The security of the nation and how to achieve it has been a very large and active public debate for years now, especially since the terrorist attacks reached our homeland in September of 2001. We have many thousands of troops stationed all over the world, we are building a system to knock missiles out of the sky, we have in the last decade alone deployed our troops to more conflicts than pretty much the whole rest of the century previous. We are taking steps to pressure foreign governments to cooperate in hunting down terrorists and cut off their financial backing and we are actively opposing and dismantling governments that refuse to cooperate in our efforts to shut down terrorist organizations in their territories. I have no problems with any of this, except for the fact that none of this keeps our borders safe from terrorists. The Canadian border and the Mexican border are not adequately patrolled and haven't been since I can remember, not to mention the coastguard patrolling the Florida coastline for desperate Cubans and Haitians.
To put the sorry state of affairs that is our nation's border policy in perspective I'll give you a couple stories to think about. The Press here in the US for quite a while after September 11th ridiculed Canada's border policy and their loose immigration policy that let just about anybody in their country if they could get there. Many Middle Eastern peoples had flown to Canada and just walked across the border into the US and we were up in arms over it. Canada's reaction to the tragedies in New York and Washington DC was to beef up their restrictions on travel and to be much more vigilant and strict on who traveled both directions over their border. Many Americans traveling north and then coming back home were subject to extensive questioning sessions and car searches. When they got to the customs officers on our side of the border, typically they were waved on with a nod. And understandably Canada got a little miffed at us for saying they weren't doing enough to ensure the border between our countries was patrolled properly. The reality is that there is still a very small number of border patrol officers available to patrol the Canadian border. The last number I heard was that there is only one officer for every 20 miles of open border between Canada and the US. That is about 200 to 300 patrolling the entire border not including the major roads in and out.
There is no secret that the Mexican border is a problem both in terms of illegal immigration and the terrain that is very often quite remote and rough. There are many things that are happening on our southern border which disturb me but a symptom that characterizes the problem are the spontaneous militias that are forming to patrol the border in places like southern Arizona. The small towns that the illegal immigrants have been coming through on their way to the good life up here have been continually trashed. Crops have been destroyed, people are threatened by armed illegal immigrants and sometimes the occasional house or business has actually been burned down by the tens of thousands of illegal aliens who annually plod through these little border towns. As a result the people in them have finally given up on the federal government to provide the security the Constitution mandates and they have taken the very dangerous step of patrolling the borders themselves - armed. Several small militias have formed in the border states in small towns that no matter how vocal they are they cannot get the attention of Washington. This is a very dangerous situation, and it is a very visible symptom of the problems that continue to be ignored regarding the Mexican border. Smugglers bring illegals across the border all the time and they aren't picky about who they bring as long as they have the cash. There have been reports that Islamic terrorists have crossed the border with the help of Mexican smugglers. And yet we ignore the situation. Why is that? The explanation that I keep hearing from the politicians is that for the Republicans the Mexicans are a cheap source of labor for the jobs that many Americans consider beneath them. From the Democrat point of view Mexicans are a burgeoning new voting block that is ripe for the entitlement train. And neither side wants to do anything to offend the Mexican segment of the population for fear they might not be reelected. So we have a huge problem on our hands.
Its not so much the economic impact that millions of people demanding state and federal services when they have never put anything into the treasuries they are taking money out of can have. Rather it is the potential for Political radicals and violent criminals to come into our country and carry with them a dirty bomb, or more terrorists just coming here to await new orders from whoever is plotting against us. And while they are here they'll visit their local government social service office and help themselves to the generosity we supposedly don't have.
What I want to know is why we haven't stationed the National Guard on our borders while we hire and train new officers to patrol that border? Why have we let this problem grow for decades while doing nothing about it? It has gotten to the point now that it might be political suicide for someone to do something meaningful about the problem and I'd like to know why we let it get this far. Armed men from the Mexican army have been caught well north of our border and have been shooting at our border patrol officers. Mexican nationals are suing the federal government for the wrongful death of people who died in the desert trying to get across the border. They had no right to be there, we gave them no permission and they blame us for making them go through the desert. There are student groups and radical groups forming in the southwest that claim the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico as Mexican territory. They plan to make a new country called Aztlan and beyond that the Mexican government and our 'friend' El Presidente Fox is encouraging them to do this. The situation is beyond ridiculous. It is time to confront the Mexican government with the hard cold facts and to make it clear that our borders are sovereign. We need to put the National Guard on our southern border so that we can control the influx of illegal immigrants, thousands of who are violent criminals and dozens of who are terrorists from Middle Eastern nations. I just can't figure out why it hasn't been done by now.