Neto's Tucson: Border saga repeats year after year

By Ernesto Portillo Jr. Arizona Daily Star
Posted: Sunday, June 5, 2011 12:00 am

Several newspaper headlines caught my attention last week. One said that Border Patrol freeway checkpoints are coming to an end. Another screamed that the flow of illegal migrants was "out of control."

Yet another headline stated, "Disillusioned Mexicans slipping back home," and a smaller one reported that nearly 60 illegal crossers were rescued after a five-day ordeal in triple-digit weather.

Yet the headlines are not from today's newspapers.

They are more than 30 years old.

A cursory reading of a batch of articles from the Arizona Daily Star and the defunct Tucson Daily Citizen newspapers are revealing about illegal immigration and the border. We're still talking about and debating the same challenges.

Then as now, the rhetoric over illegal immigration rings sharply. Calls for increased border enforcement are insistent.

In a Jan. 14, 1976, front-page story in the Tucson Daily Citizen, the top U.S. immigration officer - Leonard F. Chapman Jr., then commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service - called for employer sanctions as the "tide of illegal aliens entering the United States continues 'out of control.' " Border enforcement was increasing during the administration of Gerald Ford, but some in the U.S. Border Patrol feared their resources would be reduced.

In a Citizen story on July 24, 1975, a deputy patrol chief in San Diego predicted that "the days of the fixed checkpoint are over."

The official was reacting to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that border agents needed probable cause to search a vehicle's interior.

There are more interior checkpoints, fixed and temporary, today than there were in 1975. Likewise, the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed Arizona's employer sanction law.

But even with more border enforcement, road checkpoints and employer sanctions, people continue to enter the country illegally. And they continue to leave when the economy sours, like it has now.

In a July 9, 1975, Citizen story, James Wyckoff reported that Mexican workers were returning home "in the wake of Arizona's slumping economy and unemployment."

As a result, fewer people were illegally crossing the border and the U.S. Border Patrol reported "an unprecedented 20 percent drop in apprehensions of illegal aliens," Wyckoff wrote.

He went on to quote a Border Patrol official who stressed that enforcement had become more effective as border crossers had to confront "the obstacle course of increased patrols, border patrol air surveillance and electronic sensors." The article also said Border Patrol agents were preparing for an increase in border crossers as the state and national economy improved.

But the assistant chief acknowledged that the "casual" border jumper was forced to use human smugglers because of the tighter border security.

Regardless of the coinciding ebb and flow of migrants and the economy, there has been a constant: deaths.

"A five-day march from the U.S.-Mexican border to Casa Grande through blistering 100-degree desert temperatures ended last week for 58 illegal Mexican aliens with their rescue by the U.S. Border Patrol," reported the Arizona Daily Star on May 31, 1974.

The story went on to say that several of the rescued migrants were near death after having walked 100 miles. The migrants, all men, were waiting for a cattle truck to pick them up. Each had paid up to $40 to the smuggler.

Today's smuggling fees are in the thousands of dollars because the billions spent on border enforcement have raised the risks and costs of illegal crossings.

Finally, an Oct. 2, 1974, headline said that the flow of border crossers was defying federal efforts.

"Thousands of illegal Mexican aliens are working long hours for low wages throughout the United States despite increased federal efforts to ferret them out," The Associated Press reported.

Today's headlines are yesterday's headlines.

Ernesto Portillo Jr. is editor of La Estrella de TucsĂłn. Contact him at netopjr@azstarnet.com or at 520-573-4187.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/ ... 70b87.html