Illegal entry and drug smuggling in perspective…what if all this was going on in your front yard?
by Hugh Holub on Apr. 17, 2011, under border issues, border patrol, border patrol tucson sector, drug smuggling, immigration law reform, mexican drug cartels, politicsDepartment of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano keeps telling America the border is more secure than ever. Janet Napolitano: Border security better than ever
But if you live on or near the border where the Border Patrol has NOT secured the border…as rancher Jim Chilton testified to Congress recently….it is a whole other world down here.
Most of you do not live near the border so you probably have no idea what is going on down here.
Let me try and put in a perspective you can relate to.
Every night hundreds of people walk through your front yard.
They leave water bottles, clothing, and other trash in your yard so every morning you have to clean up your yard.
If you leave your car or truck parked outside one morning it will be gone…stolen. A few weeks later your stolen vehicle will be recovered as part of a drug bust.
If you aren’t home, your home will be broken into.
And occasionally you will spot a guy carrying an AK 47 leading a group of illegal aliens with large back packs or a string of horses loaded with duffle bags filled with marijuana through your yard.
Every once in a while an undocumented immigrant will pound on your front door asking for water and first aid. You start leaving water bottles on your front porch.
Even though you leave water bottles on your front porch, you often find your garden hose running in the morning because someone needed a drink but didn’t have the courtesy to turn off the faucet. You find out you can buy a locking mechanism to put on all your outdoor water faucets.
Occasionally one of the immigrants pounding on your door has been the victim of border bandits, with even their shoes having been stolen. By now you have memorized the Border Patrol’s phone number.
If you have a big front yard, you might even find a dead person in your yard…either an undocumented immigrant who died of heat exhaustion, or a victim of a drug cartel shooting.
While you may have a lot of sympathy for the plight of undocumented workers, you find your property is being overwhelmed by nightly traffic and trash. You quit putting out water bottles and put a rifle by your front door just in case the next person pounding on your door at 4 AM is a drug cartel goon.
You notice that when you call the Border Patrol to report an encounter will drug smugglers or illegal aliens on your property, as you are more frequently doing, they take a long time to respond, if ever.
You start asking yourself…why the hell can’t the Border Patrol strop illegal entry and drug smuggling at the border.
You seriously think about selling out and moving somewhere else in the United States where all this is not going on nightly…but you realize someone would have to be insane to buy your home.
You keep asking yourself…why does the federal government and the coyotes who guide illegal aliens and the drug smugglers assume they can run all over your property with impunity every night?
And you get very angry. This is not the way to live in the United States of American in 2011.
Note: Every one of these scenarios has happened to us or our friends who live near or on the border.
April 17th, 2011 on 9:00 am
Worse than the situation in South Central LA?. Worse than the South Side of Chicago? Worse than Bed-Sty in NY? Maybe by a degree of two, but those people have also been asking for relief, and asking for many years more than the ranchers. And they don’t even get price supports or almost-free rent on land, so maybe they’ve got a bigger beef (pardon the pun).
Besides, aren’t we supposed to act entirely out of naked self-interest here? Isn’t that the theory: by acting entirely out of self-interest, I help everybody without even trying to help? So, since none of these things are happening to me, my self-interest is to ignore them. Just like we ignore the plight of the other victims of self-interest, I will ignore the plight of the ranchers and thereby “do my part” in making this a great country.
April 17th, 2011 on 9:21 am
What is interesting is the link between drug smuggling and the mess in our cities…
…and folks ought to consider who is going to take care of the range lands if the cowboys are gone…do you think for a moment the government is going to have folks out there at night or on weekends? You comment about almost-free rent….you of all people should know the history of “public” lands that were actually stolen by the federal government …. a lot of the borderlands ranches existed prior to this even being part of the United States. The American taxpayer never paid a dime to confiscate the lands now called “public”.
April 17th, 2011 on 11:04 am
I will never be convinced that running cattle on land, especially this land, is a good thing for anybody or anything other than the ranchers.
Who will take care of the rangelands when the ranchers are gone? I suppose they will be cared for in the same way as they were prior to the arrival of the ranchers.
My problems with putting effort and money into trying to preserve a romantic notion of the “old west” are many. One is that I find it hard to be sympathetic to the ranchers because they are largely the benficiaries of our monies, monies which are being used to support a previously powerful constituency’s income and also to provide the millions of pounds of dead animal carcasses that the public wants to eat at artifically low prices. It’s just me, but I object to meat-eating on moral as well as political grounds. People, animals and environments all over the world suffer because we like big, greasy steaks.
Another objection is the special consideration and attention given to people who, on the one hand, are likely supporters of the American ethos of competition and social darwinism, while on the other hand, they are whining and asking for help from the same federal government (which they no doubt despise, except when the checks come their way) they accuse of interfering by restoring a natural predator that they wiped out in their search for ever greater profit. Most people in the world are living on $2.00/day or less. They’re not able to order a big T-bone, wash it down with liquor and finish it off with a fine cigar. Even a dead chicken would be a big luxury for them. Plenty of people “trespass” upon their livelihoods and their rights and no one cares too much.
This is just my POV and I realize not many would agree with me, but I can give no more credence to the concerns of ranchers than I can give to the international proletariat; those living on two dollars a day. And these are the very people who were and continue to be displaced from their lands (and sometimes killed too) by those feeding our appetites for dead animals. The international proletariat includes those fleeing a situation created by business interests and crossing the border in their flight. It also includes the poor saps who carry the loads of marijuana across the ranchers land. They don’t have the luxury of bourgeois morality making them realize that drugs are harmful to everyone, nor the luxury of the bourgeoisie to choose “another line of work”. First we take care of the proletariat, then we’ll worry about the rancher’s concerns. That should be the priority, not protecting our supply of bloody steaks and the ranchers “way of life”.
April 17th, 2011 on 9:33 am
Good article , Hugh. I would add my experience of discovering a “rape tree” two streets from my house, in an area I frequently ride my horse.
I was naive when I moved to Baja Arizona. I had no idea I would be living in fear.
There are some sad stories, of encountering people who can barely walk, weak from not eating for days. Most are, no doubt, looking for a better life. But there is a criminal element involved, too, since money can be made by smuggling people and drugs. I wish the border could be patrolled and secured at the border. There should be field outposts all along the border . The illegal crossers should be stopped there, so they don’t get into our neighborhoods.
April 17th, 2011 on 1:39 pm
So what happens when they get “into our neighborhoods” The local Hispanics will never report them. (I bet they dont live in your neighborhood because we would report them). Then the cycle starts.
April 17th, 2011 on 2:04 pm
So what happens when they get “into our neighborhoods”
Then you get your pool cleaned and your landscape maintained, as it has always been. As a bonus, you get someone to look down upon while they’re working for you.
May 19th, 2011 on 8:01 am
well all i can say that it is clean
May 19th, 2011 on 9:03 am
So who did these jobs before the businessmen hired them.
April 17th, 2011 on 12:02 pm
Excellent article for a change. Unless you walk in my shoes, please don’t criticize me. These ranchers and most people in Baja Arizona, are experiencing devastating problems from the illegal alins invading us and the cartels. We live in a gated, very nice neighborhood and we still have break-ins and theft from illegals. How do we know? Because when they are finally captured by Law Enforcement, they are invariably illegal Mexicans, usually with a previous record. However, ICE does nothing so they are usually simply deported back to Mexico to return to the U.S. another day.
April 17th, 2011 on 2:06 pm
“We live in a gated, very nice neighborhood and we still have break-ins and theft from illegals.”
It’s just terrible to think that the real world is encroaching on your own private Idaho.
April 17th, 2011 on 2:14 pm
They have a right to be left alone. They have a right not to be victimized by crime by illegals and you make fun of them. You say they are “from Idaho” like its an insult to be white and conservative.
I will suggest they arm themselves. Make the next robber pay the ultimate price for robbing their home.
Maybe they are just plain sick and tired of illegal alien mexican peons, I know I am.
April 17th, 2011 on 2:36 pm
“Private Idaho” is an idiomatic expression referring to one’s own self-constructed paradise cut off from the cares of the world. It’s not about race or political philosophy.
I have no problem with the idea that burglary is a dangerous profession and people are going to shoot at you if you try to steal from them. Everyone has the right to self defense, individually and collectively. See, we can all agree on some things.
As to “rights”: yep, we all have a right to be left alone. It happens to be my favorite “right” and I exercise that right as often as practical. On the other hand, the poor saps who are being forced across the border also have rights and among those are the right to self defense against poverty and starvation. They have a right to survival, one that takes precedence over crossing someone’s border.
I also think the people who live in the ghettos of America have the same “rights” to be left alone and not have to deal with robbery and drug dealing every day. In my mind they even have a “right” to eat every day and decent medical care. This is where my sarcasm and lack of sympathy for rich white folks living in “nice neighborhoods” comes from. Once the less fortunate have those same “rights”, then I’ll be more concerned about the well-to-do.
April 26th, 2011 on 9:58 pm
Less fortunate = less motivated……Rich white folks = former proletariat……America = Not Mexico…..Stay in Mexico and fix yer damn country, Paco…….
April 17th, 2011 on 1:35 pm
Couldn’t aggree more Hugh.
We really need to get at the root of these problems. Unfortunately. Corporations and age old labor battles still successfully provide large profits and cheap food/products for us. Its crazy but these are our tax dollars at work via Ag Subsidies and so forth. It seems somehow the USDA , BP, DEA , ICE ,perhaps unwittingly, are put in positions that favor the Companies. I still find it difficult to believe big problems with big money isn’t linked to some form of corruption. Walter Kelly’s “We have met the enemy…” also comes to mind.
One example of the hypocrisy at the heart of U.S. immigration policy: In Tar Heel, North Carolina, Hispanic workers at a Smithfield Foods ($12 billion) packing plant are rounded up by ICE agents (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in a pre-dawn raid. A politician running for office would narrate such a scene by saying that these men and women, while perhaps hard workers, are in the U.S. illegally and if the rule of law is going to mean anything in this country, they must be picked up and sent to a detention center where the legal process can run its course.
The true story: After NAFTA caused cheap (19% below production costs) American corn to flood Mexican markets, putting even prosperous Mexican corn farmers out of business, many fled to the U.S., desperate for work to support their families. Many others were actively recruited (Adverts placed in Mexico) by corporations like Smithfield to work dangerous jobs in American factories. Government raids carried out in collusion with the senior management of companies like Smithfield to “send a message” (to Americans, to the undocumented) while never really interfering with the company’s production line or, more importantly, its bottom line.
Since then Smithfield has been fined and sued over a variety of issues involving an 16 year union battle. National Labor Relations Board called for new elections, etc. etc..
Check out: NAFTA + US Farm Subsidies Devastates Mexican Agriculture. Why Do Mexican Workers Head North? Food,Inc.
April 17th, 2011 on 1:36 pm
Good article Hugh.
April 17th, 2011 on 1:37 pm
You make the point for the US Army on our border. Not the National Guard who just observe and report but the real Army who can secure the border.
April 18th, 2011 on 6:12 pm
leftwing, your momma did not give you enough titty when you were little, did she? You sure are a sourpuss. If ranchers are getting too much help, how come all my rancher friends have such a hard time making a living?
I am retired and living in town, but my relatives on both sides have always ranched. I know a little about what they go through trying to feed most of the world, vegetarians excepted. I also know what it is like to be invaded. A few years ago a 24 year old man ran in my back door while high on methamphetamine. He looked like Mike Tyson, except he was of Mexican descent. I look like Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies, so I was no match for him. I grabbed a pistol and chased him around until he found the door. Then I called police. He left in the ambulance and I did not, so all is well that ends well. I am glad I eat all that good grass-fed beef so I had the strength to deal with him! I would hate to have had to face him on a remote ranch where police and an ambulance might take hours to get here. Think about it!
April 25th, 2011 on 12:05 pm
If ranchers are getting too much help, how come all my rancher friends have such a hard time making a living?
I guess in response, I’d ask you these questions:
If all your rancher friends are having such as hard time making a living, why are they still doing it? Why not do something else if it’s so bad?
Secondly, you say they are “having a hard time”. Well, most of us a having a hard time right now. Relative to whom are they having a harder time? A single mom with two kids? A carpenter in the home construction business?
April 25th, 2011 on 11:47 am
Hey leftfield, take off your rose colored glasses. Your the poster child for the axiom, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” If Mexicans were sooooo wonderful, why aren’t they making their own Country liveable!
April 25th, 2011 on 12:07 pm
With or without my “rose colored glasses”, I still can’t find any reference to Mexico or Mexicans in my comments.