Thread: AZ: Crisis on the border

Crisis on the border
Failure to solve immigration issues causes real suffering

April 18, 2007
BY CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com
PIMA COUNTY, Ariz. -- We like to say there are two sides to every story. But here on the front lines of the immigration wars, there are 10 sides. Maybe more.
Last week we made our annual trek to a great old horse ranch on the Arizona side of the Mexican border. It is here, every year, that we leave the city behind, lope the desert and drink in the beauty of the West. But midway through the week, the desert took on all sorts of different dimensions. Down the road were the Minutemen -- people from all over the United States, young and old, who volunteer their time to come down, camp out, watch the border and report sightings of illegal immigrants to law enforcement. Their critics consider them vigilantes. The Minutemen consider themselves patriots dedicated to having the borders secured and the law against illegal immigration obeyed.

Lavonne and Delbert Drymiller, retirees who for decades lived and worked in Harvard, Ill., were among the people I met. "I don't want to be mean to anybody," said Lavonne, 78, but she added, "people need to come here the right way."

Pat King agrees. She and her husband have allowed the Minutemen to set up on their 50,000-acre spread because their ranch, in the last decade, has been vandalized countless times. Water pipes broken. Buildings robbed. Property stolen. Fences trampled by groups as large as 60 or 70, causing their cattle to head for the highway. Some of the groups have presented a certain danger: "My husband will be coming down from the mountains and see druggies with their backpacks. You must stop them, you must."

But the desert is full of meek travelers as well as wily traffickers.

On Wednesday, during a morning ride, ranch guide Jason Cathcart radioed that he'd spotted a group of illegals hiding in a wash. Within minutes, we came upon six of them, a woman and five young men. With our embarrassingly fractured Spanish, we were able to figure out that the woman was the mother of the 18-year-old at her side. They told us they'd been walking for three days. The night before, there had been a hard rain and a high wind. And they'd run out of water. They were polite, nervous, and eager for us to ride away. But within an hour, as we approached the ranch's lower corral, there they were again. This time in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.

The image of that thirty-something mother and her son sticks with me. You have to be awfully desperate to leave your home behind, risk the crushing daytime heat and the cold nights of the desert, and set out for a country that wants your cheap labor but not the economic burden of educating your children and caring for your sick.

I'm also struck by the decency of a rancher like King, who is not unsympathetic to the plight of immigrant workers but who has become a prisoner of her own property. Her husband's family homesteaded this land in 1895, they've worked it ever since, but now can't leave it unguarded.

In Washington, President Bush has proposed a guest worker program. In the odd world of politics, for once he and the Democrats are talking some of the same language. Meanwhile, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) has joined with fellow Congressman Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to propose a package of immigration reforms that include increased border security, greater accountability of employers who hire the undocumented, as well as provisions for guest workers.

The Democrats who now control the House are hoping to lead a charge for immigration reform. But Republicans in the Senate have expressed grave doubts. Nobody's kidding themselves. Without significant bipartisan agreement, this is a powder keg of an issue that none of the current presidential candidates are all that keen about wrestling with. All the more incentive for House members and senators on both sides of the aisle to figure something out by the summer, well before the caucuses and primaries of 2008.

I have no idea what the answer is. But far away from Washington, in the desert that links Arizona with Mexico, there is, in the words of Arizona's own governor, "a state of emergency" to which we have paid precious little attention.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/3462 ... 18.article

Nobody's kidding themselves. Without significant bipartisan agreement, this is a powder keg of an issue that none of the current presidential candidates are all that keen about wrestling with

This is so not true. We all know Tancredo & Hunter are using the illegal immigration problem as a main focal point in their campaigns.