Money buys first class border crossing
By Jeremy Schwartz | Monday, February 18, 2008, 03:18 PM


Apparently money can buy almost anything, including, easy access to the United States. According to last week’s emeequis magazine, a kind of a hip version of Time or Newsweek, coyotes, or people smugglers are using techniques that go far beyond the traditional desert exodus.

For its cover story, the magazine uses the story of an anonymous coyote, who claims to be from the state of Sinaloa and plies his trade along the Arizona border. According the man, migrants who can afford $3,000 get the deluxe treatment: The coyote says that his operation rents legal visas from Mexicans for $300 a week and has a stash of the documents at any given time. When migrants pay the $3,000 they go through the visas looking for a photo ID that resembles the would-be border crosser. The match doesn’t have to be exact, our anonymous coyote explains. The human smugglers also have a crew of makeup artists stashed along the border who will change hair color, give colored contacts, pencil in moles or freckles, glue fake beards and dress the migrant as a well-to-do border crosser. The migrant is then taken across the international bridge by car and tells the border guard that he or she is simply headed to the nearest Wal-Mart or shopping mall. “That’s because if you say you’re going farther, they’ll pass the visa through the machine…and they trap you,â€