Posted on 02/06/2005 6:14:14 AM PST by SandRat
The Arizona-Mexico border and the pathways to northern cities and farm fields have always been dangerous places.
Just ask the granddaughter of a Cochise County rancher. The 13-year-old was surprised on a hike by armed immigrant smugglers who were bringing their human cargo across her grandfather's ranch and through the desert. She still has terrible nightmares of these men with guns.
Or the 13-year-old immigrant girl named Montserrat who was making a trek to find work. Montserrat told the New York Times she thought she would go to school and eventually get a good job in the United States. Instead she was taken to a house in Phoenix. She didn't realize until then she had been sold into prostitution.
"The man said he'd already paid and I had to do whatever he said," Montserrat told the Times. "When he said he already paid, I knew why I was there. I was crushed."
Two young girls. Both terrified of the coyotes operating with impunity along Arizona's border.
And incredibly, there are no specific penalties under state law to stop the human smuggling that has become so prevalent.
That is why we are introducing identical bills in the state House and Senate to empower local law enforcement not only to arrest those who smuggle illegal immigrants but those who force them into prostitution and sweatshops, as well. The bills make it a felony to traffic human beings into the United States as well as to force them into prostitution.
Representing Cochise, Santa Cruz and Pima counties, we are struck by a general feeling of lawlessness in the border areas - a lawlessness many in Arizona assumed had gone away with gunslingers of the Old West. It is a new lawlessness created by smugglers.
We have all heard of the smugglers who create turmoil on Southern Arizona ranches on the one hand and leave immigrants to die in the desert on the other. They have no allegiance to the people they smuggle and no fear of law enforcement. And we have no idea who they are bringing into the United States.
One of the most stunning revelations has come from testimony before the House Commerce and Military Affairs Committee by garrison commander Col. Jonathan Hunter of Fort Huachuca, home of the U.S. Army intelligence school. Hunter related that more 3,600 illegal immigrants were found within the post's perimeter last year. Coyotes lead them there.
Some say the state has no responsibility to address this issue. The U.S. Attorney's Office, however, is so overwhelmed by other crimes that prosecuting smugglers has fallen down the priority list. But smuggling human beings has become more lucrative than drugs. The hundreds of e-mails we receive from constituents confirm they are tired of waiting for Washington.
Whatever your opinion on our bill, you will have your chance to make your voice heard - not only in Phoenix at the Capitol, but now here in Southern Arizona. We have taken the unprecedented step of asking the House Judiciary Committee chairman to take testimony on this - and several other immigration bills in an area where the impact of coyotes is strong - in Cochise County. We are hopeful that the public will attend this hearing and make their voices heard.
Will this bill end illegal trafficking? No, but it will give law enforcement another tool to protect the public. It will also help protect the lives of two girls who came from opposite sides of the border.
Your family isn't you. Having a family proves nothing. Reagan's boy Ron is a loser.
But you're probably a bit too young now
Age does not equal wisdom, but I will agree it is sad when some one gets old and is still stupid.
You continue to show your ignorance of the United States and how it developed. Families are the core of it. The values and the society that they handed down are the only things we have - not the people in the government, not the buildings in D.C., not the pieces of paper that codified their beliefs.
WE are the end result, and the only "nation" in existence now that represents the "United States". But we are the product of all who came before us, and if we were raised properly, the values that were hard won over the centuries were set down to us by our parents, our siblings, our families.
This is the fundamental notion of Conservatism. That the ideals developed over generations, passed along and practiced by each succeeding generation, are of value in and of themselves because they are the product of experience, and should be respected, not discarded and ignored.
Thus the history of America is the history of its families, and not a lot more.
psychobabble. I don't disagree with your support of family values, but all people place value around the family. Even the Mexicans who are looking for jobs. Your dodging the issue. America is filled with immigrants who don't have a family tree that dates back to the pilgrims, and a man's worth is not defined by who his daddy is or if he's a mama's boy.
If your blue blood family "ideals developed over generations, passed along and practiced by each succeeding generation" produced you then I'm glad to be the greatgrandson of poor immigrants. Have a nice day.
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