text: just a thought but i wonder why? i just wonder why it is that we rush to help every country in the world to help them bring up their economy and standard of living but our neighbors south of the border seem to be left behind. i think you would help out your own neighborhood first,besides it may help solve our illegal immigrant problem in the long run too. any other thoughts on this? good point you have there. the problem is that with the corrupted governments of many latin american countries, financial aid would be kept by the rich. the solution would be that the united states government stopped intervening in latin american politics as much and let them have a socialist kind of government. uncle sam wants every country to have their kind of democracy, but they don't realize that it only works with educated people. most people in the u.s. have a fairly good education, but this is not the case with many latin american countries.  let's take chile as an example, which is the country with the strongest economy in latin america. they used to be consiered "third world" as well, until president pinochet got into power and he forced children to get an education. after many years of ruling this country, he finally ended his term but now chile has a strong economy and good education. i would guess that if that happened in every latin american country then we would all be a different continent. contact me if you have any thoughts about this.