Posted on 12/23/2004 2:23:43 PM PST by Dashing Dasher
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 20 - Every year at this time, the restaurant kitchens and vegetable fields of California empty out. Prayers are said to San Cristofo, money is removed from mattresses, and Mexicans head home.
The United States-Mexico border is broken, say United States immigration and customs officials. And at no time is the stress on the border more visible than the holidays, when immigration and customs officials say they are most overwhelmed.
At the San Ysidro crossing here, on one side of the toll gates, immigrants head back to Mexico for the holidays, their pickup trucks and vans packed with washing machines, teddy bears and cheap lawn furniture. On the other side, customs agents probe gasoline tanks and dashboards with mirrors on sticks, while drug-sniffing dogs ferret through the upholstery in search of drugs bound for American cities like Los Angeles and New York to fill the New Year's Eve demand.
More than one million Mexicans will go south for the holidays, about half of them exiting through San Diego into Tijuana, officials say. Some are legal residents, but most, border officials say, are illegal immigrants, who in a month's time will pay thousands of dollars to have smugglers sneak them back to their jobs in the United States.
"It's like the salmon going home," said Mike Unzueta, the acting special agent in charge of the San Diego sector for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. "Come January, we'll get killed with illegal immigration back from Mexico."
The torrent of travel that began in mid-December on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe will peak just before Christmas. Then the travel will reverse back into the United States in mid-January after Día de los Reyes, or Three Kings Day.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I agree! Close the borders down tight on Christmas day, before they start coming back! Our borders are a joke!
Merry Christmas!
Get the lazer/electric fence up quick. They know which entries are easier. TJ in San Diego is full of holes, This would be perfect time to build the fence while they are enjoying their siesta (sp)
Leave it to a New York Times reporter to refer to the border inspection station as "toll gates." Well, yes it looks like a toll gate even though no toll is collected.
We practically hand out $$ at the "toll gate".
It should be called the anti-toll gate or the "take what you want" gate.
Oy!
bump! Oh, how will the American economy survive without it's backbone, the illegal labor force!
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