Some call them illegal. Some call them undocumented. Some call them immigrants. Some call them aliens. I call them crossers.
Please do not judge what I have to say until you read my whole diary.
I’m not illegal, but I have known and worked with many people who were and are.
I wrote a diary the other day about the National Guard Police being deployed to the Sierra Vista area and was accused of all kinds of things and HRed. I deleted that diary. I decided I needed to write this diary. This is my response.
National Guard Police Deployed
http://sierravista-fthuachuca.kold.com/...
Finally the Democrats have put forth new legislation to once again address comprehensive immigration reform, but they are not optimistic about its chances.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Senate Democrats launched on Wednesday a new effort for comprehensive immigration reform, even though they so far have no Republican support for a bill that would allow some undocumented immigrants to gain legal status.
Although Durbin, along with bill author Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and co-sponsor Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), acknowledged the tough odds of getting immigration reform through the Senate -- much less a Republican-controlled House -- they said it was important to offer a vehicle.
The bill addresses border security, amnesty and the Dream Act. The Democrats are not giving their efforts much chance of passing, but they are at least trying.
I have lived in AZ for over 45 years. I lived on the border for over ten years. I know a lot about the border. I lived about three miles from where the Monument fire started for seven years. I used to go there from time to time (not a lot there but a view and firewood, which we would go for), and I went to all the canyons frequently, Ash, Carr, Stump, Miller. All beautiful riparian areas, all burned in the fire.
The Coronado National Monument, where the fire started, straddles the border. It is the beginning of the Coronado Trail. If you drove to the top of the Monument and looked south, all would be Mexico. No one goes there anymore unless they are smugglers or coyotes. The area had been closed to the public for weeks. I have heard stories from visitors who took what they thought would be a nice walk in the Huachuca Mountains, where the fire was, and after seeing the camps and trash, they could not get out of there quick enough. They were afraid.
At least fifty homes (57 at last count) and four businesses have been destroyed by this fire. I am afraid of more violence.
The truth is it almost certainly was smugglers or coyotes who set the fire. You all did not want to hear that. I was not being politically correct. You wanted to bash McCain. It is not a matter of being anti anything. It is a matter of the truth.
Maybe it is a matter of nomenclature. McCain’s unfortunate use of the word illegal. You cannot paint them all with a broad brush, and when you defend or condemn them all the same, it is the same fallacy and error of judgement. The Mexican/Latino people do not defend them. They know they bear the brunt of the anger for their actions, and they certainly bear the brunt of their violence. When you defend them all as if they were one, you are doing the people you say you support a big disservice. That is like saying you can’t tell them apart.
These are the same kind of people who have murdered over twenty thousand people in Mexico in the last few years. They terrorize the Mexican people on both sides of the border. They are ruthless, evil people. I will ask McCain’s question: Why is it so hard for you to believe they would set this fire?
Casualty numbers have escalated significantly over time. According to a Stratfor report, the number of drug-related deaths in 2006 and 2007 (2,119 and 2,275) more than doubled to 5,207 in 2008. The number further increased substantially over the next two years, from 6,598 in 2009 to over 11,000 in 2010.[42]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
There may not be a person caught for committing the crime, but there is strong circumstantial evidence. There is video of the fire starting and where it started. That whole area is under high resolution surveillance. It is a well known smuggling corridor. It has been under video surveillance since the time I lived there. There was a million dollar dirigible, which we called Meacham’s folly, after one of our infamous governors, and the spy in the sky (we hated it and people on both sides of the border would shoot at it). How would you like to see a huge white blimp hanging in the sky that you know is photographing everything. I don’t know if they still use it, but they also use satellites and drones now. I have seen the maps of the fire and it almost certainly started in Mexico or right in a fenced off area between the border (which is what the video shows). I hate agreeing with McCain and Dever, neither of whom I can stand. But they are probably right.
I have seen the same messages on local stories. I can’t stand McCain...but. I hate Devers..but...they are probably right. How, you ask can people feel so certain? They have identified and questioned two campers who were deep in the mountains when the Wallow fire started. You think they don’t know who was in an area that is under surveillance?
The truth is no one would go to that place where the fire started unless they were smugglers. I am not saying they were crossers looking for a better life. They are criminals. Smugglers, coyotes. That area had been closed to the public, and the people who live there do not go there because they know better. There is a war on the border, whether you believe it or not.
Some have suggested it was radical border watchers, but even in my dislike for them and what they do, they would have no reason to do this. And if they were in the area, it would have already been made public. That area is under surveillance and movements recorded and reported. If they had been in the area, the information would have been released.
A case can be made that there is genuine fear of how people in the area will react to whoever started the fire. Many homes and businesses have been lost. There has been tension in the area for years. IMO this is the reason the National Guard Police were sent there. There is already a ton of law enforcement in the area and not that many people. There is probably more law enforcement per capita there than almost anywhere in the country. I admit I am speculating. I do believe John McCain was given information that has not been given to the public. I believe the unauthorized photo below was leaked on purpose because certain people with information want the truth to be known. Like I said the area is under constant surveillance. I got a reply on a posting board from someone who got burnt out in one of the canyons (I will not say which) that said “we know it was the Mexicans...setting fires is SOP for them..heads are going to roll.” This post was immediately deleted.
maps of the fire, the line at the bottom is the border
http://www.kvoa.com/...
http://www.kvoa.com/...
video (this was released unauthorized) I’m sorry it got released to Fox by a radical border group
http://www.foxnews.com/...
Tighter enforcement, beefed up border patrol and the addition of the National Guard on the border has led to more desperate measures, like the fire (and it was not the first started on the border, this is known by Congress) and more deaths in the desert. I am trying to explain the situation to you. Just denying it or calling McCain names doesn’t help. Being as politically hard line as the Republicans will not help. You need to understand the concerns of people caught in the crossfire. You cannot just dismiss them as racists. I have watched my state grow more and more radicalized. We need honesty if any good is to come from all this. We need to get real. Drawing political lines in the sand and intolerance for another opinion has led to the myriad of problems that have resulted from our refusal to deal with the situation. It is a humanitarian crisis. It has even made McCain, once a person who tried to offer comprehensive immigration reform, turn a hard line in the other direction.
I used to get crossers by my house, which was almost literally across the road from the border (about two miles south). I could see the smoke from the smelter in Cananea, which is thirty miles south of the border, from my house. I would give them food and water. My husband and I found a couple sleeping in our empty house in Bisbee. They were startled when we showed up, and my husband just asked them to leave in the morning. They were grateful.
At my job in Bisbee, I worked for three years with a crew that came across on green cards every day from Naco. We used to sing and laugh all the time. I had friends that lived in Douglas and Agua Prieta, both essentially the same town divided by the border, much like Nogales. There is an American and Mexican side of Nogales.
Everyone used to go back and forth all the time, and we enjoyed having the best of both worlds. Then the drug war heated up in the early eighties, and the border got locked down more and more. Five different enforcement agencies took over the county. You could be stopped anywhere within thirty miles of the border and be searched for no reason. This is still true. We moved off the border in 1990 because it had already become a war zone. Friends we had who lived on the border were being robbed and vandalized by crossers. Feelings were changing and not for the better. I have family and friends who still live there. I have not been back since my best friend’s funeral in 2004. I live in central AZ close to Sedona now.
Almost no one comes across the border anymore without coyotes who abuse them, take their money and hold them hostage to get money from their families in this country. The deserts are littered with the bodies of those who have died from the heat while crossing, because they have been forced into more remote and rugged terrain. Imagine the desperation of people who would do this. Walk in their shoes.
Property has been trashed all along the border, leading to angry feelings and growing fear from people who have lived there for generations, many of them Mexican/Hispanic descendants themselves. How would you feel to see men carrying drugs and guns cut across your property in the middle of the night? Walk in their shoes.
Because of SB 1070, crossers who live in this state are afraid to report crimes against them whether it is rape, minor or major crimes or abuse by their husbands. They are afraid when they go to work that they may get raided and rounded up and not be able to say goodbye to their families. They are taken advantage of and abused by the people who bring them here and the people who employ them. They live in fear much as Jose Antonio Vargas describes in his coming out. They are afraid when they drive that they will get stopped and deported like a young man in Phoenix. Many young people he had coached came out to plead for him and cried when he left. Walk in their shoes.
A former Alhambra High School assistant cross-country coach was deported Monday after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied his request to stay in the country.
Miguel Aparicio was arrested in 2009 by the Pinal County Sheriff's Office. He was pulled over after running a stop sign and subsequently arrested when authorities learned Aparicio was in the country illegally.
Aparicio requested a stay of deportation, citing community involvement and the fact that he was living with and taking care of his grandmother as reasons for his staying, said Jose Penalosa, his attorney.
After the request was denied, Aparicio was required to leave by Monday evening on a bus that would take him to the border town of Nogales and then Mexico.
Aparicio will be unable to enter the United States for at least 10 years now that he has a deportation order against him, Penalosa said.
http://www.azcentral.com/...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110622/us_yblog_thelookout/pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-comes-out-as-illegal-immigrant
People on the message boards I have read are calling for Vargas to be deported by overwhelming numbers. They do not care that he won a Pulitzer. They do not care how good a person he is. Lives are being destroyed every day. People paint them with a broad brush, and they all get hurt. I believe this is why many American citizens of Mexican descent are not on the side of the crossers. They have been here legally for generations or went through a long legal process to come here and because of crossers are treated with suspicion and distrust. Walk in their shoes.
These are vulnerable people who are caught in a web of politics, abuse and strong emotions.
What is the answer? We need amnesty for those who are here now and a legal path to citizenship. We need comprehensive immigration reform and border enforcement. We need to legalize, at least, marijuana ( I am for legalization and control of all drugs) because much of the crime, smuggling and violence is because of drugs that our country consumes. We are not innocent in this problem.
The drug war has left a trail of murder, corruption, ruined lives and trashed constitutional rights at a cost of billions without one iota of reduced use to show for it. Forty years of madness. A trail of tears. It has been our longest, most costly war. I believe it has been one of the greatest tragedies of my lifetime.
Legislation to end federal criminalization of marijuana introduced by Franks, Paul
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) will introduce legislation on Thursday to end the federal ban on marijuana and let the states decide whether to legalize it.
We need to be sympathetic to those who live on the border and the crimes committed against them. You cannot just dismiss how they feel. They live and deal with it every day. Walk in their shoes.
We need green cards for those who would be willing to come here and pick crops. Hard work. You should try to walk in their shoes. My husband picked grapefruit for two days and made a dollar fifty, that was in the seventies. The first day he made fifty cents. He decided he had got the knack of it after the first day. The next day he made a dollar. He was anglo. He is gone now. I miss his voice of reason. When friends said the border should be laid with land mines (not the first or last time we heard this), he said the border should be opened both ways. Many Americans live in Mexico illegally. They skirt Mexico’s laws to retire more cheaply there and take advantage of their cheaper health care.
We need leaders who do not back away from this issue because of polarization politics. The people being hurt by this situation are mainly poor people looking for a better life. Some are refuges from drug and political violence, and are not just from Mexico but also Central and South America, Jamaica and Puerto Rico, and even Canada and China. They come here from all over the world.
I do not believe we should let everyone in who wants to come. Our country would be overrun. We need to be honest about what is really happening. People have died by the hundreds trying to cross. The ones who have spent most their lives here are being sent back to a country they barely know. They are being held in prisons with no charges and for indefinite terms. They are being made victims by every part of the system. It is time to quit playing politics with them. They are real people with real feelings, real fears and real families. They are not invisible. They are all around you.
In the meantime, though, Senate Democrats plan to continue to push for administrative relief for some undocumented people, particularly family members of citizens and DREAM Act-eligible young people. A number of Senate Democrats sent a letter to the White House in April asking him to stop deporting so-called DREAMers.
Please call your representatives in Congress and tell them you support the legislation Democrats are trying to put forth. Please write the President and ask him to stop deporting family members of citizens and students eligible for the Dream Act. Please ask them to legalize marijuana. This problem, and the violence and desperate acts are only getting worse. I am really afraid of where this will all end. The problem has been ignored or dealt with inhumanely for too long.
I have tried to point out where I am expressing my opinion based on my knowledge. I admit I could be wrong. Okay, slay me. I've had my say.