by Sandy » Thu Apr 29, 2010 6:21 am
I happen to be a native Arizonan who grew up in Cochise County in the southeastern corner of the state, which is one of the areas that is hot in terms of illegal crossings. There are two border crossings in the county, one in the small town of Naco, which straddles the border, the other between Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, which is the busiest of the two. The fence that extends along the border is chain link, buried into the ground, and about 12 feet high with barbed wire across the top. But that's not where the illegal crossings occur. They happen in remote areas of the desert, miles away from the border crossings, in places where the fence is nothing but a few strands of barbed wire, and where a handful of border patrol have to cover hundreds of square miles of territory.
I lived in a subdivision south of a small town 40 miles north of the border, and during most of my childhood and teenage years, the sight of illegals, groups of three or four mostly men walking up the alley behind our house was a common, daily occurrence. My sister, who still lives in the same neighborhood, tells me that the same thing still happens, except that the numbers have increased dramatically, and so has the crime. Such activity is probably more dangerous for those here illegally, since the climate in the desert, especially in the summertime, is not conducive to long hikes, and they are subject to both abuse and exploitation.
The easiest way to enforce existing immigration law would be to prosecute, with stiff financial penalties, the businesses who knowingly hire those who are here illegally. Yeah, in Southern Arizona there are some ranchers and farmers who hire illegals here and there, and always have done so, but the real problem is in the larger businesses who see this as a source of cheap labor which leads to bigger profits. Remove the profit incentive with a fine that is larger than the financial benefit of cheap labor, and the stream of illegals from Mexico would return to being just a trickle across the border. From a political standpoint, for the federal government, it will require a reversal of Bush administration policy which winked at the problem and essentially gave a green light to their corporate supporters, and then gutted the Border Patrol's budget to give tax breaks to the wealthy.