I was struck though by the very stark contrast between a Mexican "migrant" and one from, say, North Korea. Imagine a Mexican being not only sent back to Mexico, but being brutally tortured or even killed upon being sent back. Imagine a Mexican being charged with leaving his home village as though it were a criminal offense. And in North Korea it is a criminal offense. Imagine a Mexican being tried in court for not showing up at work. Imagine the accusation of "leaving the country." Leaving the country is an internationally guaranteed right, assuming of course that the other country is willing to receive another citizen or tourist.

After being found guilty of all of the above, imagine a Mexican being sent to a short-term (2-3 years?) labor camp where there is below subsistence-level food rationing and high possibility of death and the hardest of labor. Imagine grueling interrogations geared at determining the poor hungry soul's dedication to the Mexican regime.

Hard to imagine in this hemisphere? But everyday stuff in Chosun, aided by China's supportive hands. Whenever possible the Chinese police, expecting a bonus of some sort, send North Koreans back to their own land. Of course, it's not always possible. As here, "illegals" are quite often assimilated into the culture and the economy.

But part of that economy is slave trade "over there". Imagine that. A Mexican risks his life to get to a place where there is food, and is trapped at the border by a citizen of the host country. He or she is sold into sexual slavery, or forced into a marriage to some desperate American...

Again hard to imagine, but very common at the Chinese border.

Imagine local businesses in America being raided from time to time, as illegals are swept out the back door like so much vermin and sent back to Mexico (I know some have proposed this). Imagine Mexicans having been treated so poorly here, and punished beyond words in their home land, actually attempting to make the trip here again. Imagine that a trip to the United States may mean the killing or imprisonment of all their family in Mexico.

Imagine that during interrogation at home in Mexico, the Mexican is asked if he went to a Christian Church. Imagine that with a positive response to that question he is executed. Imagine a Mexican begging the interrogator to kill her so as to avoid any more punishment.

Imagine a Mexican who has become pregnant in the States being forced to abort her child, or kill her already-born infant, so that the holy ethnicity of the Mexicans can remain intact.

Can't do it, can you? Can't imagine such horrors in our part of the world? But David Hawk in his Hidden Gulag (available free online) documents that all these things and more have happened in Chosun.