Mexican article should focus on facts

I am writing in response to Britta Clark’s story in Monday’s edition of The Oracle.

I am sure you do not want to hear some actual facts about why “Mexicans come due to the large growth of population that can not be supported in Mexico. Santibanez said Mexico cannot sustain all of the people in the country.”

But here they are anyway: California’s population density is 70 percent more than that of Mexico (mainly due to Mexican immigrants).

Italy’s population density is four times more than Mexico’s. Germany, France, China and many other countries also have much higher population densities than Mexico.

How are all these countries able to sustain their people without having to export them to the United States? I obtained this info from .

A few additional facts: Mexico’s unemployment rate is only 3 percent — half that of the United States’ unemployment rate as stated at .

Mexico’s per-capita income is $9,100 annually, higher than Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, and most of Asia. .

Finally, Mexico’s population growth rate is no higher than the world average. Using Mr. Santibanez’s argument, shouldn’t we let immigrants into the United States in proportion to their percentage of the world’s population?

Currently, even though Mexicans are only 2 percent of the world’s population, they make up 30 percent of the United States’ immigrants.

Sounds racist and discriminatory to me.

Tim Brummer is a resident of California.

Saudi Arabia has lost its position in affairs

The latest duel between Libya and Saudi Arabia signaled the start of a new era in Middle East relations with Saudi Arabia losing its self-proclaimed position as the leader of the Arab world to a much smaller role, which restricts it to the Gulf area and not the entire Middle East.

The reason that this turn of events took place was because of Saudi Arabia’s failure to play an active role in mediating the current Gulf crises and its obsession with protecting its self-interests that today are viewed by Arabs and Americans alike as protecting an extreme form of government that is alarmingly similar to that of Mullah Omar in Afghanistan.

The similarity is in the social structure based on a model of an ancient Islamic form in which rules and regulations are dictated by the ministry of virtue — which in reality, is nothing but a link to the old days of mankind when the term “human rights” was yet to be created.

This system is a tool used to enforce virtues deemed essential by Saudi religious leaders who work alongside the government to maintain the lowest form of human rights and dignity in the name of Islam and maintain the flow of massive oil revenues to one family.

This form of extreme Islam is not the norm in the Middle East, where a more moderate and progressive form of Islam in regions of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and most parts of North Africa prevails. These countries have managed to use Islam as a tool of progress and developed their social structure in a genuine attempt to reach out to the world as partners in business, security and global heritage. It is no surprise to see a developing form of democracy in which citizens choose their representatives and have a say in internal and external politics and policy.

Finally, I would like to stress the importance of American assistance to the progressive Arab and Islamic states in the Middle East in order to challenge the ideologies that preach extremism, which, in the long run, would help create a more stable Middle East that can maintain its own security. This will give the world a stable platform to focus on development and technology rather than war.

Abdo Masoud is a senior majoring in international relations and president for International Studies Organization.