Posted on 07/26/2014 7:20:36 PM PDT by blueplum
Visiting El Salvador over the past year, it was hard not to think the country's number-one job is standing around outside with a gun. In the region from which child migrants are fleeing to the US, personal security is largely a question of what you can afford to pay. El Salvador has, by one estimate, 25,000 private guards in a country with 20,000 police officers. In Honduras, which boasts the highest murder rate in the world and has seen the largest exodus of young people to the American border this year, guards outnumber cops five to one.
Wealthy Salvadorans can retreat to residential compounds that resemble a militarized version of a Palm Beach retirement community, complete with golf carts. Behind high walls and even higher voltage wires, one economist gushed to me: "This place has everything – we never have to go outside!" For the rest, those who stay and those who get sent back, gangland drama is a fact of life.
:snip:'
Both major gangs now plaguing the region originated in Los Angeles. The gang that became MS-13 was originally an informal collection of teenage civil war refugees and metal-heads who borrowed their devil-horns hand sign from Judas Priest. Their onetime ally-turned-rival, Mara 18, traces back to the 1940s but shared with the newer gang an open-door membership for Central Americans that put them both at odds with the area's more established, exclusively Mexican gangs. When those gangs began to terrorize the new immigrants, MS-13 and Mara 18 fought back.
:snip:
During El Salvador's recent presidential elections, the opposition party posted billboards in regions from which the largest number of migrants are leaving. Under pictures of Salvadoran families in DC, California and New York read lines like I WANT TO RETURN TO A COUNTRY FREE OF GANGS...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Not my biggest concern right now. When it is actually used to keep us in it will probably work like the one we have now. Nothing the government does works.
Drunk driving is a serious criminal offense. It leads to thousands of deaths a year. A citizen caught drunk driving is often imprisoned and fined heavily losing his driving privileges and freedom. deportation is in order for an alien convicted of such an offense.
Breakin’ The Law!
Steaming pile alert.
Your comments are very valid; I was thinking only in tactile needs i.e., the situation demanding attacking something on the other side of the border, for instance. You make a good point.
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