Reply #16: Well, it's really not that horrible, IMHO

[Piltdown13]

Yes, the city has water problems, and all the difficulties associated with being a border town -- El Paso/Juarez is really one large city that just happens to have an international border down the middle. But there are not beggars on every corner; I actually saw a lot more panhandlers on a daily basis living in Boston. I also rather doubt that there are 50,000 illegal kids in the EP school system -- back in the early 1990s, at least the EPISD started requiring a utility bill in a parent's name to enroll kids in school, among other measures...and enrollment at my high school, which is very near the border, dropped by a few hundred. And EP is largely ignored by the state legislature, probably because there's really no money to speak of there.

Of course, it's probably different for someone who moved to El Paso after having lived other places than for those of us who grew up there.