Our Southern Border . . .

What in the heck is going on with our border with Mexico?

For pretty much my entire life, I have lived within a few hours drive of the international border between the United States and Mexico. Over the years, I have known and understood border politics . . . on both sides of the border.

I have traveled extensively across Mexico. I have crossed over pretty much every bridge between the two countries from Tijuana to Brownsville. I have crossed a number of those bridges many times, including Brownville – Matamoros, Progreso – Nuevo Progreso, Hidalgo – Reynosa, Eagle Pass – Piedras Negras, Del Rio – Acuna, Laredo – Nuevo Laredo, El Paso – Juarez, as well as bridges on Arizona/Mexico including Alcadones and San Luis. I have spent considerable time in Mexico visiting cities such as Monterrey, Mexico City, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, Cozumel, Cancun, etc. I also attended my sophomore and junior years of high school at Ysleta, only a hundred yards from the Rio Grande River (the lower valley area of El Paso). As a student at Ysleta, my pals and I thought it was really cool to leave high school football practice and drive across the back route and go into Saragossa, pull our old clunkers up in front of the market, and walk up to the beer box on the sidewalk in front of the food store and just help ourselves as 15- and 16-year-olds. All perfectly legal at that tender age . . . and in that country!

I speak Spanish well enough to effectively communicate, negotiate, and trade when in Mexico. Further, I own some senior citizen apartment complexes in the Rio Grande Valley, occupied by folks who, for the most part, only speak Spanish, and the most of them started life in Mexico and managed to find their way here. The great majority of them and I communicate quite well when I visit there. My point is simply that I know Mexico and her people . . . and I know them about as well as any white man I know.

I am seriously confused over the entire border issue and the politics surrounding it. Suddenly there is a ferocious debate in Washington about closing and protecting our border. Duh . . . I have always been under the impression that protecting the border has always been the law of the land and something that we, as a Nation, spend untold hundreds of millions of dollars upon with the Border Patrol and all of its check points. I travel to Mexico several times a year and have not once seen a slacking off by the border patrol folks at the bridge check-point or at the inland check-point station. They are asking the same questions, examining the same documents . . . and are obviously seriously looking for folks trying to sneak across.

Yet, in spite of the efforts of the Border Patrol, there are more and more illegals managing to find their way into the United States. That is a given . . . but suddenly there is a ferocious debate going on in our Nation’s capital over this subject and one gets the notion that something has changed and there has been something improper going on that has permitted the large increase of illegals.

Over the next few blogs, I intend to address some of that debate, and examine the rights and wrongs of it . . . and report how I see things as I look to the South. I want to be honest and tell you that I believe that protecting the borders and providing for the common defense are the two primary and fundamental responsibilities of the federal government. In the areas of purpose, responsibility, and duty, I believe the federal government has drifted far, far off course and now focuses its time and energy (and our money) on foolish things such as the sort of windows and light bulbs we are permitted to use in our homes! It also has become infatuated with social programs and things such as health care and highway construction . . . both of which are not enumerated as tasks/powers under the Constitution.

Having said that, I also go on record as being opposed to illegal immigration . . . But I also confess that if I had been born in Mexico, I would have spent every ounce of energy I had trying to get into this great country . . . that we call home. Life in Mexico is far different . . . in that it is very hard!

It Seems to me . . . the time has come for action . . . but what should that action be? And who ought to take it? More to follow . . .

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