I've traveled along the border between Mexico and the U.S. quite a bit in the past fifteen years, and know some of it quite well. I don't know much at all about the border between California, Western Arizona, and New Mexico, but I know some of the border in southeast Arizona and in Texas. Over half our border with Mexico is along the Texas border. If your knowledge of the border comes from news sources, like television, it's wrong. I would say skewed or perhaps tilted toward some agenda, but it's just flat wrong. It doesn't look much like you have it pictured, and it certainly doesn't function like you think it does. If you've got an idea of a tightly secured border due to beefed up Border Patrol people, you can scratch that. I've parked along a stretch of highway in southeast Arizona and watched illegal immigrants simply walk across the border and head north. Fences and walls, where they exist, are mostly for show. Ask anyone who lives along that border about illegal immigrants and drug traffickers, and they just shrug. It's like asking Californians about earthquakes.
Half of the border between Mexico and Texas is busy. Forget the image of tumbled down desert villages along the border and think in terms of metropolitan areas . . . like McAllen or Laredo or in New Mexico, El Paso. Visit an international bridge and watch the traffic flow, and then ask yourself home much real damage is being done to trade between this country and Mexico. You can fight the war against illegal drugs flowing across that border until doomsday and never win it, and for one simple reason - we want the drugs. Without a market here, there wouldn't be much of a drug trade. In fact, the drug trade is double-faceted. It's big money for the drug traders, and it's big money for those who fight it. If we didn't need all those drug enforcement officers, and they were laid off, what would that do to our economy? We need the drugs to keep commerce going, and not just for the sellers and users. Government isn't interested in doing the smart thing and legalizing the drugs; they want the fight. And they losing it, and they still want the fight.
McAllen, Texas is a damn nice town. It's good to look at, and it's ultra modern. Hidalgo County has over half million people now. If you drive from there to the coast, you see the build-up of population, and you see all the commerce, and you know the economy is in decent shape there. That's not the case all over Texas, and still, many Texans are scared to death of the border. I love the part of Texas from Del Rio heading west near the Rio Grande River, all the way to Presidio. Once you leave Presidio and head northwest toward El Paso, you hit some really nice country that's remote and still wild. And in El Paso, the river is almost nonexistent, just a trickle of water. Once you run out of river to mark the border, you just have lots of miles of wide open spaces that are impossible to police and protect.
So, let us go to the little town of Naco in southeast Arizona. That's a place perhaps you've pictured in your mind, a dusty desert town that looks like the back side of the moon. Not far away, you have the much larger towns of Bisbee or Sierra Vista. But at Naco, you have a village, and on both sides of the border. On the Mexican side you'll find dentist's offices and an otherwise grubby looking Mexican town. I'm told this is where many illegal aliens cross, and the town is full of Coyotes, the guys who get them across for a fee. And there's a Border Patrol presence there and a big fence that stops almost nothing. Ten miles out into the desert from Naco there's only the remains of an old fence separating Arizona from Mexico, easy to get past, and then you have a short walk to a major highway where someone can pick you up and transport you north. Think of this when you think of Trump's idiotic wall, and perhaps you'll see the idiocy in it. But think most about what happens to the economies of those border states when and if the undocumented worker force stops, or even slows a lot. Go drive the interstate between Nogales and Tucson and you'll see how important that work force is to Tucson and beyond.
Sometimes we play a fools game, and sometimes the fools are idiots when it comes to knowing the border. My guess is most members of Congress are just these foolish idiots, and we all know what Trump is.
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