Exodus? My Response

          “People aren’t coming here as much as they are leaving a cratered economy” (par. 9). On the article, Exodus by Marc Cooper, he pointed out the recent situation of Mexicans who were aspiring to be in America. The promise of a better life, higher wages and job opportunities are being associated to be as an American dream (par. 9). Marc Cooper’s arguments wanted to open the mind of his reader that a lot of Mexicans suffer before they can actually step into the grounds of United States of America. One example he pointed out is when he warned a nursing mother not to make the crossing but after a week, when he was requested to identify the fatality that had been found in the desert, he recognized the same young woman. What is here in America that is worth dying for is the question that many people against immigration could not clear out.

          As I read the article Exodus, the author indirectly points out the reasons why most immigrants wanted to be in this country and that is to sustain their selves. America is known to be a country of free market and competition. Say for example there is a job opening and two people applied. One is an American that has a bachelor’s degree and the other one is a Mexican that has a doctorate degree. Who do you think will earn the job? Of course the one with higher capabilities to do the job well. For the issue of having a good job in correlation to illegal immigrants and legal immigrants, illegal immigrants don’t really get a good job because most of the decent jobs right now require papers. Jobs such as a construction workers, house cleaners and babysitters are jobs that most illegal immigrants ended up to. Would Americans do the job? Do you think Americans would do the job of picking fruits under the heat of the sun? On a professional capacity as a bachelor’s degree holder, can Americans do it? The answer is no. Poverty drives most of the immigrants to be in the First World Economy country. The increasing volume of immigrants as well as the tightening of the borders is all inevitable but to question the availability of jobs that were supposed to be for the Americans to have is not acceptable. Even in the article Exodus, Marc Cooper noted what Charles Bowden think is the solution to lower the number of immigrants in America as quoted, “The only way you’ll stop Mexicans coming to the U.S. is if you lower American wages to the same level as Vietnam” (par. 9). For me he sounds like admitting that America has a lot to offer when it comes to job for its citizens but majority of it was occupied by those immigrants that are more willing to sacrifice whatever they can to sustain their selves. This is a character that everyone must have to survive.

Works Cited

Cooper, Marc. “Exodus.” Perspectives on Arguments. 6^th Ed. Nancy Wood. Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.

The Kaingin System (Slash and Burn Farming)

               It is always a question why humans continue to do the slash-and-burn farming (kaingin). One reason often being associated with this dilemma is economic reasoning of poor people where in fact the great question of ethical consideration of preserving nature is being sacrificed. Some consider kaingin as their means of earning money to finance their basic needs by utilizing any possible natural resources within their area of residency and sell them on the market. They claim that it is only through this system that they can feed their family since most of them haven't had the chance to go to school to earn a decent degree. Many had attested that the elimination of trees in the mountains had greatly affected the overall hydrologic cycle of nature and that kaingin is the major attributor on this argument. Can we stop the kaingin system? Can we really blame poverty on this predicament?

               I am interested on the rampant problem of kaingin system because, like many developing countries, Philippines had been facing this problem for decades without any new advancement in alleviating the existing problem. Philippines had been recently visited by a lot of water runoff from storms and regular rains and consensus said that this is due to excessive overflow from the mountains because there are not enough trees that can help soil in seeping water on the surface. Since this problem catches the hydrology and hydraulics area which is part of my academic interest for my undergraduate degree, I always wanted to make use of whatever knowledge I have to save mother nature.

               I know that kaingin is a process where trees are being cut and turn into charcoal by burning the woods without replacing the trimmed trees. From where I live in the Philippines, it seems that this activity was always perform every night because I can always see the mountains burning. Kaingin had been addressed several times in the Philippine Congress as a threat because of the domino effect of removing trees in the mountains and the catastrophic loss that may occur once kaingin will never stop.

               I need to do more research on obtaining and relating the consensus of having a great flood to the depletion of trees on the mountains. I would like to explore other possible options that we can follow for solving the continuous kaingin system and asses each options in their weaknesses and strengths to develop a new efficient and effective way of alleviating this problem. Also, if the blame is all paid to poverty, I would like to seek out some solutions on this matter and discuss their practicability.