quote cope the border exploring the u.s.-mexico defied." david, please. [applause] >> thanks, tom miller and everyone here. i would like to start by thanking the city of tucson, the university of arizona, the arizona daily star, every volunteer, everyone from tucson, every so there arizona citizen who has made me as an author and

all loveless as authors feel welcome. you've done an extraordinary job with the tucson festival of books. give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] it is an incredible achievement. it's an incredible achievement. it's an extraordinary achievement in today's economic climate and you shouldn't be prouder of yourselves as a region. thank you so much. i have one other thanks to extend as tom mentioned i served in iraq and as tom delude it to i was wounded in iraq. i had a close encounter with a shrapnel that left me with a little bit of shrapnel in my jaw and so every time i open my mouth to white my jaw hurts which is a pretty useful won't to have. [laughter] as wounds go. but i'm standing up here following in the footsteps as a

transitioning or you're two writer in some other issues and somebody whose transition from the military into being a citizen. as many of you know and as those of you who've known veterans who've made the transition it's a tough one to make. my generation of veterans has the privilege of being thanked for our service on an almost daily basis when we encounter people who learn that we are veterans. generations past didn't have that privilege and one of the man who's going to follow me wallace a forerunner and part of a generation of war years to writers who begin to reshape the cultural landscape in the united states to bridge the gap from the vietnam era into the era that we are in today. and so if you're out here and your part of the vietnam

generation i can't think you enough for your service and we can't thank you enough for your sacrifice and the past you took to to becoming citizens. thank you, philip, personally. [applause] so the border, and icc gentle topic to discuss. one with no opinions or points of your perspectives. [laughter] the border, a place where as those of you who live here you can be for immigration and for border security and for employment enforcement and for a path to citizenship and for amnesty and other things. you can do all these things even without running for political office. it's an impressive experience. i've traveled a lot on the border in 2007i spent three months traveling the entire u.s.-mexico border from the gulf

of mexico to the pacific ocean that formed the context of my work and i also spent a lot of time around military environments and just to sort of move into where we are going to be going as a panel and where i'm going to be going in the perspective i'm going to be coming from i spent a lot of time in northern mexico. i'm working on a project for the foreign policy research institute which is based in philadelphia researching northern mexico and i spent a lot of time asking and answering myself what the role of the federal military forces that they are u.s. forces or mexican forces that should be into this border environment and what the correct role should be and with the most advantageous role is for future generations. i've been convicted in my own work of the truth that many of you in this area are familiar

with. there is a native tradition in native american culture that says that what you do@@@ @ a and security may not matter as

much as those that are happening right in our own backyard. i care about this place because this is our home and where the next seven generations of americans and mexicans of north americans will live and that's why i'm here to talk about. thanks very much for having me. [applause] thank you, david. our second panel is margaret. she holds a bachelor's degree from the university of pennsylvania. she studied french in paris and spanish in guatemala. her travels have taken her through central american through europe, mexico. in addition to working as a children's book editor for mcgraw-hill in new york would like most about her reza may is she worked as an editor for the french edition of the tv guide. [laughter] she's lived here in tucson for almost 25 years the last ten of

which she reported about the border paying particular attention to the death of migrants. her coverage has appeared primarily in the tucson weekly for which she has won a slew of journalism awards. aside from her border writings she's been an art critic and writes about the irish immigrant experience. she's here today just weeks after the release of her first book, immigration stories from the arizona mexico border land. margaret. [applause] >> thanks buddy for coming today. i didn't find out until recently i was going to be speaking in between two marines. [laughter] i'm not a marine, never have been. i've been a journalist in tucson for about 20 years. i've been writing for the tucson weekly and other publications

about ten years ago i started writing about the border. until then we haven't heard much about death in arizona and about 2,000 suddenly almost every day there were reports of people dying right here in arizona a couple of hours from our comfortable homes in tucson and as a writer for the tucson weekly i said you guys we've got to do something about this, we have to start reporting on this and i was the art editor and instill the art editor. i do a lot of our trading and other reporting. i had never done anything on the borders i was trying to encourage the weekly to send a an experienced person to the border to cover and they said why don't you go so i said okay so i went down there and as i've often said to people in the ten years i've been writing about this i have never really found the words to describe what it was like to go down to douglas in the year 2000 and see a country that looked like it was

at work right here in the united states. douglas is a little border town in the southeast corner of arizona. i will read a little fragment from my book of what i found down there. i first came face-to-face with the migrants whose stories i tell in my book in the summer of 2000 when i travelled to douglas to report on the air as an immigration crisis for the tucson weekly. the town was a war zone. can you hear me? i was going to say i'm not else tall as a marine. [laughter] okay. the town was a war zone occupied by the border patrol and overwhelmed by migrants. human beings were dying in the fields and in the desert. two hours away from my comfortable home in tucson while ordinary american life continued all around them. agents of my own government were chasing down farm workers and bus blaze and cleaning ladies with helicopters and infrared

cameras and halting of the poorest of the poor off to jail in handcuffs. we hadn't seen this kind of i guess we will call it militarization of the border before then. arizona in the last ten years has become a killing field. we have now found the bodies of plus 2,000 migrants. this is just in southern arizona since the border enforcement was stepped up. it goes back to 1994 when the federal government decided to seal up the urban crossings in see diego and el paso because so many migrants were pouring through. part of it goes back to nafta when we made our north american free trade agreement the united states started selling very cheap corn in some of the poorest parts of mexico in southern mexico displacing what are probably millions of campesinos from their land already living a very marginal existence. they started flooding of the borders and the united states

and it became a political problem so the federal government back under clinton sealed up your been crossings. the thinking was if you took care of the urban crossings you take care of the illegal immigration and i have a quote from doris meissner, commissioner of the ips back in those days. she said we did believe that geography would be an ally to us. it was our sense that the number of people crossing the border through arizona would go down to a trickle. that thinking was wrong. as i have said we have found in the last ten years close to 2,000 bodies and those are only the bodies that we've found. and i know i don't have a really long time to speak here but i would like to tell you the story of one, the body of one person who was found. it's the title of my book. i named the book for this young girl. she was 14-years-old and she died about two hours from here

in arizona into wilderness in january of 2008. josephine was a young girl living in el salvador. her mother was an e illegal immigrant in l.a. and she had a young brother who was ten. they had been left behind in el salvador until the mother could find the money to bring them up. they were living with their grandmother. the mother scraped together the money god knows how much she paid. some of the rates for paying to bring people from central america i've heard as high as $8,000 a person so it would have taken somebody working at a low-level job which migrants, immigrants in this country hold a long time to save up that kind of money. she arranged to have the children brought from el salvador. they traveled all the way across mexico probably a couple of weeks in a group and they crossed over the border into arizona about two or two and a half hours from tucson and the goal is to then walked through southern arizona until you can

get past the border patrol checkpoints. it can be a lot of three to five days. so this is in january and some people outside of arizona don't know it gets very cold here in the winter so this group of people walked through these mountains and judging by the name of that place you can imagine the wilderness what it's like up and down roller coaster mountain snow water, lots of cactus, lots of rocks, lots of ways to trip and she got sick when she was crossing on the trail. probably from drinking the water which if you ever walk around down there its green and putrid. it makes people sick and i had her autopsy from leader. her stomach was empty so she was vomiting on the trail. she could not continue with the group so her mom had paid or was going to pay to deliver this child made the decision to leave this young girl on the trail and her little brother we can imagine screaming and crying but

he reported later she said to him you go ahead, you have to get to mom. so the boy was brought off. nobody called anybody come nobody called any authorities, no one. the little boy arrived safely three days later sounded the alarm to his mother. the mother called the conflict. people went out looking for her but nobody found her. we didn't have good information. three weeks later a young will collect this in tucson happened to be hiking vitriol putting out food and water and he came across the body of this child. she had been dead about three weeks so you could imagine the condition. the reason i tell her story in my book is because i was able to get information about her because her body was found and i was able to get her autopsy report and learn something about her family. she was one of 183 people who died in southern arizona in the wilderness just that year alone

and every one of them would have a story ensure equally as tragic. that was since 2008. the numbers have gone up. last year we ret 206 bodies found in southern arizona and this year they say we are on target for 30% ahead of that number. so my goal is just thompson is a lot of us know the numbers but interestingly since i have written this book i have found out that people outside of arizona don't know those numbers. a cousin of mine in pennsylvania , good irish name, she just read my book and she told me i had no idea. i didn't know that these people were dying on u.s. soil every single year so my goal in writing this book and telling stories is to let people know what's going on. some people said door blaming the united states for the problem of poverty. while it is a poor nation, there are poor nations be less but i'm just trying to say we as a people have a responsibility to realize these people are dying

on u.s. soil and we should do something to stop so my book is a small effort in that direction. [applause] >> the third panelist is philip caputo and he's a ringer. i say that because while technically this is to be in nonfiction panel negative to will agree that his experience and his tenacity and ability that has developed as a journalist shows up on every page of his brand new novel crossers. it takes place primarily in southern arizona and northern samarra. it's based on observations on foot on horseback and jeeps any way you can go. he talked to people both official and decided unofficial capacities. he's written about the border nonfiction mind he's written about the border for the atlantic and the virginia quarterly review.

he's the second marine on the panel. you are surrounded by marines, margaret. she served in the marines in the mid-1960s out of which came the highly acclaimed memoir a rumor of war. his magazine would includes profiles authors william styron, actor robert redford and soviet invasion of afghanistan. in 1974 he was on a pulitzer prize-winning investigative team for "the chicago tribune" that was investigating corruption in chicago. [laughter] following that he became a foreign correspondent which he left for the glamorous world of free-lance writing. his books include act of faith set in the sudan 13 seconds to look back at the state shootings and means of the escape, a war correspondent memoir of life and death in afghanistan the middle east and vietnam. with all that, i am proud to present the author of cross t's, philip caputo.

[applause] >> i would like to second david's thanks to everybody that's been involved or that's attending this to psalmbook festival. i've got to say that this is really encouraging. my wife and i were at the fund-raising cocktail party last night. there were probably about close to 1,000 people in attendance and the only thing i don't like about it is that i kind of like to be gloomy and miserable most of the time and despairing of what's going to happen to writing and storytelling and the print industry in general and this kind of gathering makes me think that i am all wrong.

as tom mentioned, crossers is an awful, and nonfiction pieces like probably don't belong here but i am here today i want to point out that being an awful it's not really about the border as an issue. it's not the border as a john ethical feature or geographical expression and it's not about the border as a problem which can be solved or as the case may be not soft. it's about people who are caught up in a particular situation, people caught up in a particular place and in this case here it is the border and the conflict that exists past and present. i've always had a foot in both worlds, the world's of journalism or nonfiction and the world of fiction throughout my whole career. they've kind of cross fertilized. there has been a few well i will

use the phrase synergistic relationship. for the example my first book a rumor of war which was about my service with the marine corps in vietnam was a memoir, nonfiction narrative but in its structure the way i selected the details even áo#@ @ @ @,%

faith in set in kenya and sudan, that grew out of an assignment i had with national geographic adventure. this one, crossers, was inspired by an assignment by our original lagat from the virginia quarterly review to write about the border as an issue, right about the border as a problem and i must say that for a small university magazine they gave me a lot of space, 10,000 words, and they called me because i live part of the year with my wife in patagonia and over the years that would be since 1996, i've accumulated a lot almost by osmosis about what is going on down there and of course almost every day that i am down there

or nearby in the san rafael valley, i've encountered undocumented aliens coming over the border. i certainly encountered an awful lot of drug smugglers because for various reasons the area we live in is more of a drug corridor -- drug-smuggling corridor than an area for smuggling illegal aliens. i can think of one incident when my wife, leslie and i were hiking only a mile from patagonia and we were bird watching of all of the innocuous activities and we can round up the band in the road and there were five guys offloading bales of marijuana into a beat up old station wagon. i really it of 50 feet from them and of course we stopped cold, they stopped cold and dave ran off into the bushes in the creek

and the guy driving the volkswagen golf in and drove off and made a u-turn and drove back past us kind of giving us his best treasurer of the c dot dress their probably to let us know he didn't think would be cool if we called the cops which we did any way. [applause] but in another case, kind of a humorous one about two years ago i was for spec writing with a friend in the rauf tail valley and four of these sad sacks came popping out of the canyon. they looked like a mess and they were waving at me and so i made sure they were not armed. i rode up to them and it turned out they were drug mules who dropped their loads and they were asking me for a road where they could get picked up by the border patrol because no longer

having dope on them they would not be arrested for illegal narcotics trafficking, they would simply be arrested as undocumented aliens and instead of having to walk for 30 miles back into mexico they would get to ride in a homeland security boss back to the border. that's standard operating procedure and so i got a laugh out of this. i gave them directions to the road then i called a gaziano on the border patrol and i said i'm now aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise but i said there's four guys out in the forest road 58 waiting for you guys to pick them up what don't you go do that. anyway, in writing that article for the virginia quarterly review i developed a lot of sources in the border patrol and other law enforcement agencies. i learned about chin's adults of drug smuggling from them.

i went over the border with them on a couple loved clandestine missions so we were kind of illegal aliens on the other side of the line and there were a lot of things because this novel takes place primarily on a cattle ranch in southern arizona that i didn't know about cowboys and cattle ranching and i've got a lot of friends who are cowboys and cattle ranchers and they allowed me this kind of total incompetent cowboy to go on a couple of roundups and a couple of brandon's so i could learn about that. again, it's the kind of thing that you would do as a journalist. and i interviewed them about ranching as a business. in addition to that i picked up a lot of allure for example one cowboy friend of mine who used to live out in the san rafael valley but moved because he and

his wife have small children and were harassed so much again by the drug deals he told me a story that i used a novel about one might about 3:00 in the morning three drug meals on the way back to mexico bank on the door and wanted something to eat and he made peanut butter sandwiches for them and he went outside holding these sandwiches in one hand in a plate and a 357 revolver in the other hand just in case they wanted something more than the peanut butter sandwiches come he gave them the food and then a little while later at two weeks later he and his wife were out of town on a vacation when they came back they found their house had been broken into and their freezer where they just butchered beef had been broken open and all the state stolen out of it and he said he was pretty sure it was the same guys letting him know

they didn't like peanut butter. [laughter] anyway, one of the reasons i turned this into a novel is as a journalist you are restricted to the facts even in the stage in the new journalism and i felt that there were certain emotional truths and psychological truths i can only get across through an awful. the kind of truths william faulkner called those of the human heart and conflict with itself and that which i think is what from novelists province should be and that imagination can shine its bright if not brighter light on the truth as journalism can so as this novel crossers true to the reality of life on the border today the answer is yes and no it is a novel but i think of a novel as a truth masquerading as a lie.

thank you. [applause] there are two microphones here. please lineup if you have questions. this being a somewhat volatile topics if you're going to make a statement at least put a question at the end of it. but while you are lining up with questions, i'm going to throw out a question for the panel to discuss just among the three of you and then we will get to the questions from all of you. to the panel when will it end? margaret five years from now will someone write a book called the death of immigration stories from the mexican border? will things get more and more depressing? david, will the unfortunate things chief witness in your trips continually get worse? how can this be reversed? that's my question. in addition results from push and paul factors what compels somebody to police played a and

what attracts them to point b. a drug smuggling on the other hand is the result of supply and demand who grows it and where and who consumes it and for how much so is that it or can we move into a more same direction. you three, take it away. >> i guess i will start since you asked me first. unfortunately i think there is a good chance five years from now somebody can be writing a book called the death of julio. the fact is the united states shares a 2,000-mile border with mexico and we have a poor country next to a very wealthy country and i think long-term the only thing that's going to prevent people from wanting to move from that side where it's pour into the side where there are more economic opportunities is economic development in mexico. in my book i tell the story about a small coffee to what i

got started with a 20,000-dollar microloan from the presbyterian church. it's now supporting a village of 200 families in. eda of the young people returned home from the united states because now they can kunkel -- they can earn a living wage back home and can control their own coffee. it's a co-op, they don't have to sell it to the big companies. this is a small model. to me in the research i did this was the most optimistic thing that you're helping people to stay home because most of them want to stay home and help them earn a living. unfortunately that doesn't seem the direction we are looking at. we are looking more at spending several billion dollars so far as what we spend on border enforcement and i think we are probably right to continue in that direction. >> david? >> margaret was the care if i will be the state so we will just kind of jump into all the different dynamics with everything.

talking about migration and talking about migration north from mexico, one part about that i think it's difficult as americans to understand there's a lot of internal dynamics of migration that take place inside mexico. the population of the border on the mexican side has doubled since nafta in 1994. coming north into the united states might be considered getting to harvard and getting into [inaudible] or maybe there's different opportunities. there's a lot of industrial work. there's migration that takes place inside mexico north from mexico. a lot of that has been transpiring from industrialization. it's difficult for us also to capture the type of multi smuts granted to a mexican man when he

successfully completes a crossing north through the desert. running the devils highways and the adrenaline rush and it is a badge of i don't want to say donner but it's there may be a little bit of a gold star on the sticker of the indoor bragging rights. from my perspective, i think that part of doing something about it is taking the devils highway away. i think that that has to be part of the solution. i think that has to be part of the solution in a bilateral pattern. one of the things that i've seen that i think is an encouraging sign is a partnership between mexican law enforcement, the police federal and the border patrol that are patrolling the border to get there. i think that that's something that useful lee could expand in regions of the border where people don't live.

the devils highway that runs through the cold water training range nation, which you're familiar with year, which our viewers might be able to see on the map up their, those aren't places people should be going. those are places right now that are governed by the drug smugglers who phillips sees in his backyard. i think preventing them from physically getting there has to be part of the solution. >> finally, philip. >> i would say -- islamic coming up for questions if you have any? no questions? all right, continue. >> both margaret and david have spoken about solutions some of which you have to understand i think would be temporary

solutions or measures that can bring this quote on quote problem. i don't think of it as a problem. i don't think there's a solution to it. but i will call with a predicament. that can bring it under some sort of control but i think ultimately speaking as margaret said and here i'm going to confine myself to mexico. i know there's lots of illegal immigration from el salvador and guatemala and other such places but about from what i understand 90% of migrants come from mexico. 90% of those -- is that right, tom? mexico is a poor country but it's not a poor country. it's actually got if you look at the statistics depending on which source reducing the 12th to the 14th largest economy in

the world. it's actually got a bigger economy than some eastern european nations. but, so in addition to the economic development that market mentioned, i think they're ought to be some kind@@@ @ @s

taxing marijuana. [applause] which brings in 70% of the drug cartel revenue and so far as cocaine and hard drugs i would emphasize put a lot of money into treatment and education. and even in tough love education. i would like people to know especially some of the wall street hotshots and stuff like that, guys who want to know

better that are supporting appliance cocaine so they can go out and get another 50 million-dollar bonus that every time they do that there is blood in that cocaine and most of it is in the american blood its mexican blood. and i don't know if that would actually solve the drug smuggling problem but i think it would go a long way toward alleviating a. >> we have questions coming up next here comes a few. very quickly i want to ask the panel while we have people lining up for questions in the last panel the last discussion here in this auditorium this morning we heard the author touch on what happens to small mexican towns as a result of migration. can any of you three discuss what happens to major american city as a result of this

migration? your observations [laughter] >> i think there's 340 people who could probably discuss it as clear and detailed as we could. the strain on major american cities in terms of the economic strain, in terms of the physical strain on local services is well, there's a reason it's a divisive issue. >> i would say the strain in a place like tucson southern arizona, the impact on hospitals -- so many migrants are injured coming over and there is not money to pay for their health care and they are brought to those hospitals. i would think economically that would be one of the things that strains hospital on the other hand a place like tucson we have many very productive workers who happen not to have papers allowing them to be in this

country and i think they are contributing to the economy, taxes and social security are taken out of their paychecks. they are never going to see that social security money. they say it's helping fund the baby boomers' retirement for which i am grateful. [laughter] the local schools are getting money from just like any other working family the local schools are getting money from their rent they pay and real-estate taxes their landlords are paying, so i think we have a large population of the illegal workers in arizona and i think that they have probably contributed to our economy. >> philippe, anything to add to that? >> no, again it is a to which soared. there's no doubt that excessive and illegal immigration has been a great strain on the social and educational services in countries -- in this country. there's also no doubt that these

undocumented migrants make a great contribution. i live part of the year my wife and i am a city in southeastern connecticut and i don't know of a landscaping crews or construction crew or roofing crew or anything including the ones we have used that are not all spanish-speaking and i don't think there's a green card there among them but they all work like the devil and take chances on their work that no american would take and again so they make a contribution to the economy. there is -- i've got a character in this novel who complains she says she'sthrough and eight stot truck and all fat but if i were living over there on would jump the border and come here and

instead of making $10 a day working in some factory i could make $10 an hour sweeping floors and wal-mart but i don't think i should be of two minds about it and her friend and lover tells her that life is not talk radio and it's okay to be ambivalent. [laughter] and that's how i feel about this issue. [applause] >> first questioned? go right ahead. >> tom, he introduced the panel i think by talking up the fact that our borderlands have not just for ten years, not 20 years but many years even going back before the treaty if guadalupe that there been push and pull factors that have brought people back and forth across the border. i can remember a time in the early 80's when in fact it was

the u.s. war zone between mexico and the united states and very nuanced ways when people from el salvador and guatemala were fleeing the the war in their homeland and coming seeking life in the u.s.. i remember a time when we would see people from el salvador who had fled a particular area of their country that had been bombed with napalm bombs and white phosphorous bombs and the direction of the bombing had been conducted with assistance from u.s. military helping because of our great mapping abilities helping the el salvador military determine which villages would get bombed. three to six months later we would see the refugees who had burns on their bodies, women and children from that area of

bombing. so here's my question. this has been an issue from before, this part of the region was the united states. it's still an issue. why is it so hard for us in the united states and even in mexico to create or design a creative policy? why is it that the united states, our government is not able to even a creative policy but one that works? why are we not able to do that? the most powerful and perhaps most wealthy nation on earth? why? >> the question to rephrase it slightly is what are the interests that are in favor of

maintaining the current policy? can any of you address that? don't feel compelled but if you can please do. >> well, yeah, i will. there are interests that benefit from the status quo. certainly the meat packing industry in the united states benefits from the status quo, the chicken and poultry processing industry benefits from the status quo. certain agricultural interests to and the status quo is that you can haulier undocumented aliens for a lot less money with a lot less benefits than you could american workers. one of the great myths the throne about about this is that people from el salvador and mexico do work that americans are not willing to do. in some cases that is true if you're talking about the most

basic kind of agricultural field labor but in other cases it's that americans won't do that sort of work for the amount of money that is now being paid. for example, i know of a meat packing plant in waterloo iowa where i once taught school used to pay them the equivalent of $15 per hour to american workers and then discovered that they could hire illegal mexican labor for $9 an hour so they are interested in the status quo. and in maintaining its. and i am sure that there's a lot of people in the mexican political and social elite who just love exporting what could be a potential -- potentially explosive social problem. >> thank you. gentlemen?

margaret, you wanted to add? >> in terms of people benefiting from the current policy, we have very large corporations like boeing, which is being paid millions and millions of dollars to the effect these border walls and faulty virtual tower is that so far -- we are projecting i think 6.7 billion we want to pay to put virtual towers all the way across the southwest border. so far i don't even know the numbers are. i have it written down some place that we've put a lot of money into this already and they don't work but it's almost like on some level of you want to look at the economic benefits in addition to things felt mentioned which i acknowledge, there are many interests the united states benefiting financially by border enforcement. >> thank you. gentlemen, please. >> thank you, phillip and david for serving. i'm a veteran of the corrine

korean war. thank you comedy that, for the rumor of war mad. i used it for my source of my book bridging the gap after vietnam. my comment and question to you is there is a very obvious lack of middle class and mexico. there is a great middle class in the united states and i think that's one of the reasons we are such a great country in all phases. you either have it or you don't in mexico's there is a class system, there definitely is a class system. i wonder if he would comment on those issues as to why there is obviously a tremendous immigration fleming from mexico and the united states. >> david, you've been -- >> i think david can speak to that better than all right. >> one of the things i'm puzzled about is trying to identify that number class in mexico. there is more of a middle class that i've discovered that my fault as i've been traveling

north of mexico. when i meet northern mexicans, and by northern mexicans i am speaking specifically of people living in the six northern mexican states of baja california, and -- as we work our way west to east. those states when you bring mexico down on the united nations human development index have the highest development of all of mexico. it's difficult to capture the degree of connectivity those regions have with the united states. for example, in those parts of mexico they celebrate christmas. in mexico city it's commonly celebrated, the holiday is usually january 6th. as we are talking almost two different regions.

imagine if the west coast celebrated one thing and the east coast celebrated thanksgiving on a different day. in my encounters with northern mexicans, i yet yet to make a single person more than 1 degree of separation from the united states. when you go into sports bars into chihuahua city you see nfl football. everybody has a favorite nfl team, you see 24 translated in spanish on sunday night. over 80% of the people that i've met in northern mexico had been in the united states and many cases a year or more. my favorite story about this was a guy that immigrated illegally by the most common method that i found of illegal immigration from northern mexicans has been to simply overstate tourist visa. as he crossed on his tourist visa, 72 our visa, went to las