Monday, July 31, 2006

30 Days

Ok, I know I'm full of glowing reviews but I believe I explained that already.

So, here is another one for you.

'30 Days' is a TV Show by the guy that made the movie 'Supersize This' in which he spent 30 days eating nothing but McDonald's food to show what happens to the human body on such a diet. It wasn't pretty. In the TV series it follows someone places in a situation outside of their normal experience. It is a social experiment and it is awesome. For example, one of the more remarkable ones was when they took an all-american god-fearing Oklahoma quarterback and stuck him with a single Gay man in the heart of San Fransico. It is an incrediable way to see how these different cultures clash and how they learn from each other.

We are now in the second season of '30 Days' and the premier was taking a Minuteman (the viglanties patrolling the border) and stick him with an illegal immigrant family in LA. I just finished watching it. In a nutshell, wow! It was a seven member family living in a house with less than 500 sq ft. Three of the kids were illegal and two were born in the US, making them citizens. The middle child was college bound. Most of the political fighting happened between the college-bound girl and the minuteman. Sharp girl..sharp dude too. The show did a GREAT job of representing both sides and showing why the problem is so complicated. I highly recommend anyone that wants to know more about the entire issue to try to catch one of the repeats.

Next weeks episode involves a guy whose job was shipped to India. It looks like they send the guy to India to do his job there. Looks pretty interesting.

Love these social experiements. :)

5 comments:

Silent Joe said...

Its not too complicated. They are breaking the law and need to suffer the consequences of such. You wouldnt tell a bank robber, oh its ok you just robbed that bank, you have a hard life at home and you do such a good job at your day job, its ok. We will over look it.

They need to follow the rules and laws just like everyone else. Maybe if they put as much effort into fixing there own country as they do in leaving it, there country could prosper.

Ryan said...

It gets extremely complicated because of the shear numbers we are talking about here. Something like 14 million illegal aliens in the country now. What do you plan on doing with them all?

Then there is the issue with those families that had kids in America. Those kids are citizens while their parents are not. How do you deal with that situation?

The only way you are going to solve this is by investing in Mexico and giving them a reason to stay there and not come here. If you saw the 'house' these people lived in before coming to America you would have a better understanding into why they risk it all to come to the US.

Silent Joe said...

Why should WE, the USA build up Mexico when we cant even take care of Americans?

They came here illegally, there children were born here illegally, therefore they are not "citizens" in my eyes.

They can all exit the same way they came in. Maybe if we stop paying for all these illegals, we will have enough to help our homeless and other troubled americans.

At what point does "investing" stop? Do we build up Mexico, India, Africa, Irag? Hell dude, we cant even fix our own house let alone to be fixing other countries.

Maybe we should just start taking over sovereign nations, wait, we already did that in Iraq. Why give it back? We should just annex them...

Ryan said...

Who said only the US needs to do the investing? It is in the best interest of the modern world to invest in third world countries and other less fortunate countries to bolster the environment people live in. There is a great stat floating around regarding wars and the like. It goes something along the lines of the # of wars fought between two countries with a McDonalds is 0. Think about that. Why would that be? Could it have anything to do with the economic fortunes of the more modern, wealthy countries between totally intertwined?

The same dynamic is at play between mexico and the US. Mexico is a poor country and the US is not. The conditions in which those people that risk their life to come to the US are coming from is worse than even the poorest in America live in. Wouldn't you try to get the hell out of dodge if your only source of water was a stagnant puddle?

I'm not saying that we should welcome everyone anytime for any reason. I think we need to do a better job enforcing the laws on the books and going after the companies that hire illegal aliens. However, it is a gross over-simplification of the situation to just say 'send them back'. That isn't even possible logistically.

And like it or not, the law says that kids born in America are citizens of America, regardless of wherre the parents came from or their status in the US.

Silent Joe said...

Maybe if they put as much effort into creating change in there own countries as they do in running from them, it would not be as bad.

I believe in a united Earth, dont get me wrong but we cant even fix our own problems and we are running off trying to save other countries.