Sunday, September 19, 2010

No Fence Would Keep a Determined Immigrant


                                                                                                                                                                                           
  The actual fencing technology that demarks the limit between the U.S. and Northern Mexico covering only the third of the most manageable border goes along 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex. and it cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades. The project is running seven years behind, and billions of dollars ahead since the Bush administration. Investigators concluded that there’s no good way of estimate the effectiveness of the fence since the innovative have already learned to breach it with cutters, torches and ladders.

The Border Patrol's Budget has raised in the latest years
    Nothing less, the native Mexican citizen deeply believes that the states of Alta California, New Mexico and Texas, which ownership ceded after the 1847 war, has been taken away from them long time ago, so the passing by the border and systematic filtering through the years would mean to them that they know their own land because it intimately belongs to them.

     With more than 225 million crossings annually through Southwest border stations, Mr. Cornelius co-director of a center on migration at the University of California, said in a recent study on federal human-trafficking “close scrutiny of this massive flow is impossible.”
   The particular ultimate character in the scene is the Minuteman Border Patrol for hire to watch any fence maneuvers. The Minuteman; “a solitary man on a hill” with hat on, dog and pistol, custodies the border saying patriotically that he cares about his land's interests from “people who has no love for the country”. He carries an Obama Bin Laden picture under a “wanted” sign at the more old western cowboy style talking as if Mexicans were a serious threat for national security.
    Are not ideologies and interest confused in all this border crossing issue? Or is still ignorance, in spite of the latest technological paraphernalia what keep us, humans, miles apart?

***
    In the other hand, Calais, France, authorities dismantled a camp for undocumented migrants outside the English Channel port in an effort to crack down on the smuggling networks that assist them, rounding up almost 300 Afghans, Pakistanis who had gathered there for years in the hope of making clandestine journeys across the 22 miles of water to Britain (attractive because of its large communities of Africans and South Asians and its underground economy). 
The French immigration minister, Eric Besson, defended the operation “This is not a humanitarian camp,” he said. “It’s a base for human traffickers.” “The operation in Calais won’t stop departures from Kabul,” he added. “The smugglers will find other routes that are more complex and more dangerous.” Many said that they had fled conflicts in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan and Iran, and that they had nowhere else to go. Moustafa Tcharminian, a 38-year-old from Tehran, “The smugglers are in love with money,” he said. “They will keep sending people and lying to them, telling them to go.” The EU estimates that 500,000 people cross its borders without papers each year.

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   In immigration matters it’s crucial to know the immigrant’s background to find out his most intimate interests. A follow up through the first years in the new country giving him the freedom, the civil rights and the benefits to motion around is important for his development into the community.

     In a research on Mexican laborers, Nina Berstein states that the tens of thousands of Mexicans who labored in the cotton fields in the Southwest under the Bracero program, were never a threat to national security; there "never was a more docile animal in the world than the Mexican”. Nearly every immigrant group has been caught at that crossroads for a time, wanted for work but unwelcome as citizens, especially when the economy slumps. But Mexicans have been summoned and sent back in cycles for four generations, repeatedly losing the ground they had gained. As one rancher quoted in Mr. Zolberg's book remarked to a Mexican hand: "When we want you, we'll call you; when we don't — git.". 
Today, the nature of the deal can no longer be disguised, said Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration Studies at NYU "It's a bad-faith pact," he said. "We can't have it both ways — an economy that's addicted to immigrant labor, but that's not ready to pay the cost."

“Turning immigrants into Americans is a mission tied intimately to this country’s self-interest and identity, if not its very soul” says a NY Times source on a commitment of citizenship article.

***
    The border crossing issue has not been resolved yet because it has a long history of manipulation according to the calling of the times and this has not stopped the determined immigrant to risk his life to cross it, in its search of a better life.

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