Thread: Down Mexico way

Down Mexico way

September 27, 2008

A fence in the desert sand is a breakthrough for American border control - hailed by American ultranationalists, broken through by those it is intended to keep out - writes Ian Munro from Tucson, Arizona.

Late summer rains have revived the desert floor, and the unseasonal green undulates all the way to the crumpled blue of distant mountains. Across this ancient panorama struts a 6-metre steel fence, still taking shape as part of President George Bush's $3 billion project to seal America's southern border.

Mountains ring this desert fringe - the Chirichuas to the east, Sierra Madre in the south, Huachucas in the west. From a high point, it could be seen as one country, which it once was. And for some, that is part of the problem.

Glenn Spencer, 71, patrols his piece of the border twice daily with seven big German shepherds, and argues Mexico is on a mission of demographic conquest, encouraging its people to occupy territory seized by the United States 160 years ago.

"What you have is a situation where the Mexican people, especially their government, believe that this is their land," he says. "Their people are taught that we took it from them."

Spencer is referring to conflicts and treaties that, within a mid-19th century decade, cost Mexico oil-rich Texas, gold-laden California, copper-saturated Arizona and other large land parcels that subsequently became American states. "This very nationalistic state of Mexico is now moving to recapture the south-west, and they are well on the way to doing it."

In a workshop at Spencer's ranch, where screens bear security camera images from the border, is a rack of military-style and hunting rifles. The minuteman movement inspired by Spencer conducts armed and nightly patrols of the desert, in camouflage fatigues and with night vision and thermal gear, to detect illegal immigrants, doing the job they say their government will not.

Numerous anti-immigration groups appropriate the minuteman title, evoking colonial revolutionaries willing to fight the British at a minute's notice. These latter-day patriots share the view that illegal migrants steal American jobs, depress wages, foster crime and Hispanic street gangs, import drugs and drain welfare services.

An estimated 12 million illegal migrants are in the US, mostly from Mexico and Latin America. They cross the Mexican border in their hundreds of thousands each year in a trade now run by drug cartels. Paying anywhere between a few hundred and several thousand dollars each to guides, known as coyotes, they gamble on overcoming the fence, evading the border patrol and surviving the desert. Many thousands are turned back. Hundreds do not survive the desert.

Bush courted controversy with a plan to offer illegals a "path to citizenship" by learning English, remaining employed and paying back taxes. The path was blocked last year amid protests whipped up by cable news commentators who said the Government was offering amnesty to criminals.

John McCain's support for the migration plan initially undermined his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Bush, meanwhile, vowed to build by this year's end an extra 1000 kilometres or so of a fence that has been built higgledy-piggledy over many years. Bush's plan, however, was an unprecedented expansion of physical barriers in step with development of a "virtual wall" of computer-aided surveillance of unfenced areas. In addition, Predator unmanned drones, used widely in Iraq, are being deployed to detect incursions and the number of border patrol agents will more than double to 18,600 by year's end.

The Bush plan has many critics - for its divisiveness in border communities, for threatening environment values and animal species, for cost, and for its futility. Oliver Bernstein, of the national environment group, the Sierra Club, says: "It's the worst possible thing you can do for the border lands region because there is such a concentration of protected areas. I have never seen such an unpopular project get as far as this one."

Because the meandering Rio Grande separates Texas and Mexico, and because the wall is straight, some Americans will be walled off from their own country. And some complain that the plan puts lives at risk because it pushes illegal crossing points into ever more remote and difficult areas.

Even staunch proponents are disenchanted. "We have been fooled," says Spencer ally, Shawna Forde, a 40-year-old rock concert promoter. "They told us they were going to build a fence, but they have built a vehicle barrier."

And that is pretty much correct. Border patrol officials say that in remote areas their aim is to stop drug-laden vehicles driving across the border, so bollards are used to block access. In remote areas authorities have hours, sometimes days, to track down walkers so there is not the same urgency. The fence does not stop pedestrian traffic, it only slows it.

"We just created a more athletic criminal," says Forde, the national director of Minuteman American Defence, a group claiming thousands of members. She was won over to the Minuteman cause several years ago when she phoned a bank to be told "press 1 for English".

"It insulted me. I have travelled all over the world. I don't know where else people have to press 1 for their native tongue."

On a ridge by the border fence Forde points out a dog-legged minor league fence that runs for all of about 400 metres. "That's you're history right there. That's what started the movement," says Forde. "That got the whole nation talking about illegal immigration."

She explains that a citizen's rebellion several years ago sponsored the lesser fence on land donated by property owners frustrated by government inaction.

Forde, who resides mostly in Seattle, agrees some migrants are looking to work up north - 2 or 3 per cent, she says - but says mostly they are criminals and drug runners. "We are not talking women and children," she says. "We are talking a massive migration of men and a lot of them with drug cartels and very different agendas. You are not getting the educated and the well-off. You are getting the desperate and the poor. They are not like us."

West of the Spencer ranch, Nogales is as neatly bisected by the fence as the desert itself. The Mexican side of the wall splitting the town hosts murals on the dangers of rushing the border. At the town's bus depot last week, dozens of white crosses mounted on the wall speculated on the fate of those who set out to enter the US illegally. Some crosses bear generic Hispanic names - there's one for Manuel Sanchez - but most carry only the word desconocido (unknown), and a question mark.

Doug Roupp, who runs a humanitarian mission overseeing 86 water stations in Arizona's desert, says authorities assumed that walling towns and fencing relatively safe crossing areas would discourage migration because people would not venture into dangerous territory. They were wrong. In 2000, 600,000 people were stopped at the border sector south of Tucson, and 44 people died. Last year, there were 310,000 apprehensions, and 246 deaths.

"As far as we know [the fence] has just pushed people into crossing in different places, putting them more at risk," says Roupp.

Humane Borders, a humanitarian group, makes daily runs to remote areas known for immigrant traffic. One in 10 patrols encounters migrants, he says. Most are still alive, even if lost and disoriented.

Humane Borders is run by Tucson's First Christian Church. It is grateful to the minutemen for drawing attention to migration, but worried about their reliance on weapons where drug runners operate alongside economic migrants.

Roupp says the lure to the US is work, often in jobs shunned by Americans. Agriculture, hospitality and construction would stall without them. "The powers-that-be are not really interested in changing this situation. We're not controlling the borders, but boy, you can control your workers. You can fire them; you can work them extra hard. There are just too many ways for big business to make a buck out of this," says Roupp.

A Pew Research Centre study this year found one in 10 construction workers were illegal Hispanics. As government raids on work places scooped up hundreds of illegals, Oregon State University's agriculture department in July warned that action against illegals threatened 170,000 jobs and almost $15 billion in lost production. In Iowa, there were similar concerns about the impact of raids on the state's meat-packers.

Meanwhile the Pew Centre estimates that Hispanics — native and foreign-born— have the lowest average incomes of all ethnic groups in the US, and only two-thirds that of whites.

Fence construction is well advanced in El Paso, Texas, but evidence of the failure of wire to deter intruders is everywhere. An old fence that runs to the west end of the town has been patched repeatedly, and gaps in the fence are guarded by border patrol agents.

At headquarters, 26 cameras monitor the border, and fencing is backed by an irrigation canal with water running so fast that border patrol agents are trained in rapid water rescue. In Arizona, the desert gets them; in El Paso most fatalities are canal drownings.

From Ciudad Juarez, on the Mexican side, scouts watch the border agents, who watch the river. Here, the border patrol is winning, says its spokesman, Jose Romero. Immigrant traffic has fallen 60 per cent, but it is increasing elsewhere in Texas and Arizona.

Drug cartels have taken over the immigration routes lending new levels of organisation. Specialised groups will breach the fence and then retreat, leaving the way open for migrants. "Because they are so organised, we have to be, so we have a roaming crew. All they do is fix fences," says Romero.

Other groups act as drug mules, carrying parcels of narcotics to a truck pick-up point before retreating.

El Paso - The Pass - is a natural smuggling route, sitting as it does north of Mexico City and at the point where the Rockies end and the Sierra Madre begins. That helps explain its central role in Mexico's bloody drug war. Since the Mexican Government cracked down on drug cartels in the north more than 4100 people have died - 900 of them this year in Juarez, which witnessed beheadings.

Romero says: "Immigrants told us three years ago it was $200 to be smuggled into the US. Now it can be as much as $2000 … because the drug smuggler wants his portion."

Romero says that without the fence in El Paso, intruders could disappear within 30 seconds into an urban environment 80 per cent Hispanic. Of those apprehended, 13 per cent have a criminal record.

"We apprehend a lot of people who are simply here to work, who are here for economic reasons," Romero says. But many were unaware they were entitled to apply for a visa. A Chilean paid smugglers $11,000 to try to rejoin his children in the US, only to lose his life savings in the attempt. His children could have sponsored him.

In Tucson, Roupp argues that the border issue will not be solved until the US disentangles anti-terrorism and anti-narcotics operations from immigration policy. About 40 per cent of the 12 million illegals entered the US legally, but overstayed their visas, says Roupp. He argues guest workers should lodge a bond and that the US should foster development south of the border.

The nation seems intractably divided over immigration with the minutemen and their allies defining debate. "We're winning," says Spencer. "The tide is with us. Years ago there were no arrests of illegals at job sites. Today there are thousands. There was no fence; we have the beginnings of a fence."

But it is only the beginnings. The Department of Homeland Security recently told Congress it was only halfway to achieving Bush's end-of-year construction target, and higher costs meant money was running out. Work has not begun in some of the more environmentally sensitive areas of south Texas.

Like the Iraq war and the rebuilding of America's finance system, immigration and the border fence are matters to be left to Bush's successor.

www.smh.com

First Mr. Roupp and his entire group should be charged with aiding and abetting illegals.

Roupp says the lure to the US is work, often in jobs shunned by Americans. Agriculture, hospitality and construction would stall without them. "The powers-that-be are not really interested in changing this situation. We're not controlling the borders, but boy, you can control your workers. You can fire them; you can work them extra hard. There are just too many ways for big business to make a buck out of this," says Roupp.

If you can't find work as an American, you will do anything to feed self and family, including those jobs "Americans won't do," especially during this financial mess, if you find the fuel to get to work or even have the money to get on the bus, transferring five or six times.