I posted this blog some months ago, but considering all the talk about the border these days, I thought it deserved a second time around.


The border between Mexico and the U.S. is easy to find because it's the Rio Grande River.  In New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the situation changes, and different situations require different management techniques.  Some folks seem to think the U.S. does little or nothing to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, but that's not true.  We work hard at keeping them out . . . but we just don't work hard enough at it.  And sometimes we don't go about it the right way either.  I blame it on politicians, but that's nothing new with me because I blame most things that go wrong in our society on them.  And why shouldn't I?  Aren't they the ones who're supposed to be running things?

Like most Americans, I have little faith in Congress when it comes to taking care of problems like the border crisis.  We've got close to fifty million Latinos in the U.S., many of the illegals, and what are we getting from Congress as a solution to the problem?  Nada, zilch, zero, that's what.  Oh, they're working on it, spending lots of our tax dollars and precious time . . . and getting nowhere.  And I've been worried about that until recently when it dawned on me that even if they do something, it will more than likely be wrong.  I'm no longer pushing for a Congressional solution to the border crisis.  What I'd like to see is the enforcement of laws we already have.

Of all the problems facing us at the moment, the border crisis is the most troubling.  Congress can't find a solution because of politics, which means that too many people have too many agendas concerning what's best for America.  And it is a difficult problem because there's lots of confusion about what's right . . . not just for us but for immigrants wanting to come here.  We have an abundance of work here in the U.S. and not enough people willing to do it . . . and that's a fact.  Even our poor people think they're too good to do certain kinds of work, and these jobs are often the ones the Mexican migrant workers fill . . . and with gratitide in most cases.  Doesn't it make you wonder about the sanity of a country that wants to reject willing workers, especially when their own people are too lazy to do the work?

I just took a look at population figures in the U.S. and see that we're running close to 300,000,000 people now.  Of that number, about 80 percent are classified as white.  Remember, latinos are counted in that number, but even if over forty million of the whites are latinos, we've still got a comfortable majority of gringos here in America.  What we're talking about is a figure somewhere around 200,000,000 lilly white Americans.  Blacks still make up less than 13 percent of the population, and Asians are far beneath that at about 4 percent.  What that means is that the only real threat to white America in terms of population is coming from the latinos.  Maybe that's what sets some of them off, demanding things as ridiculous as building a wall between the Mexico and the U.S.

In case you're in that group, the let's shut the border bunch, here's something for you to think about.  The real border between Mexico and the U.S. ain't no river, and it ain't no line drawn in the desert sand either.  GOT IT?  ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?  What I'm saying to some of you slow learners out there is that there's no border to guard . . . at least one that's material enough to protect.  We can increase the Border Patrol ten fold, build walls, poison the water in the Rio Grande (more than pollution already has), and even send the entire army down there . . . and we still won't stop the Mexicans from coming.  They will find ways to get over, under, and around your iron curtain or whatever you construct there to keep them out.  The real border is in how we deal with the problem of illegal immigration, and that's something that's in the hands of Congress and other government groups, and that's like giving a handful of shit to a chimp.  All that's going to happen is that more shit gets smeared around . . . and the place is ugly enough already.

I go to the Texas/Mexico border a lot because I live close enough to get there with ease.  In just a few hours, I can be there, and I go with my eyes open.  I watch what's happening there, and some of it is disheartening.  There's lots of crime along the border, lots of pushing and shoving on both sides to get a better toe hold in the sand, and there's lots of corruption on both sides.  But in some places I see progress and even signs of great wealth, like you'll find in McAllen or other towns down in the valley, the Texas tropics.  It's bleak along most of the border, though, and not just a little inhospitable to anyone wanting to cross the border.  But they still come, and sometimes I talk to them about the ordeal they go through to get here.  And again, I wonder:  Is it wise to keep out people who want to come so badly?  I'm not quite sure, but I think not.  We need to find ways to make them welcome and at the same time keep ourselves safe from an invasion of people who in some ways threaten our way of life.  That's the border, the real border, because that's what really separates us.

But how can we do that?  That's a tough one for sure, so it's not a mystery why Congress, the President, or anyone else has not found a solution.  I do know this much - that the solution is not something that will come overnight.  We'll be facing this problem for a long, long time.  What we need is some real dialogue where the sure enough experts are put to work trying to solve it . . . and that means people from both sides of the border who know the border.  We need people working on the problem who know what's good for the economics of both nations involved.  And the solutions they come up with will not please everyone.  In fact, the real solutions won't please anyone a hundred percent.   You might as well accept the fact right now that to solve this problem, we'll all have to give up something.  When we face up to that, we'll starting finding a border we can actually secure.

D. Paz,  11/29/07