Van Group 1, Day 5

Hullo parents at home! Today I am writing this journal! Aha!
So, today we got up in the morning and finished packing our belongings, loaded them into the vans and cleaned the rooms at the church. We then drove to BorderLinks, where we did a simulation of the agricultural industry in the US and Mexico before and after NAFTA. I started off as a Mexican corn farmer on a family farm. We were the most successful of the family farms because we were really fast at picking up corn (our task as corn farmers was to pick up kernels of corn off the ground and put them in cups and sell it to the corn buyer). Then NAFTA came along. Suddenly Mr. Corn Man would only pay 100 pesos for a full cup of corn as opposed to the previous 400 pesos. Food coupons also became ridiculously expensive, going from 100 a piece to 800 pesos. All of my family snuck across the border and I never heard fom them again (Except Kendall who sent me a frozen dinner and a thick flank which is a piece of meat I'm pretty sure).
We discussed why this happened and ate lunch which was super yummy. After lunch our group (Van Group 1, best group ever) went across the street to Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) and watched a presentation adressing the various issues roused by militarization of the border.
After this we returned to BorderLinks and watched a documentary about the journey across the border. It was good in the scene that it very clearly showed the specific reasons to cross as well as the difficulty of doing so but the directors attempts to make as dramatic as possible with crackly voice overs and random black and white clips made it a bit difficult to take seriously.
Lastly we explored why many immigrants do not take the legal path to citizenship or a green card. We did a roleplay activity where each person was given a character and was sent through the immigration process.Most people who actually made it through to the US were either very skilled, very famous, or had direct family in the US. Although they could become citizens or green card holders, it would take about 15 years for most of them to go through the process.
It is now almost time for dinner and I am writhing this blog post. Huzzah!