Thread: Border Patrol heads north in search of 6,000 agents

Border Patrol heads north in search of 6,000 agents
Thursday, December 13, 2007 3:22 AM
By Mark Ferenchik

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Top News StoriesThe U.S. Border Patrol is looking for you -- to work for them.

The Border Patrol will be recruiting Saturday at the Hyatt Regency Downtown as part of a national effort to hire 6,000 agents by the end of next year.

"Border security affects everybody," said Lloyd Easterling, a supervisory agent based in Washington, D.C. "This is an opportunity for us to go out and find people interested in law-enforcement work."

But a local Latino leader thinks the agency is here because it wants to recruit Midwesterners who are frightened by immigration and eager to halt Latinos at the U.S.-Mexican border.

The Latino community here views itself as isolated from the rest of the community, said Joseph L. Mas, chairman of the Ohio Hispanic Coalition.

"They feel they're a community under siege," he said.

Recruitment manager Joe Arata said Mas' comment on why the Border Patrol is recruiting here is "absolutely incorrect."

He said his team recruits in areas far from the borders to reach people interested in law enforcement who might not have considered the Border Patrol.

And, he added, "Anybody in the country can apply online."

Latinos who are U.S. citizens are encouraged to apply along with everyone else, he said.

Columbus is just one stop on the Border Patrol's recruiting itinerary. A job fair two weeks ago in Memphis, Tenn., drew 300 people, Arata said. In addition to Columbus, the patrol will be in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday.

Next month, job fairs are planned in Hattiesburg and Jackson, Miss.; St. Louis; and Richmond, Va., as well as Corpus Christi, Texas, which is about 160 miles from Mexico.

Starting pay is about $40,000, which can rise to more than $70,000 after three years with overtime or promotions, Easterling said.

The patrol has about 15,000 agents but lost almost 10 percent this year to retirements and resignations, he said.

One agent who has stuck it out is 39-year-old Greg Lambert, a former Powell resident who patrols the desert east of Yuma, Ariz., as a Border Patrol supervisor.

"Occasionally, we can get into situations that are fairly dangerous," said Lambert, a 1986 graduate of Olentangy High School. Lambert has been with the Border Patrol nine years and usually works solo, calling in backup when he needs to.

Easterling said the agency reported 987 assaults against agents for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Lambert said he was part of the Marine vanguard that entered Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, one of the first to breach the Iraq-Kuwait border. Now, he's patrolling a border to try to keep others from getting in.

"It's a logical fit," he said.

Recruits go through 95 days of training that includes handling firearms, learning immigration laws and tracking people, Easterling said.

Everyone is required to learn Spanish, Arata said.

Once trained, the agents are sent to California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas and assigned to rural areas along the border, much of it rugged desert.

Mas said the Border Patrol is seen by the Latino community as the "epitome of intolerance" and an organization whose goal is to send back as many people as it can catch with no concern for civil rights.

Baldemar Velasquez thinks that beefing up border security is a waste of money.

"It's one of those harebrained strategies that is really like treating the symptoms and not really getting to the heart of the disease," said Velasquez, president of the Toledo-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a union representing 12,000 farmworkers in six states, including Ohio.

Mexicans come to this country because there are no opportunities back home, Velasquez said. Free-trade agreements have sent commodity prices plunging in Mexico, where American farmers have dumped tons of corn.

"The Mexican market can't compete," he said.

Velasquez has proposed a visa program that would allow workers to cross the border to find work.

"To really control the border, you can't throw money and people at it," he said.

The U.S. Border Patrol job fair will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the Union Room of the Hyatt Regency, 350 N. High St. Prospective recruits must be U.S. citizens who are 18 to 39 years old with valid driver's licenses and a year's worth of job experience. No high-school diploma is required, Arata said. They also must pass a criminal-background check and take tests, including one to judge their ability to learn a foreign language if they don't speak Spanish. Information and applications are available online at www.cbp.gov.

mferenchik@dispatch.com

Copyright © 2007, The Columbus Dispatchhttp://www.dispatch.com/live/co ... ml?sid=101

The drop in the price of corn should have lead to a rise in the use of corn as an input. It would be a good idea to get hold of this person Velazquez and say that his labor organization should educate his members on the importance of raising corn to feed animals to use as meat. The transnational shipping cost in Mexico is on average three times ours. The villagers who raise corn would have difficulty selling to the large centralized industrial corn flour and tortilla producers but an advantage selling to the poultry or hog farmers in their villages.

Velasquez has proposed a visa program that would allow workers to cross the border to find work.

So the H2A visa isn't good enough?

Personally, I don't understand why anybody would want to be a BP agent since they're really sitting ducks, not allowed to do anything for fear of being prosecuted by the government.

The fact is, there is some truth to the fact that America dumped subsidized corn on Mexico and put a lot of small farmers out of business.

Then along came Wal Mart and other box stores and caused many of the small businesses to close.

Also, many of the manufacturing facilities located right at the border in Mexico and promised great wealth, and drew many from the interior. When they manufacturers decided China gave them a better deal, they left and left these people without work. They just walked over here and got jobs.

Those may be facts, but it doesn't have anything to do with their coming here illegally, demanding, destroying and disrespecting us.

Mexico should take all the newfound wealth from NAfTA and the big guys in Mexico, all the extra foreign aid, windfall money from oil prices and do something to help these farmers.

Of course, these people could not have stayed here had it not been for the downright complicity of our government. They have aided and abetted and protected them from day one.

I am getting sick and tired of hearing how we have no right to enforce our laws, even hire BP agents. I just can't wrap my mind around someone in this country saying we have no right to hire BP agents and we have no right to defend the border. That should outrage everyone, especially our government, that they should do something.

Mexicans come to this country because there are no opportunities back home, Velasquez said.

That is completely untrue!! There was a study a few months ago that said, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), over 60% to 75% of the Mexicans who came over the border to find work DID have jobs back home. However, those jobs, of course, did not pay as much money as the ones in the U.S. There were almost NO unemployed Mexicans coming to the U.S.A. It is all about raking in the dough, plain and simple!!!

I'm sick of hearing this crappy excuse for coming here!!!

TexasGal