The Northern Line

By The Lineman

Repatriation of illegal aliens now within the United States will be like sending men to war--mothers will be separated from their children; deserters will flee to Canada and many of our friends will be sent into a living hell--but it''s for the same purpose: American defense, and it will take a conservative president to do it. I''m not sure if our current president can.

Our leadership is appeasing foreign leaders who care nothing about America, trying to forge agreements that will give us "peace in our time," and it''s all a waste. Our president said yesterday that immigration reform can only succeed if we push all his points at once, firming up the borders while coaxing present illegal aliens toward citizenship--two direct opposites, strengthening the law while disgracing it. In a world where everyone is nice and the rules don''t matter, this would be wonderful--but this world has real enemies who are out for themselves and we have a precious democracy to defend. I admire our president for what he''s doing in the Middle East; his vision of the future there and his methods to achieve that dream are spectacular--his bold initiative, commitment of forces, personal defense of the free world''s goals are beyond reproach and beyond the intellectual capacity of the democrats--I would give my life in that effort, having lived in the Middle East and worked in Baghdad. Also, I trudged through those years from ''64 to ''80, from a kid to an adult, praying for salvation, for Reagan to come along, and I appreciate having a Republican president and Republican majorities in both houses. That was hard watching America decline--and now it''s almost as hard watching our chances to build American pride dwindle away week by week, more speeches and no fence being built. I don''t think they really are conservatives, just politicians.

A true conservative president has values in his heart that have guided him since childhood--the political party chooses him, not the other way around. Even if he knows his candidacy has no chance (''64), he sacrifices his career for his values, sticking to them no matter what, amazed that life has given him this chance to represent those values to the American people. If he''s lucky, he wins an election (''80)--but his values never change. They are the immutable, inalienable rights of man delineated in the Declaration and Constitution, a very radical set of ideals in the practical world of politics and money, sort of nutty, really, but rights the majority of us would give our lives to defend--serious business.

The conservative president''s main objective must be, in this age again, defense. Reagan saved us by clearly challenging our enemy and presenting a program to defeat them; he was elected on that sensible platform and carried it out. His leadership was so strong, so apolitical, so human, he would have been elected for a third term but chose to follow the rules and bowed out.

The conservative president we need has the same objective--defense--and a clear program to achieve it is waiting, only, must we wait another 16 years for it to be enacted? Right now conservatives have the majority they need to set America''s direction--do we have to watch this president fumble his chances for another two and a half years before we can take effective action? Good grief. By that time the Democrats may think of something to further delude the masses--and our chance will be gone. If you were there on election night in ''64, do you remember the feeling?

As Reagan became a leader of the Free World, we now need a president to provide leadership for all of North America. How long must we wait?

Next: I will assume a conservative president has materialized and describe what Repatriation will be like, including fences, sally ports, governmental activities, effects on communities, and how it will benefit Latin America to have someone offering leadership and setting the rules, even north of the line.

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By The Lineman

Some concise replies to my rambling discourse on establishing and enforcing immigration laws demand comment: (1)how can the President propose a North America without borders and, at the same time, propose bringing immigration under control? (2)what constitutes fairness?

The President is able to conceive of two opposites working together simultaneously because he is a baby-boomer who has always had a way out of trouble--typical of his class and generation. As a young man, he experienced the immense political success of LBJ, when 2/3 of American voters actually believed that "we can fight a limited war in Southeast Asia, and a war on poverty here at home." 1/3 of voters knew this was rubbish and, though the President has spent his life among that 1/3, he still has many of the values of the 60''s, that all this has got to turn out good in the end--and he is a politician, too.

He is strongly persuaded by the Mexican president, someone with whom he would dearly love to get along because, like many of us, the President has a very positive image of the Mexican nation and people and this is his chance to show America how well we all get along down here. The Mexican president is a PANista, a product of the conservative Mexican business community--even more reason to make agreements of all sorts, to listen to their insights and criticisms of American law and policy, to try to be nice. Our President''s weakness is that he is at least one generation removed from the poverty and struggle that made America strong--the Mexican president sees it at his door.

So our American President tries to be nice, to be diplomatic, to avoid the tragedies that were common before WWII--famine, epidemics, genocide--and he fails to represent that dwindling portion of Americans who have endured such things, believing,, like on TV, that it must all turn out good in the end--and if it doesn''t you can turn off the set, get a good night''s sleep and wake up to a good breakfast--like he always has. He doesn''t now that tragic human events on a massive scale are only prevented by America''s wealth, and he is dribbling it away.

Our President is a very good man but he is not the hard man his father is. His father corrected the military side of LBJ''s fantasy, that we can fight a limited war, and he put America back on track philosophically.

Until Korea, America had operated under the very radical concept of civilian control over the military, that civilian authorities decide political matters and, if they require military action, civilian authority gives the military an assignment. The military then did its job without meddling in politics. It worked beautifully, allowing our military to make successive conquests without embroiling the nation in too much colonialism. Then along came Truman, the Democrat, and his police action in Korea, refusing to go for victory and dragging his feet politically, dragging us into LBJ''s stupid "limited war" in Southeast Asia, the cost of which no one wishes to face. The first President Bush would not release the military until civilian authorities had agreed on a specific mission, then he gave them their mission and stopped them at a line just above Kuwait, exactly according to traditional American policy of civilian control over the military. This action still confuses a great many internationally and within our borders of every political persuasion, simply because it is so professional, so well thought out, a product of deliberation and action devised by our founding fathers who had experienced uncontrolled militaries. This is a true conservative president: he returned us to our base American procedures after the liberal experiment with "limited war."

Now we face the other side of LBJ''s platform for America, fighting "a war on poverty here at home," the concept of which draws people from around the world and deludes America from realizing that there is a limit to its resources.

Before WWII and shortly thereafter, America and Mexico had successful, controlled immigration relationships that met the needs of both countries. An INS officer who served at that time told me that, back then, he could hand his pistol to the illegal he was apprehending while the agent filled out the paperwork, knowing that the man was so moral and ethical he would never shame himself by breaking a rule--he was just looking for work and had missed a Bracero group.

Now, the nature of illegal immigration has changed. Though most migrants still have deep values, they are coming to America for the chance to increase materially and to "party," in the words of the same INS agent. Standing in the school district headquarters parking lot in Nogales, Arizona, you can watch them pour through the storm drains into America dressed in their party clothes, ready for action, and on any street corner in any Mexican city you can see them ganged up with their buckets and squeegees waiting for the traffic to stop at the red light. When they hear about the storm drain in Nogales they will be on their way--there is absolutely nothing for them to do in Mexico but work hard for a tiny wage, so here they come. They are human, not criminals.

There is nothing to stop them and, as the Chinese say, "hunger makes a thief of any man." Our leaders are people who have not suffered; they are baby-boomers just like the president, intent on doing good, perhaps, but with no sense of urgency. They will negotiate, like Truman in Korea and LBJ in Vietnam, while the third world encroaches and eventually defeats us, a combination of this welfare state drawing people from around the world and the wealthy''s lack of awareness to protect themselves, coupled with lifetime experiences of nothing tragic ever really happening.

Well, talk to the mothers of boys who died in Vietnam for nothing--tragedy does happen, and when no one is there to defend or speak for decent people they get trampled. Life is not a TV program. Witness the Christians in Africa--who really cares? And this is what''s happening here on a very gradual scale.

When we have a defendable border, and when we have leadership that represents the conservative majority who voted them into power, we will have a chance at correcting the errors of the 60''s. Our leadership must know when to walk away from a deal when we are getting cheated--now they don''t; they keep playing politics. Hopefully a correction in direction will be made before we have to do something drastic, like defend ourselves militarily from an enemy which has organized itself within our borders--hopefully that''s a long way off, just a nightmare, but a practical military goal of any modern enemy.

So much for mushy leadership--now, fairness.

A gentleman comments that is it unfair that he lost the ability walk fifteen years ago, and how can laws be made to make his loss fair--what is fair legislation?

"Fair," in rules, means accepting the reality common to all and dealing out suffering in equal measure, not playing favorites.

Fair immigration law accepts that not everyone who wishes to enter the USA can do so, that there will be a great many more people with legitimate reasons to enter than the country can reasonably accept. So we encounter the concept of "reasonability" in immigration law, too. "Reasonability" is based on the ancient, international concept of people taking care of as many of their own problems as possible before asking for help, and accepting the fact that perhaps nobody else in the world should be burdened with that person''s problems. Mexican culture has a beautiful saying about this; "Haga la lucha," which means, literally, "Make the fight."

This concept of "haga la lucha," or "reasonability" in immigration law, is far older than Marxist or collectivist thought, or LBJ''s "war on poverty." It is based in human strength, the same stuff that conquers frontiers and builds nations. Poor people used to have it in spades--now they have leftover Soviet disinformation.

No, it isn''t fair that a man loses his ability to walk; but it also isn''t fair that a stranger is taxed--on penalty of imprisonment--to pay for the sufferer''s medical care.

This is fairness and reasonability in immigration law.

Next (perhaps): Repatriation

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by The Lineman

The United States is a smashing success; it''s a beacon to the struggling people of the world, exactly as intended, and has a responsibility to preserve itself as the homeland of human dignity, the embodiment of mankind''s most liberal philosophies. Immigration law assures national preservation by allowing entry to those who share our dream and preventing entry of those who do harm. With firm control of the borders, there is a chance of enforcing that law--we must make sure it is fair. With such a responsibility, I am not going to discuss half-measures.

The current system works reasonably well worldwide; only our southern border is really in crisis, though visiting the waiting room of an American consulate in Asia is a shock. If a consulate in a Chinese city makes a tiny exception in the rules for one applicant, the entire population is aware by that afternoon and the place is overwhelmed. Consular officers in those positions must hold rigidly to the rule, sometimes seeming pitiless, to be fair to all--and they do a great job with the current set of rules. When our southern border is as impenetrable as the Pacific Ocean the job will be much the same there, too, using the same regulations with regional differences based on our long-term relationship with Mexico.

Because so many families are split by the border, with members living within easy driving distance of each other--because agriculture depends so heavily on labor and produce being able to move readily across the border--because business and industry rely on immediate access to facilities on both sides and the quick transport of goods--because residents of border communities like to do their daily shopping on both sides of the border--because Mexican medical facilities offer a release from the deathgrip of the American medical machine, because citizens of both countries like to vacation across the border--there must be a fair, reasonable procedure that allows a large volume of people to cross readily while, at the same time, identifying and denying entrance to those who would do the United States harm.

The problem is, how do we identify harmful individuals among such a crowd? We can''t--until we have full cooperation from the Mexican authorities, and we will not have full cooperation until mutual respect is established between Mexico and the United States; mutual respect will not be established until we have firm borders. At that time, Mexico will be sufficiently populated with former residents of the United States to have gone through a sea change in political philosophy spurred by people who want honest government, or at least the chance to vote in an honest election, and who are willing to demand it. As long as people of this quality are allowed to easily drift illegally into the United States, Mexico doesn''t stand a chance at reform.

Until then, American immigration law and law enforcement officials will be the bane of the international press because they will have to uphold the will of the American people.

When the traditional liberals of Latin America have established a government of laws in Mexico, when most of their government money is accounted for and Pemex, if not privatized, funds public education and programs for their needy; when law enforcement officers are paid adequately instead of having to depend on corruption to survive, and the strong spirit of Mexican decency, their work ethic, the works of their brilliant philosophers in every field are studied and applied, and their faith in God is openly acknowledged, then our law enforcement agencies on both sides can cooperate to protect the entire region. And this will happen, or the United States will have the option to simply close its borders and let Latin America cook in its own juices.

When escape to America has been denied and Latin America is embroiled in deciding its future, the border will be a living hell of surplus population on the Mexican side. American border regulators will have to concentrate on human concerns in their immediate areas; NAFTA and tourism may fall by the wayside. Many American families have sick and elderly relatives in Mexico whom they care for daily; orphanages in Mexican border towns depend on donations of personal time and material from Americans--these relationships and others like them cannot be immediately severed. The people directly involved, government and church officials and workers, know who must get back and forth and should have access to immigration law to prevent crimes against humanity, but until the people of Latin America have their house in order without making demands on the United States we on this side must be willing to witness catastrophic human events among them without going to their aid. It seems inhuman, but daily events in the third world are already beyond the average American''s conception--the media now picks and chooses which tragedy to emphasize to American taste--and if we are not willing to accept at our present borders third world horrors that we cannot change, they will inundate us, the end product of uncontrolled immigration, and their values will dominate. So much for the land of the free--it will be a free-for-all, like Somalia.

We must be willing to trust in the strength of decent Latin Americans.

America may lose its self-image of the rich uncle but, as it''s said, "America is to the world as Disneyland is to L.A.," the sooner we face contemporary realities the more wealth and opportunity we will preserve for legal immigrants of the future. Like an American consulate in a Chinese city, America will survive like an island with operpopulation and poverty at its gates; international society will scorn us (they do anyway) but if the rules are not rigidly enforced the island will be lost.

This seems rather stupidly dreamy, but remember what the Loyalists thought of the rebels during the American Revolution--and today we live the rebel''s dream. If there are no dreams for the Western Hemisphere the future will be the same as today, a gradual descent into mayhem. As the world wondered for centuries whether the spirit of man would ever be freed, today Hispanic people question whether corruption is inherent in their culture. It seems so, yet the majority of individuals say they are repulsed by it. This is a question for Latin America to resolve, not the United States.

Presuming the forces of decency in Latin America eventually come to dominate (in whatever political form that requires) and American authorities gain faith in Latin governmental systems, Mexican and American law enforcement will share information. Criminals who prey on illegal aliens are themselves often illegal, offending on both sides, and there seems to already be substantial international cooperation to detain them--this will become the standard. Office personnel on both sides will get to know and trust each other; electronic information systems--already amazingly fast--will identify harmful individuals quickly. When criminals learn to defeat current methods, authorities will cooperate for the mutual benefit of both countries in applying new identification methods, always one step ahead as is standard in law enforcement.

When the only points of crossing are those under supervision by authorities of both countries, crowds will file through at a rate that allows thorough inspection, maddeningly slow for vehicles at first--perhaps justifying new vehicle and packaging designs to pass inspection at a profitable rate. Individuals will walk through readily by electronic identification. Gradually, the law will loosen up to allow passage of cultural and human rights exchange, after dignity is restored, and friendship between the countries will grow as never before--after the line is drawn and mutual respect established. The law of supply and demand, the unseen hand, will furnish the details.

Next: Repatriation

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By Lineman

If a law has no teeth, there is no law. Establishing a firm, fair, reasonable structure of immigration laws and law enforcement in the border region is secondary--first it must have teeth. The border fence will be the teeth; it is first priority. Once that physical barrier is in place the people on both sides who scoff at America''a ability to defend herself will think again before they doubt our resolve.

After the fence(#1)will come the establishment of laws and law enforcement (#2), then the repatriation of illegal aliens now within American borders (#3) and the simultaneous, steady process of legal immigration (#4). There is no need for laws about language or acculturation--if we control who enters, we will admit only those from the great majority of applicants who want to be Americans anyway, people who know the importance of English internationally and want their children to have this ability. No law will negate the old rule of immigrants, that 1/3 adopt readily to their new home; 1/3 do so reluctantly but hold to the past, and 1/3 never acculturate--they stay in the ghettoe and wish they hadn''t had to leave home. That''s human nature--any time spent by our government trying to regulate it is wasted, perhaps a source of interesting news stories, something for the public to chew so they feel like they''re doing something.

Controlling who enters is the key and we cannot do this without a fence. The fence is not racist or xenophobic, neither is it related to the Belin wall. In El Paso, Texas there is a problem of drivers coming over from Juarez, driving like they''re in Mexico then roaring home after they''ve caused their damage. El Paso residents, largely people born in Mexico or second generation Tejanos, avoid people with Mexican license plates because they know there is no one to answer for the damage they cause. El Pasoans look directly across the Rio Grande at Juarez and say thank heavens there''s a river, otherwise it would be one great city and there would be no traffic law. They also say thank heavens because they know better than most Americans what''s going on in Juarez--politically, socially and in every other way. These are some of the most conservative, law-abiding, decent people in the United States, the kernel of knowledge needed to draw up immigration laws. What matters is their common decency and respect for God and their having to earn a living, traditional American values. If they had their way, they would draw every decent person in Mexico over that river to live under the system of laws that is the American government, get them away from the government of individuals who rule Juarez. With no barrier they cannot seperate the good from the bad, even though they know how to choose better than anyone else.

The Rio Grande, for them, is the dividing line between the ancient hell of corruption and injustice and the modern, liberal state where our fellow man decides issues of justice. Thank heavens the river is there.

When we talk about building a fence, we mean extending the Rio Grande all the way to the ocean at Tijuana and enhancing the river itself so it is not so easily crossed. When this is done, the people on the American side can go about their business, not living in fear of the mess to the south spilling over. Many people far to the north would like to see a fence so their backs would be covered; we in the border region, of every ethnicity, with relatives and many other connections in Mexico, would like to see a fence so we would be protected tomorrow on the way to work.

Who would object to this fence, and why? It will not be too expensive and not too much of a construction problem--we have to think in terms of building the Interstate Highway system fifty years ago, an internal national defence mechanism that will take years to build, but a tiny fraction of the work that went into the Interstates, and very interesting to our engineers--they''ll figure it out.

The fence will not be politically offensive--once Aemricans have voted to build it, and even now, it''s an internal affair. Other soveriegn countries are welcome to comment but, as to their negotiating with us about our laws, only internationalists and collectivists--and people who can''t take care of their own affairs--would think they have such a right; and they are out to destroy America anyway, so who cares about them. They can sit out there and debate all they want.

Will illegal aleins now in the USA object? Of course--when they get repatriated they will be stuck outside the fence and, in many cases, they have built good lives in America and are decent, hard-working people; but Latin America needs people of this quality to reform their own governments. I think North Americans will be amazed at what effect they have once they''re back home. It will do them good, too, because many of them are subject to leftist propoganda in the Southwest, believing that this chunk of the USA should be given back to Mexico. They will soon find how choice positions are assigned under the Mexican system, no matter their accomplishments and merit, and how well their children will be educated in Mexican public schools, one of the richest nations in the world. Perhaps El Grito will be heard again.

That covers financial, physical, social and political barriers to completing the fence. Objectors are just obfuscating. Next: establishing fair, enforceable immigration laws and procedures.

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At last!
By
Lineman

At last the nation''s attention turns to this bleeding wound of a border problem and, again, the blunt hammer of politics is trying to quickly repair a delicate, simple situation that has grown confusing and complex due to neglect.

At last I can turn my attention to working on it, too.

If we care about our fellow man and the will of the founding fathers--including the founding fathers of Mexico--we must guide that political hammer as well as we can towards protecting the common people on both sides of the borders. Our system of laws was intended as a restriction on government, not an empowering instrument, so any legislation that sweeps either the taxpayers of the USA or any citizens of Mexico under the carpet is inaffective and abusive, actually magnifies the problem. Legislation must eliminate the programs that bait illegal immigrants, respecting American taxpayers and unburdening them from laws that have them paying the medical bills of the third world; legislation must define and establish clear law enforcement procedures in the border region--not just along the borders; legislation must see to the needs of our neighbors to the south by clarifying that the USA is not a dumping ground for their social ills. Allowing the current authorities in Mexico to think they can affect our national sense of right and wrong, to use guilt by displaying their open sores like street beggars, is an insult to the Mexican nation--their common people are far better than that; they are poorly represented.

How many American politicians have any idea of conditions on the border? How many have waited at an emergency room, bleeding or passing out with fever, while the tax payer-supported medical staff tends to the ills of illegal citizens of another country? How many Mexican citizens have died in the desert seeking help that should have been available at home? How many American politicians have ever been stuck for a job while their families starve, or spent a night outdoors against their will, or even ever missed a meal? Precious few, you can bet, yet they are debating the fates of millions, of the Americas, from their comfortable offices. This is the blunt hammer of politics, the same that put these social programs in place forty years ago, backed by 2/3''s of American voters. Is America still that ignorant and uncaring? My candidate said back then that you cannot legislate morality--and he has been proven right. LBJ''s programs continue to act as acid on American decency, taking hard-earned income from working people and pouring it slowly over people at their hour of need, dissolving any instinct of self-sufficiency or dignity they may have, as if these programs were designed by intellectuals who actually intended to destroy the moral fiber of a free people. The majority of Americans see this now, and they elect supposedly conservative representatives--then those representatives do nothing but line up at the trough like their predecessors, proof of ancient wisdom concerning politics and power. Most Americans now laugh at the shallowness of LBJ''s thinking--but he was supported by that 2/3 majority. Are Americans any smarter or more knowledgeable than then?

Are they disgusted enough by this border issue to make wise choices or will they take the first feel-good legislation and go with it like they did in ''64?

Part of the bluntness of politics is its desire to fix things with one blow, or a series of sharp blows. That won''t work on our border; it will only make it worse and hurt a lot of people who are already suffering. We are looking for a long-term repair, attention that may last several years. For example, can we really locate and repatriate 11 million illegal aliens? Yes! We have to think a bit more Asian-style here, the same way Ho Chi Minh beat us--time is on our side. We blunt Americns are used to thinking of the number 11 million as if they were barley seeds in a basket--too huge a pile of barley seeds to grasp, mentally--wow, what a bunch of barley seeds. But the way we move them is by designing a moderate-sized scoop that handles well, doesn''t drop too many on the floor, then finding scoop operators of steady demeanor who will be there every day, searching and scooping, year after year until the job is done. I bet they get to the pont in a very few years where illegals are hard to find and we have to worry about their hiding a few to preserve their federal jobs, then promise them another assignment.

When it is known in Latin America that the horrible, selfish American citizenry is effectively pushing all illegals back over the border the people won''t be so tempted to leave home, maybe won''t make as many babies and will demand effective leadership to solve their social problems right where they live. It worked for the Communists in Southeast Asia; it works in middle school classrooms--why not here? Americans just aren''t thinking right.
To eliminate social programs, we need to rescind them all but keep people currently on assistance on the dole until all the kids are 18 years old. That will give plenty of time for the welfare bureaucracy to retire or be moved to other government jobs; those seeking to apply will have to move to Midland/Odessa where KFC pays $8.50/hr. to start and can''t get enough applicants. People in other countries will get the word plenty quick and, again, take their frustrations out on their local authorities, as they should. The rest of us just have to decide we want this done, that we are willing to commit to a reform that will take 18 years, like paying off credit cards that indebted us in one brief vacation but take years to pay off. LBJ''s platform sounded nice but it just wasn''t a very good idea.

The border is a delicate situation because millions of people are involved who live hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. Their sustenance and medical conditions are life and death; their gullibility to swindlers and violent criminals on both sides of the border is infamous, though unknown to people who have not lived with them. A man once told me he had been robbed the night before by cholos who were waiting for him when he passed through a hedge, a place where all the field hands had to pass to get back to the canyon where they lived at the end of the day. Twenty years ago all the hands kept their pay rolled up in their sock (the Bank of America has gone a long way to resolve this matter), so all the cholos had to do was ambush my friend and rob him.

I asked if he had called the police and he said, no, that he would have to wait an hour for them to arrive, that they could do nothing, really, and that they would take the knife he used to protect himself. He would spend an hour to lose his knife and miss his dinner--better to stoically accept his fate, part of being illegal in the USA.

Interviewing a woman one morning who had no ID, she told me that she had been fully prepared to work in the USA but when she was running no-man''s-land the night before from Tijuana she had come to a ditch with the migra right behind her. She had tried to jump the ditch but it was too wide and when she landed hard on the other side the bag with all her belongings popped open and they fell into the ditch. What was she to do? Stop and pick them up and get arrested, or keep going and enter the USA with nothing? She kept going.

Another lady in the room, listening quietly, asked, "was it a while bag with a big red letter K on it?" Yes, the interviewee answered. "That was a K-Mart bag. Next time use the blue bag from Walmart--they don''t pop." This is the level of materialism of these people. They have nothing, are mostly decent people who are easily crushed. Their native land owes them the chance to acquire stability--they need to stay there and hammer on their own political system, not come here and beg from ours. And they soon lose the dignity of beggars and become demanding, unable to survive in anything but a welfare state--American taxpayers money used to corrupt the citizens of another country--amazing, on top of the horror we have created in our own society.

The situation is simple in its essence: people often seek work in other countries; it''s up to the host country to decide who may come to do what job, for how long, and to establish simple procedures to accomplish this. The vast amount of money involved between American agiculture and Mexican politicians has spoiled the affair into a rotten mess, though this will take decades to work out. I know a municipal judge in West Texas who told an illegal alien convicted of misdemeanor DWI that if he would work on the judge''s farm for six years the offender wouldn''t have to go to prison. We found the man five years later, listed as an absconder, still afraid of the authorities and wanting to get back out to the judge''s farm where he felt protected. No passing of a new law will root all this filth out.
The situation, the region has been neglected while all this corruption has been growing for years. It''s so easy for the American people to throw more money at poverty hoping it will go away so they can go to the mall instead of volunteering through a church program to help someone. It''s so easy to take a racist or xenophobic perspective and say all those different-looking people just need to get out, then turn away while they rush in. It''s smart politically to tell the people of your country to leave, to go north over the line when they need something--here, here''s a bottle of water, a map and a bag lunch. And the people who are making millions on this don''t want the nation''s attention--they want it to continue as is. About 1/3 of all American agents from every agency are compromised in their first year.

I once applied to University of San Diego law school, disgusted with the corruption and abuse I''d seen as a welfare worker and Amnesty teacher. The admissions counselor told me that if I wanted to become an honest immigration lawyer I would make less than I did as a welfare worker, and did I want to put myself in the position to decide what my price would be?

Are we, as a nation, ready to make that decision?

In September 1973 a man picked me up hitchiking in Benson, Arizona, on my way from LA to Corpus Christi. Two Mexican men crossed I10 in front of us barefoot, south to north, with their shoes tied together and hung over their necks. They each had a small plastic bottle on a string, a hat, and nothing else. They looked like coyotes, glancing both ways up and down the freeway, then crossing way out in the middle of nowhere. Where were they going?

The old man driving told me they were illegals, that they had come from a village way down to the south over the mountains that we could just see in the distant haze, way down in Mexico, and that they had crossed the desert barefoot to save their shoes for when they found work. He said the bottle was for water, that they made the trip on about a quart. I had been out of the infantry just over two years and thought about their trip. I asked why they would do such a thing.

The man said that in Mexico there is no work for men like these, that their only income came from making the desert trip, finding piece work, then taking the money back to their village. He said that, recently, he had to have a sanitary pit dug at his house and that the backhoe man had wanted over a thousand dollars--which he didn''t have--but two Mexican illegals came along and dug the hole in one day with picks and shovels for fifty dollars. Fifty dollars, and sandwiches for lunch, and the hole was perfectly square--as good or better than the backhoe could do.

He said that just as America had become a source of income for these people, the local economy had come to depend on their labor. Otherwise, neither side would live nearly as well; they were co-dependant.

Sixteen years later I was a welfare worker in San Diego County, Calif. interviewing recent arrivals from Mexico every morning. Many of them were like the two men I''d seen crossing I10 in 1973; but most of them, applying for welfare, were pregnant women. I came to know why they came to America: Mexico doesn''t care. America cares, perhaps too much. I saw the supposedly infinite financial resources of the people of California being poured, like acid, over the decency, ethics and morality of the people of Mexico, reducing them to welfare dependency.

I taught English on the border, in the packing houses and barrios, in adult education, in migrant schools, and I supervised them for years as they passed through the American justice system in Texas--fascinating. I came to know them and the border, how its lack of structure draws the criminal element from both sides, how it feeds on innocence and need, encourages amorality and violence. The situation in California fifteen years ago was hopeless--I can only imagine the current misery there and in Arizona and New Mexico; public agencies and others wish it were as simple as when I worked there.

So now the border has gained national attention--thank God. If conditions I worked in fifteen years ago are considered the good old days, what will they be in another fifteen if we don''t do something now? With luck, a national movement will reform the border as labor was reformed at the beginning of the twentieth century, setting structure for the phenominal growth the border will see in this century. And as the population explodes, the Rio Grande Valley becomes one massive Los Angeles, the deserts fill up with Hispanic or Asian migrants, few of those people will study history to find us--who cared enough to challenge authority, to bring decency and structure to this nightmare.

The situation is that severe. What we do now will determine whether criminal activity or the rule of law dominate North America, as this wave of immigration sweeps north for the rest of the century.

I forgot to mention the men I worked with on Spring Street in LA in 1966 and 1967, who were there at the factory when I arrived at 7:30 and were there when I left at 5. They cursed when there was no work.
There is no place for men like these in Mexico--there should be.

Apparently, Mexico will not change. We on this side of the border, of all races and ethnicities, where there is a semblance of law and order, will have to do all the work.