US-Mexican border as a terror risk

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | March 22, 2005 | Faye Bowers

[Ramonan]

Concern is growing at the top levels of government about the US-Mexican border becoming a back door for terrorists entering the United States. While Al Qaeda infiltration across the nation's southern border has been a constant concern since 9/11, US officials cite recent intelligence giving the most definitive evidence yet that terrorists are planning to use it as an entry point.

As a result, a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers - mainly from border states - are pushing to tighten checkpoints and other ways of monitoring the porous 1,400-mile boundary. The subject will also be central to President Bush's summit in Texas Wednesday with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin

The other is through a loophole in the system to separate the large number of illegal Mexican migrants, who are automatically turned back at the borders, from citizens of other countries who are allowed in, pending immigration hearings. These others are referred to as "other than Mexicans," or OTMs, by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They come from other Latin American countries as well as other parts of the world, many of them designated by the government as countries of "special interest." In 2004, some 44,000 OTMs were allowed into the US.

Representative Ortiz, though, disputes many of the DHS numbers. He says he regularly hears reports of much higher figures from border patrol officials from his district in Texas, which includes the border-crossing area of Brownsville.

"In the Brownsville sector alone, border patrol officials reported they caught 23,178 OTMs crossing through August 2004," Mr. Ortiz says. "Of those, 16,616 were released."

Ortiz also points out that another loophole is entering Mexico through Brazil, where a visa is not required to travel to Mexico

[jackbenimble]

Not a solution at all. It's more profitable, because it's tax-free, to sneak in and get paid cash under the table.

Coming in legally with Newt's blessing and then working under the table for cash are not mutually exclusive.

The only difference is that they would be legal migrants working for cash and evading the tax law. Unless there is enforcement, the employers will place profits in front of respect for the law and they will continue with the lawless criminal behavior that they are practicing now.

The open border types like to pretend that employment and tax laws will suddenly and magically be more enforceable and enforced after we install a guestworker program but they never actually tell us which huge bureaucracy is actually going to do all this enforcing and why if it will be possible in the future it is supposedly impossible to do now.

[hershey]

The radio was reporting this am that hundreds of businesses were being prosecuted for hiring illegals. Don't know if they were all in the southwest, but Logan Airport was exposed last night as having employed a cleaning service that hired illegals from Brazil. They were busy in supposedly secure areas of the airport. Hugh headline in the Boston Globe and an embarrassment for Gov. Romney...along with the Big Dig mess.

[Marauder]

I'm thinking that if a guest worker program were started, a database system would have to be implemented to ensure that the guest workers were actually working.

If I were a guy in charge of such a thing and saw a number of guest workers in country with no documented income, I'd be curious enough about their activities - after a reasonable period of time - that I'd want some fresh info as to where they are and what they're doing.

Action taken would depend on what they're doing and how faithful they were about updating their whereabouts.

But people that hire these guys want absolutely no proof of their having done so, and that's why I'm convinced that most if not all of the illegals are working under the table. Deductions taken from their wages are probably not reported, so we're taking a double hit: The lost taxes as well as some serious money going out-of-country.

We're helping Vicente Fox's economy at a hell of a cost.

[jackbenimble]

Your talking an enormous bureaucracy to babysit 11 to 20 million guestworkers at the level of detail you are talking about.

Think about the Florida Department of Child Welfare as a reference. They are not trying to look after the health and welfare of even a fraction of that many children yet just about once a month Bill Oreilly is telling us about another family of pathetically starved foster children.

The politicians pushing the guestworker program have no intention of spending money on building an enforcement bureaucracy on that scale.

[Marauder]

Yeah, I know; I was just thinking "out loud" as it were. It isn't going to happen.

I know most if not all government bureaucracies are grossly inefficient, but Florida has to be at the bottom of the heap.