An interesting presentation.

My mom's an English teacher, but not at a public school. She works at the local community college, and teaches ESL (English as a Second Language). So naturally, she works with a lot of Hispanic students, legal and illegal immigrants, teaching them English. The recent hype about "Illegal" Mexican immigrants has made her quite angry. She doesn't see any reason why they can't be treated as citizens too, and I agree with her.
So she set up a presentation at the synagogue, and got some people to speak on the topic. Last night was the night when this was happening. A total of three groups spoke. The first woman came directly from Mexico, and spoke very little English, so she had a translator with her.
She talked about how the major American banks like Bank of America that owned many major Mexican banks were making it extremely hard on people in Mexico. In the 90's the peso inflated so much that much of what Mexicans had saved in the bank was worth almost nothing. The American-owned banks, rather than helping these people through a problem like this, confiscated their property, leaving them no choice but to go to the US to find work. And they were mostly turned away at the border. This was, of course, extremely unfair and is still one of the main reasons Mexicans have to illegally immigrate to the US to find work. It's not as though they want to be here.
Two other groups spoke as well, but the first I found the most interesting. All in all, I learned quite a bit that night and I'm quite glad I went.