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Border Wars: One Arizonan’s Observations
The border between Arizona and Mexico as it is drawn on the map today dates back to the Gadsden Purchase, finalized in 1854. The established border on the map has always been a contentious area.
Apaches, rustlers, and raiders have crossed back and forth across that border before the purchase and long after. The shootout at the OK Corral involved Democrat versus Republican politics, as well as border cattle rustling, horse thieving, robberies of American mine payrolls, and Mexican bank robberies by Americans and Mexicans.
That border was meaningless with the exception of using it as a means to escape the authorities on one side of the border or the other.
Today, the border is just as contentious and two political parties in the United States are just as divided as they were when Arizona was a Territory. Personal ambition, mistaken good intentions, and ego in the Republican and Democratic Party has stalled any legislation to clarify immigration issues for decades. The House and Senate have abandoned any attempt to legislate any coherent immigration policy.
As an aside, I’m a bit bemused when some suggest that we need to increase the number of members of the House of Representatives. It’s like saying coyotes have been more difficult to find in your neighborhood. We need to import some more so they’re easier to find and later eradicate to protect our pets.
Living in the Sonoran Desert, I believe that a wall is necessary around ports of entry, and those towns that border the ports of entry. I believe that electronic surveillance would be just as efficient as a wall in the uninhabited areas of the Sonoran Desert. To make the trek in uninhabited areas requires consuming a liter to a gallon of water for every hour you are outdoors during the summer months. The winter months still require water consumption, but temps drop into the teens at night.
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Published in General
Doug,
I found both news stories interesting. However, the two different styles tell us a great deal about the problem we are having with the news. The first story is all about people and how they feel about things. How do they feel about the wall, how do they feel about Trump? The second story is done in the classical style that most news reporting used to be done. In half the time we get more relevant facts. We get a real feel for what is going on at the border every day. Migrants are only part of the story and the illegal activities are much more dangerous. Those trackers are likely to have saved a lot of lives of the people who get lost in the desert. Reality isn’t about identifying with people. It’s about understanding the real issues involved.
We have become obsessed with emotionalism. Emotionalism is a great way to win elections but an idiotic way to govern a country.
Regards,
Jim
The two ranchers in the first video will probably vote for President Trump again in 2020. They may disagree on what they would prefer in the method of border control, but they understand that Democrats could care less about their border concerns.
Arizona is not a sanctuary state, and the above statement probably explains why the first caravan headed for the California Port of Entry rather than the Arizona Port of Entry at Nogales, or Yuma, Arizona.
Doug,
I think the average Arizonan has their head screwed on straight. I think your population is about 7 million, so not that small a state. However, it is the behemoth next door that is completely out of its mind. California has close to 40 million people. That’s a lot of stupid congresspeople to be run by the Wicked Witch of the West herself.
It is positively painful to read VDH’s reports from California. So many good people are being damaged by incredibly bad government.
Wealth, Poverty, and Flight: The Same Old State of California
The state of California is the state of chaos. No wonder it has sent Nancy Pelosi back to the House over and over again. They choose insanity.
Regards,
Jim
@jamesgawron the VDH essays are anguished and indeed painful to read. The state of California is an exemplar of what happens when policy makers are immune from the effects of their policies. I wish policy makers would accept the information and guidance from people like @dougwatt who live under the conditions policies are meant to address. But I can’t understand how Arizona chose its newest US Senator. They apparently knowingly elected someone who advocates both socialism and he abolition of the state she represents. I don’t get it. On a lighter note – she seems to have taken a look from the Lady Gaga style book for her swearing in. But she didn’t swear while she did so there’s that.
I forgot to mention the air assets of the Tucson Sector Border Patrol:
Helicopters; 14 A Stars. Five are B3s and nine are B2s. We also have five UH-60 Blackhawk A models and 3 UH–1H Hueys.
Used for surveillance, directing ground assets, as well as rescue for both American citizens, and border crossers. All based at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson. Davis-Monthan actually provides air support for a lot of interesting missions.
The Blackhawks and Hueys are for rescuing the AStar crews.
The small Texas border towns are either dying or dead, not that they were ever doing that well to begin with. It’s pretty much a no-mans-land 25 miles either side of the border. I love the country out there, but It’s fast becoming the Wild-Wild West.
You do Huachucan do.
Customs and Border Protection also flies MQ-9 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles out of Fort Huachuca. There are also a series of aerostats but I’m not sure if the USAF is controlling those now.
I do miss it there!
Fort Huachuca is located in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
The last four White Mountain Apache Scouts retired from Fort Huachuca in 1947.
Yes exactly. The people in the caravan were bused and/or walked past the routes that would have taken them a much shorter distance to the borders of Texas, New Mexico or Arizona, all to get them all to California. Here we are run by officials who view any thing less than a red carpet welcome for immigrants as being equivalent to the Holocaust. Our state Supreme Court has ruled that once in Calif, they or their families are immediately eligible for food stamps, housing vouchers, AFDC checks, and MediCaid. (Though the later is called MediCal.)
If the newly arrived have no ID whatsoever, that’s fine. The only real requirements are that One: they show up to be interviewed by sympathetic social workers. Also Two: they must be willing to state they are penniless.
Our state’s benefits dwarf those of any other states by at least 40%. And please don’t get worried about any of this. After all, you and I don’t pay for any of it, our taxes do! (!!??!?!!)
Exactly on point. The Congressional GOP, the House Republicans and National Republican Senate Committee, has engaged in deliberate Failure Theater (to quote Ace) on both immigration and healthcare, with Potemkin village “oversight” of the metastasizing, illegitimate, fourth branch of government.
How can you argue with this? It’s so frustrating.
I really wonder if it isn’t smarter to just hunker down and try to take as many countermeasures on a personal level as you can instead of worrying about this stuff. It’s like it’s on autopilot. They have got to get creative, but it’s just not happening.
I take your point about the terrain, but humans have been finding ways to traverse deserts for millennia. Depending on electronic surveillance reminds me of the commercials “I’m not a security guard, I’m a security monitor.” By the time you get boots on the ground, they’re already in the country. Physical barriers, whether constructed or natural, provide a deterrence that slows down, and possibly concentrates would-be border crossers, even if that is tunnels.
Becoming?..
The one rancher in the WSJ video that is seeing the wall extended to 18 feet in height on his land is still seeing 35 to 50 illegal immigrants crossing his land on a weekly basis. A vast improvement of the figure of 200 crossers to be sure.
I’ll provide two links from a law firm that represents individuals trying to avoid deportation. Even though the firm would be considered adversarial in trying stop deportations the info is pretty good.
Deportation
Immigration Law
In Arizona secondary border checkpoints are set up about 20 to 30 miles away from the border on state roads, and on I-19. All vehicles must stop, and everyone I stopped at your vehicle is photographed, like a red light camera set-up. The drug dog walks down the line of vehicles, and you are waved through, unless of course your vehicle is carrying drugs, or human beings in the trunk.
Immediate deportation was possible based on the 100 mile rule. If you were within 100 miles of the border without paper work expedited deportation without a hearing was an option. Sometimes the Border Patrol will set up check points in the Tucson area which is about 70 miles from the border.
I don’t mind the check points, but a secondary benefit is they drive some libertarians crazy. (Sarcasm).
“Am I being detained?”
Why yes you are. Now tell me again that the 20 kilos of pot is for personal use.
Kilos? You globalist!
I buy my pot by the pound like an American!
(Thanks for the links)
I’d consider a 75% drop to be a win in the big picture, but I know that doesn’t mean much to people like that rancher. I did not know about the 100-mile rule. Even so, when multiplied by the length of the border, even one mile is a LOT of land to disappear into, let alone 20 or 100. The links you provided indicated that the time limit on expedited deportation was raised from 14 days to 2 years. That gives the government more time to catch and deport anyone who made it past the 100 mile line.
I’m not naive enough to think that illegal immigration is going to be stopped with a physical barrier (whatever the politicians want to call it), but the likes of Pelosi and Schumer cannot convince me that such an impediment is ineffective.