Curmudgeon's Corner

Border Security & Immigration Laws

Posted by Al Campbell on April 21, 2010

Economy, Political, Quality of Life, U.S.

Border security continues to be shoved to the back of the line even as we receive increasing reports of incursions by the Mexican armed forces as they try to fight the drug lords.  One Arizona sheriff has even gone so far as to tell his citizens they had better be armed and always aware when they are farming their land on the border.

The drug lords in Mexico have been increasingly bold and have seemingly taken over that part of Mexico along our borders in Texas and Arizona.  Open warfare on the streets in broad daylight is quite a good indicator as to the status of the battle.  Reports indicate that the mercenaries and thugs working for these drug lords are often better equipped than the Mexican police and armed forces battling them.

Friends, who have been wintering in Texas for years, have told me that they went across the border to shop for pharmacy products and so on and have become accustomed to seeing armed checkpoints as soon as they cross into Mexico.

We have recent reports that scores of Somalis have likely come across the border and we have no idea of where they may be in the United States.  Mexican armed forces have intruded into the United States and we seem to turn a blind eye at those incursions.

Border security just isn’t important to our federal officials; if it were, they would be doing something about it.  They appear to be content with the porous nature of our borders and they don’t seem to have any problem with the illegals that continue to cross undetected.  Sen. Joe Lieberman has begun to push for some action and actually indicates that he favors a real fence to extend across the entire border as opposed to the ‘virtual fence’ that doesn’t seem to work very well.

Immigration ‘reform’ continues to lag in Congress even though we hear that it is “next in line”.  It seems to have been “next in line” for months now.  There is much concern on both sides of the illegal immigration issue.  One side believes that we should simply ignore the “problem” since we get cheap labor to perform jobs no American wants.  The other side believes that illegals are taking jobs away from Americans and are stealthily embedding themselves in our society at a significant cost to us.

That can be debated for a long time to come.  The interesting part of this to me is that we continue to ignore what seems a very real threat to our security by ignoring the border security as we have done historically.  The people who live in the vicinity of the border know what is happening and yet we take no real action aimed at securing our borders.

Why is this?  Is it because Congress is simply too afraid to tackle this divisive issue?  They weren’t afraid to turn health care on its head.  Is it because one party sees an advantage in future voter rolls?  Could be.  Is there some big campaign money flowing to our officials from companies using the illegals at low hourly wages with no benefits?  Could be.  Is there some behind-the-scenes deal with Mexico?  Could be.

Why aren’t we defending our border with Mexico?  And, why aren’t we dealing with the issue of illegal immigration?