Illegal Aliens: Who Left the Door Open?

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Dever feels overrun and doesn't mind who knows it. He relates a story about a recent visit by a television crew that arrived in his office and asked whether he was aware that a group of presumably illegal aliens was camped out in a drainage ditch next to the sheriff's headquarters. Sensing a story, the crew wondered if he was embarrassed by the aliens' presence. A plainspoken man, Dever said he was not the least bit embarrassed. Their presence, he said, illustrated quite pointedly just how pervasive the problem was.

The people who probably should be a little embarrassed are the folks up the road at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., home of the U.S. Army's top-secret Intelligence Center. The facility, which trains and equips military-intelligence professionals assigned around the world, also happens to be a thoroughfare for illegal aliens and drug smugglers, with mountains on the base providing a safe haven.

Using some of the same routes as the people smugglers, the drug runners are well armed, equipped with high-tech surveillance equipment and don't hesitate to use their weapons. That's what happened earlier this year, when law-enforcement officers and Mexican drug runners engaged in a fire fight at the border in front of a detachment of Marines just back from Iraq, who were installing a steel fence to prevent illegal aliens from driving through the flimsy barbed wire. The Marines, unarmed, watched placidly. None were injured.

The situation across southern Arizona has spun so far out of control that many on the border believe a day of reckoning is fast approaching, when an incident--an accidental shooting, multiple auto fatalities, a confrontation between drug and people smugglers--will touch off a higher level of violence. And the nightmare scenario: some resident frustrated by the Federal Government's refusal to halt the onslaught will begin shooting the border crossers on his or her property. As a rancher summed up the situation: "If the law can't protect you, what do you do?" Everyone, it seems, is armed, including nurses at the local hospital, who carry sidearms on their way to work out of fear for their safety.

How Corporate America Thrives on Illegals

Popular belief has it that illegals are crossing the border in search of work. In fact, many have their jobs lined up before they leave Mexico. That's because corporate managers go so far as to place orders with smugglers for a specific number of able bodies to be delivered. For corporate America, employing illegal aliens at wages so low few citizens could afford to take the jobs is great for profits and stockholders. That's why the payrolls of so many businesses--meat-packers, poultry processors, landscape firms, construction companies, office-cleaning firms and corner convenience stores, among others--are jammed with illegals. And companies are rarely, if ever, punished for it.