Posted on 12/31/2008 10:10:44 AM PST by reaganaut1
...
[T]he expanded border agency is now 54 percent minority. Hispanics [...] comprise 52 percent of the agents.
Since the Bush administration mandated hiring 6,000 new agents to boost the force to 18,000 by the end of this year, the ranks of Hispanic agents have mushroomed. The roughly 6,400 Hispanic agents on duty in 2006 increased 45 percent to about 9,300 last month.
...
But there are some concerns about thousands of new agents enforcing laws in the same communities where they have strong family ties, some that extend across the border.
''The problem I think that will come up are with people who are born and raised there, and have associates on both sides of the border. I don't think that's especially good from an integrity standpoint," said James Dorcy, a director of the National Association of Retired Border Patrol Officers.
''The drug cartels are trying to do everything they can to infiltrate the Border Patrol right now," Dorcy said.
His organization and the National Border Patrol Council worry that the rapid buildup of the Border Patrol, along with an outsourcing of background investigations of applicants to private contractors, has allowed unsuitable candidates to become federal agents
Their concerns have some validity, as a number of agents have been caught taking bribes to allow illegal immigrants, as well as drugs, to cross the border.
Last week a federal judge in McAllen sentenced ex-Border Patrol officer Reynaldo Zuniga, 34, to seven years in prison for drug smuggling. The officer, from the Valley city of Harlingen, was paid to pick up a cocaine smuggler on the Rio Grande and drop him off at a hamburger stand nearby.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Bienvenidos to the badged foxes guarding the chicken coop
Why do we have to be bean-counters?
Therein lies part of the problem.
As long as they are Americans, and will do the job, I dont care.
I believed the numbers to be much higher as every thing I read has a "spokesman" or agent who is Hispanic.
No wonder our borders are so porous.
“But there are some concerns about thousands of new agents enforcing laws in the same communities where they have strong family ties, some that extend across the border.”
Gee, ya think???
Fox, meet hen house.
Yep
The fact that most are fluent in the language used by the majority of the individuals they come in contact with, is a big plus.
ping
Sadly these agents can be as pure as the driven snow and have the greatest love of America but all it would take is the drug cartel grabbing Cousin Pedro off the streets and telling the agent what he or she must do to see Pedro alive again. They are vulnerable to this sort of pressure no matter how virtuous they are. And their families members on both sides of the border are also vulnerable to be snatched or threatened. If you want affirnative action, assign them to the Canadian border and assign northerners to police the Mexican border.
Check out US Immigration on the US-Canada border. They’re pretty much relaxed and can be jerks at times. because they know they don’t have to deal with the politics of the mexicans pouring into the country. There’s a reason why more BP agents want the US-C positions..one just needs to deal with the cold.
A return to the traditional American policies of the first one hundred and so years of this Republic would solve much.Legalize and tax all drugs with the provision clearly spelled out that intoxication of any form will not excuse the user from responsibility for his or her actions.Make it perfectly clear than many jobs will require continuation of drug-free testing and those who wish to use certain substances voluntarily restrict their employment options.
Prohibition didn't work in the 1920s and hasn't worked in the last 30 years either.
Those who stand to lose by legalization are the drug and dope gangs,pushers,and the statist control freaks.
However, when I went for my actual job interview, I was blown away by the fact that only one Border Patrol employee was a caucasian. Everyone else was hispanic.
That said, you must be a citizen to get hired.
One thing the investigator asked me that stuck over the years was "have you ever done anything that you could be blackmailed for?"
Brilliant!
Republican goal: Shore up the border by hiring more border patrol agents.
Bush accomplishment: Hand over the jobs to people who have a vested interest in not patrolling the border.
I disagree with you on legalizing drugs. For me, the closer analogy to legalizing drugs today is not what happened with prohibition but what happened with abortion. When prohibition was tried and abandoned, the general populace was still very much self-regulated by their faiths and work ethics where state welfare was not a parachute for failure to support yourself. For those reasons alone, habitual intoxication was never part of accepted culture. Those who did usually had short, brutal lives.
By the time abortion was legalized, faith had eroded big time. Kids were no longer grounded in honor and morality but instead steeped in “Do your own thing”, “if it feels good, do it”, “there’s no right or wrong”, “Imagine no religions” etc. When abortion was legalized, its proponents were claiming that there were approximately 140,000 “backstreet abortions” a year. They argued that abortion would still be rare but safe. What happened is that the government imprimatur on abortions sent a message to our younger generation that it was “okay”. Abortion skyrocketed because government has become the ultimate authority for irreligious kids. Today we see abortifacient pills advertised on television as a way to cure a “mistake”. The act of legalizing abortion defined the morality of abortion for millions of people.
Now consider the drug trade. The same effect will probably happen. Nor will it do much to curb illegal trade. Any government-sanctioned drugs are likely to be tame compared to what can be compounded by illegal drug producers. The legal drugs will whet the taste for drugs and the drug people will be glad to produce higher highs and lower lows for a price.
I do understand the argument of legalizing it but I don’t think it would work for long and we would be at the same point but with more damaging, more intoxicating, more dangerous drugs and destroyed drug addicts on our hands. With our nanny state mentality, those druggies would be burdens for decades.
>>>Bienvenidos to the badged foxes guarding the chicken coop
You mean foxes like Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean?
Some of the best Agents in the Patrol are of Mexican descent. Unfortunately they, like their Anglo counterparts don’t curry much favor with the politically correct establishment.
I still remember how surprised I was to hear a "darker than Obama" Tejana friend rant about "those D@** Mexicans", even though her grandparent were Mexicans."
Of course my mother's family wasn't too happy with Kaiser Bill and the Austrian Corporal either, despite her great grandparents coming from near Heidelberg. (Also some of her great Aunts and Uncles too, but not her grandfather, who born in the US)
“HEY, AMIGOS, OVER HERE TO THE HOLE WE’VE CUT IN THIS STUPID FENCE!”
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