Posted on 10/25/2007 1:31:24 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
DONNA — Tony Nieto said he’s careful on his family’s land, knowing the previous owner had a nasty run-in with a group of undocumented immigrants.
As he recently stepped out of his white Mazda pickup, the 34-year-old debt collector explained he always carries his nickel-plated .38 special when he visits his family’s property, located about a mile north of the Rio Grande in Donna.
Nieto says you can’t be too careful while treading along the border — even on a sun-filled Tuesday morning.
“It’s not very powerful, but it’s very accurate,” he said of the .38 special.
Unlike many people in the Rio Grande Valley, and nearly every area politician, Nieto said he welcomes the federal government’s border fence plan with open arms.
Federal officials offered no timeline for when crews will begin fencing near the property his family has owned for the past six years, but he knows that the 7-acre plot will fall south of the barrier, Nieto said.
When the fence goes up — or if it does, rather, since his family’s property does not border the feds’ first wave of fencing scheduled for next year — it will be a 14-foot-tall barrier from the rest of the United States.
Federal officials have told landowners they will still be able to access property located south of the fence through access-controlled gates, according to Nieto.
He can hardly wait.
“It’s a big ugly wall, but we’re trying to stem the illegal immigrants,” he said. “We’ve been out there where you see guys out there in trucks with guns and drugs.
“You just step on the gas. You’ve got to move.”
No respect
Other landowners and those who live near the border said the fence will disrupt the wildlife along the river, as well as their daily lives.
Mike Vickers, a Falfurrias veterinarian who said he owns 160 acres along the Rio Grande south of Pharr, wants illegal immigration to be stopped.
A former member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, Vickers said he left the group when he decided a fence would solve nothing.
“It’s just going to reduce the access for ranchers and farmers to the river,” the Falfurrias native said. “And I just think it’s a big waste of money.”
Like Nieto, Vickers maintains that undocumented immigrants remain a threat to Americans.
“They have absolutely no respect for our sovereignty and our laws and our geographic boundaries,” he said.
Find the reason
Ironically, Nieto said he descends from undocumented immigrants himself.
When they still lived in Mexico, he said his family was made up of wealthy landowners in the state of San Luis Potosí.
But when workers successfully overtook his family’s estate in 1855, one of the maids fled to Texas and took the landowners’ baby as her own so he would survive.
Nieto said the immigration situation today is much different.
“It’s the people crossing — the illegal aliens,” he said. “They’ll go in there and take all the food. They’ll use the barbecue pit.
“I understand they need water, but don’t leave it running.”
Still, Maime Rodriguez — whose Rio Grande City property would “be the first house they’d come across at the river” — said building the fence will not help the immigration situation.
“Just because it is a problem, I’m not going to take it against the people that come here undocumented,” she said.
“There’s a reason they’re coming illegally, and until we find that reason, we will have this problem.”
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“he knows that the 7-acre plot will fall south of the barrier”
I wonder how many other people’s land fall into that category?
If the Mayors of these different cities that are opposed to the fence continue to gripe, perhapes they will also fall south of the barrier.
This statement says a lot about the illegal immigrants of today. Yesterday's illegals (for the most part) did not dump trash all along the border, if they broke into a house they usually took only enough food for a meal or two, they did not feel the need to trash the house while there. If they stopped at a ranchers waterline to get a drink they did not leave the water running. Today's illegals have no respect for America or US Citizens. We taught them to not respect us by allowing them to break our laws and take our handouts without recourse.
We will have to teach them to respect our country and our laws once again- we need the fence, we need employer sanctions that really bite- we need to enforce our laws, and stop the freebies. We need to impress upon the illegals which country is theirs and which is ours.
Actually, since the fence is only for 750 miles, I would prefer that it be erected on the border where there is no river. The river is not where the majority of illegals cross.
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