Altar, Mexico: A Town Geared to Aid Illegal Immigration

[Evo]

This is just too much. Basically it's a town geared to aid illegal immigration. No surprise the Mexican government hasn't raided this town.

Illegal immigration to the United States via the Sonoran Desert is big business in the town of Altar in northern Mexico, the last major settlement before the U.S. border, 60 miles away.

Around half a million people pass through Altar every year before the dangerous walk northward.

With few activities other than helping migrants, Altar offers services from money transfers and doctors to people smuggling and prostitution.

Pharmacies specialize in electrolyte solutions to avoid dehydration on the walk north, as well as caffeine and ephedrine stimulants to increase stamina and overcome fatigue.

Gallon water bottles are on sale at almost every corner and a Mexican bank has opened a branch in Altar to service migrants who receive money from U.S. relatives for their trip.

"If you want to have a good chance of making the walk, you've got to first come to Altar. They've got everything here, it's like a Wal-Mart for migrants," said Jose Manuel Magarino, 25, from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, outside Altar's church after praying for good fortune in his border crossing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070821/ts_nm/mexico_usa_altar_dc;_ylt=AtAw_JD_1.4TBoyGIXdLIp9g.3QA

 

[siddharth]

I've always had this question, which is, isn't illegal immigration a consequence of a free market, where cheap labor tends to migrate across borders, where there's a higher demand for it?

Since the US is so much better off in terms of standard of living, wouldn't people naturally want to migrate to the US, to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives.

Anyway, IMO, I don't think ideas like border patrols or building fences actually will work in the long run, cause they don't seem to address the real issue behind the immigration.

 

[edward]

This is just too much. Basically it's a town geared to aid illegal immigration. No surprise the Mexican government hasn't raided this town.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070821/ts_nm/mexico_usa_altar_dc;_ylt=AtAw_JD_1.4TBoyGIXdLIp9g.3QA

There are several others Mexican towns who assist illegals. The small hotel in Sasabe is always full of those waiting. Another, Naco, is pretty much the same. They are both small border towns with populations swollen with entrants who will be crossing the border soon.

To add to the condemnation of the Mexican government they have printed a Border Crossing guide in the form of a simple to read 32 page illustrated comic book, which is given to Mexican crossers.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42207

Sunday night my son and I fished until after dark at a small lake 30 miles north of the border. When we left we were stopped at a Border Patrol check point. It was no surprise we have been stopped there before. As we were sitting there chatting with the Border Patrol agents about fishing, a motor-home pulled up and when they went to look it over they found it was crammed with 54 entrants.

The standard procedure currently is to take them to the Tucson Airport where they are put on an AeroNaves de Mexico airliner and flown to Mexico city. That way it takes them a week or so to make it back up to the border to try again.

When my son and I fish for bass we practice catch and release, the Border Patrol does the same thing with the illegal entrants. We had just been joking about that with the BP agents when the motor-home pulled up.

 

[edward]

I've always had this question, which is, isn't illegal immigration a consequence of a free market, where cheap labor tends to migrate across borders, where there's a higher demand for it?

Since the US is so much better off in terms of standard of living, wouldn't people naturally want to migrate to the US, to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives.

Anyway, IMO, I don't think ideas like border patrols or building fences actually will work in the long run, cause they don't seem to address the real issue behind the immigration.

This would be the ideal, but what it amounts to presently is that Mexico is solving its social problems by assisting their citizens on their journey here.

The two largest sources of income for Mexico come from the money received from oil sales to the USA and from the money sent back to Mexico by the illegal immigrants.

 

[mgb_phys]

I've always had this question, which is, isn't illegal immigration a consequence of a free market, where cheap labor tends to migrate across borders, where there's a higher demand for it?

No it's the free market when you move the work to 3rd world countries. It's illegal immigration when the third world country people move to the work.

 

[drankin]

It's illegal. Hence the term illegal immigration. Deport them all. Change or abolish the 14th Amendment. It was designed to give former slaves citizenship. Not to create anchor babies.

 

[BobG]

I've always had this question, which is, isn't illegal immigration a consequence of a free market, where cheap labor tends to migrate across borders, where there's a higher demand for it?

Since the US is so much better off in terms of standard of living, wouldn't people naturally want to migrate to the US, to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives.

Anyway, IMO, I don't think ideas like border patrols or building fences actually will work in the long run, cause they don't seem to address the real issue behind the immigration.

There's two separate problems associated with the border:

1) Labor moving into the US creates a labor surplus that reduces the wages for American citizens. Even though the wages are less than average US wages, they're higher than the person could earn in their own country. Long term, it winds up having the same effect as moving the jobs to countries with cheaper labor.

2) If you can't control your borders, you make it easier for foreign terrorists to enter the country.

In most countries, the risk from foreign terrorists is much less than the risk from home grown terrorists. In the US, the risk of home grown terrorists is less than a lot of other countries, which reduces the risk of terrorism overall (it's easier for immigrants and minorities to blend into and profit from the overall society in the US, leaving fewer alienated subgroups to recruit terrorists from). The border threat might not be worse than other countries in general, but it's the most significant risk left after the home grown threat is reduced.

The labor part is tougher. Enforcement through employers would be the most efficient option, but illegal immigration has been a problem for so long that we can't suddenly deport every illegal alien working here. Being driven out of business might be a just reward for a single company whose entire workforce consists of illegal aliens, but driving a lot of companies out of business all at once starts to have a worse impact than the illegal aliens do, especially if the long term alternative to cheap illegal labor is to move companies to where cheap legal labor is located.

The logical solution is for Mexico to lure enough industry to their company that their workers can earn a living in Mexico and the logical source of those companies is going to be the US. Mexican labor eventually has an impact on US wages whether that Mexican labor is located in the US or stays in Mexico. That doesn't affect the right or wrong of the situation, but it does affect the priority.

The security side of the border issue is probably more important than the labor side of the border issue.

 

[edward]

Looking at the smaller local picture this is what is in what is happening on an almost daily basis:

Border Patrol agents on Thursday discovered the body of an illegal border crosser near Rio Rico, seized 1,150 pounds of marijuana east of Nogales and discovered that a man caught earlier in the week was a convicted sex offender.

As for criminals among the entrants:

The convicted sex offender, a 25-year-old man from Chiapas, Mexico, was caught at 10 p.m. Wednesday. A records check next day revealed he had been convicted of statutory rape in July 2006 in Sampson County, N.C., DeWitt said.
After serving time in prison, he was deported in June this year. He'll be prosecuted on a charge of re-entry of an aggravated felon, and then deported again, he said.
From Oct. 1 through July 31, 35,629 — or about 11 percent — of the 334,203 apprehensions made in the Tucson Sector were illegal entrants with criminal records, said DeWitt, citing the latest figures available.

Emphasis mine

This guy most lilely passed through the town of Altar which Evo mentioned in her OP.


http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/198091

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I think I read some where that most illegals in the US are ones who came here legally on temporary work visas but did not leave when the visa expired.

 

[chemisttree]

A perfectly rational response to a need. It helps people on both sides. 'Entrants' (hat tip to Edward for the colloquialism) should be allowed to buy anything they want to in a free, capatalistic society. It eases their 'passing' and concentrates the efforts of the border guards. Captured maps can be used to more accurately (and humanely) repatriate 'entrants'...

It's all good!

 

[edward]

I think I read some where that most illegals in the US are ones who came here legally on temporary work visas but did not leave when the visa expired.

That once was true. I doubt that it is now, especially at the rate they are crossing the border. Although once there is an anchor baby in this country any family member can get a visa to visit and then simply stay.

So far this fiscal year there have been 334,203 apprehensions made in the Tucson Sector alone. The BP estimates that they are only catching half of the entrants. Multiply that times the number of years this has been going on and you have the population of the average small country.

 

[edward]

A perfectly rational response to a need. It helps people on both sides. 'Entrants' (hat tip to Edward for the colloquialism) should be allowed to buy anything they want to in a free, capatalistic society. It eases their 'passing' and concentrates the efforts of the border guards. Captured maps can be used to more accurately (and humanely) repatriate 'entrants'...

It's all good!

Actually the maps show them where to go once they are on this side of the border. The repatriation, as you call it, consists of flying them to Mexico city on a Mexican airliner at American taxpayer expense.

 

[Ian]

Illegal immigration is not a consequence of a so called "free market", it is the result of a "closed market". You have got to get real here, those illegals are allowed and encouraged to be buyers of the products of the US market, but they cannot be a part of its productive operations or the reaping of its profits due to the US border laws.
The US system allows itself to suck on Mexican wealth outside its borders, but denies Mexicans the reciprocal, it is a system of "heaping dust", if you know what I mean.

 

[edward]

Illegal immigration is not a consequence of a so called "free market", it is the result of a "closed market". You have got to get real here, those illegals are allowed and encouraged to be buyers of the products of the US market, but they cannot be a part of its productive operations or the reaping of its profits due to the US border laws.
The US system allows itself to suck on Mexican wealth outside its borders, but denies Mexicans the reciprocal, it is a system of "heaping dust", if you know what I mean.

To clarify this a bit: They come here to work and buy products available on the American market. Currently most of the consumer products that they buy are made in China. The most common food items that they buy are made in Mexico.

To appease employers, especially large corporations and the building industry, our government turned its head. The federal government seemed to be oblivious to the fact that instead of coming by the tens of thousands each year they were coming by the hundreds of thousands each year.

Yet even knowing about the massive influx of entrants the federal government laid; the social, medical and educational burden that came with the entrants on the individual states.

In the southwestern states the burden of teaching federally mandated English to the children of non English speaking families has left our educational systems lacking funds and teachers.

The situation worsened when a large portion of the entrants started coming from Guatemala and El Salvador. Unlike the previous Mexican entrants the adults were unskilled and uneducated. This new influx also includes many from Southern areas of Mexico such as Chiapas who are are also neither skilled or literate.

In an ideal world we should welcome them. And in that ideal world we would have been prepared to provide their needs. But we were not prepared and the individual states simply can not afford to take on the social problems of our southern neighbors.

 

[drankin]

We can't fix the problems of the Mexican government. We shouldn't have to take on the burden of their incompetence. If we don't have a border, how can we be a sovereign nation? We have to have a regulated border just as any nation in the world has. The US nor it's trade system is the problem. The problem is that we don't have a secure border. Once we no longer have this surplus of cheap labor, we can adjust our internal work system to deal with the work that has to be done here, BY AMERICANS.

 

[EnumaElish]

This is a political and often emotional issue, and I empathize. U.S. economy is not a closed system, so something has to give and does in the end. High labor costs raise the cost of doing business in the U.S. One typical example in the last decade or so has been: Japanese-European capital comes in with an idea. They hire Americans and develop a cutting edge product. Usually, right before the sales take off (but sometimes after), they pack up and go because they discover that their initial cost estimates were low.

 

[edward]

This type of event is all too common in Southern Arizona. The guy was deported on Monday and was back in Phoenix trying to snatch a purse on Thursday.

Del Hoyo, an illegal immigrant, had been arrested last month on charges of third-degree burglary and underage drinking. He was sentenced to probation and was voluntarily removed from the country on Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Vinnie Picard said.
That means Del Hoyo illegally re-entered the country between Monday and Thursday.

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=200764