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Every since the Monroe Doctrine we have pretty much 'had our way' with our neighbors south of us....intervening in many different ways.
There are many books on the subject.

The Monroe Doctrine is a U.S. doctrine which, on December 2, 1823, proclaimed that European powers would no longer colonize or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas. The United States planned to stay neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies. However, if these latter types of wars were to occur in the Americas, the United States would view such action as hostile. President James Monroe first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress, a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States.

...and I am supposed to know this how? None of this was ever taught in primary school, or college - at least the classes I took.

Remember, I'm not a child of the sixties - I'm simply a product of the '60s.

I try to give you a lot of slack given your disadvantage

Think about what it is like living in a small village in say Honduras. If you work there for an employer which depends on American corporations you will always be poor. Our corporations only go to other countries for cheap labor or cheap resources. We are predators. Google United Fruit and you will get a taste of what I am talking about.

The United Fruit Company was frequently accused of bribing government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, exploiting its workers, contributing little by way of taxes to the countries in which it operated, and working ruthlessly to consolidate monopolies. Latin American journalists sometimes referred to the company as el pulpo ("the octopus"), and leftist parties in Central and South America encouraged the Company's workers to strike. Criticism of the United Fruit Company became a staple of the discourse of the communist parties in several Latin American countries, where its activities were often interpreted as illustrating Lenin's theory of capitalist imperialism. Major Latin American writers sympathetic to communism, such as Carlos Luis Fallas of Costa Rica, Ramón Amaya Amador of Honduras, Miguel Ángel Asturias of Guatemala, Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, and Pablo Neruda of Chile, denounced the Company in their literature.

The business practices of United Fruit were also frequently criticized by journalists, politicians, and artists in the United States. Little Steven released a song called "Bitter Fruit" about the company's misdeeds. In 1950, Gore Vidal published a novel (Dark Green, Bright Red), in which a thinly fictionalized version of United Fruit supports a military coup in a thinly fictionalized Guatemala. This reputation for malfeasance, however, was somewhat offset among those who worked for it or in the regions it controlled by the Company's later efforts to provide its employees with reasonable salaries, adequate medical care, and free private schooling. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Company and its successor, United Brands, created an Associated Producers Program that sought to transfer some of its land holdings to private growers whose produce it commercialized. As the Company gradually lost its land and transportation monopolies, its status as a capitalist bête noire declined.

Diane K. Stanley, a former U.S. diplomat and the daughter of a Welsh-born employee of the United Fruit Co. in Guatemala, argues in the book For the Record: The United Fruit Company's Sixty-six Years in Guatemala, published in 1994, that the negative perception of the company's influence in Guatemala is largely undeserved, and could be due in part to the unwillingness of left-wing journalists and writers to critically examine the legacy of the administrations of Presidents Arévalo and Arbenz. According to her:

“ Most accounts about the banana company have also failed to describe the significant contribution that United Fruit made to Guatemala's human and economic development. In addition to providing employment to tens of thousands of workers and paying them the nation's best rural wages, the Company also offered its employees excellent medical care, rent-free housing, and six years of free schooling for countless children. By clearing and draining thousands of acres of jungle that are today among the country's most productive farm lands, United Fruit converted Guatemala into a major banana producer, thereby ending the country's unhealthy dependence on its exports of coffee. The Company's pioneering work in eliminating malaria and other tropical diseases early in the twentieth century also demonstrated that Guatemala's sparsely inhabited coastal areas offered rich, previously unexploited agricultural zones. Ultimately, the taxes and salaries that the United Fruit Company paid, and the millions of dollars of foreign exchange earnings that it annually generated, impacted in an important way on Guatemala's economy.

When John F. Kennedy took office, he launched the Alliance for Progress, a program of help for Latin America, emphasizing social reform to better the lives of people. But it turned out to be mostly military aid to keep in power right-wing dictatorships and enable them to stave off revolutions.

From military aid, it was a short step to military intervention. What Truman had said at the start of the Korean war about "the rule of force" and the "rule of law" was again and again, under Truman and his successors, contradicted by American action. In Iran, in 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency succeeded in overthrowing a government which nationalized the oil industry. In Guatemala, in 1954, a legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American fighter planes flown by American pilots. The invasion put into power Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who had at one time received military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The government that the United States overthrew was the most democratic Guatemala had ever had. The President, Jacobo Arbenz, was a left-of-center Socialist; four of the fifty-six seats in the Congress were held by Communists. What was most unsettling to American business interests was that Arbenz had expropriated 234,000 acres of land owned by United Fruit, offering compensation that United Fruit called "unacceptable." Armas, in power, gave the land back to United Fruit, abolished the tax on interest and dividends to foreign investors, eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of political critics.

You guys assume that I know what you know. Clearly I don't. I'm glad that you're filling me in.

It takes three years of study to be considered fluent in English at a day-to-day "street" level. It takes [i]five[i] years to become fluent enough to pursue academic studies in English.

For those who have been through the immigration process, I apologize for any details I missed; this was 7 years ago. But I thought that those who have NOT been through it might be interested in hearing what it's like.

Wow, you sure ask a lot of questions!

Mexicans can visit the US briefly without a visa, but now they do have to have an official Mexican government ID like a passport. Lots of Mexicans make daytrips into San Diego and other border towns to shop. If they try to travel north into Orange County without a visa, they get turned back at the INS checkpoint.

US citizens can visit Mexico without a visa, but they better have their US passport with them to get back into the US! If they want to go past around a hundred miles or stay longer than a couple of weeks they need a tourist permit (costs just a few dollars). To work in Mexico foreigners all need a work permit.

The casual labor tax withholding limit does not affect the employer's legal obligation to check that the person he hires has a right to work in the US. The law recognises no monetary limit for that. Paying an illegal $5 to help you load your pickup truck is illegal!

You can give anybody up to $10000 without paying gift tax, but you can give all you like by reporting it and paying Uncle Sam. As long as it is a gift, it is YOUR tax, not the recipient's. So I don't think it would matter if that person was a citizen of another country. You do have to report transfers of money across borders, but it is not illegal to do so. (Customs and DEA will just assume you are a drug smuggler until you prove otherwise!) If you try to "gift" your illegal employee instead of paying them, the IRS will figure that out and throw your ass in jail.

Companies can't deduct expenses for paying illegals, so they instead pay a labor contractor who then pays the illegals. Or they just pay out of petty cash and forgo the deduction.

Employers have a choice: They can use the government's quick-check ID verification system or they can rely on their own ability to spot fake documents. If they use the quick-check their legal liability is very limited. If they don't then they can face huge fines and even jail when they are caught with illegal employees. So every legit company is using the quick-check. The problem is that "quick" is a relative term. The identity check can take a couple of months, then they have to give the "potentially undocumented employee" another two months to get some valid papers together. Then they submit the new identity papers and another couple of months can go by before they get word that the new ID is fake. Then they have to fire the guy, but the INS is never dispatched to deport him. So illegals can work at a job for about 6 months (certainly a harvest or a planting season), and then just go find another job!

As for treating Mexicans versus Canadians differently, that only is present in the country quotas for the legal immigration process. Illegals are still illegal no matter where they came from. And BTW, many Hispanic illegals are from countries even poorer or more repressive than Mexico.
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