By Tom DeWeese
web
posted May 20, 2002
The families of eleven immigrants who died while attempting to enter the United States illegally have filed a $41 million lawsuit against two federal agencies.
The suits assert that the United States, specifically the Department of Interior and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, failed to provide water to Mexicans trying to sneak into America and that was the reason they died. Their bodies were found last year in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge between Tucson and Yuma. Because the US Border Patrol has effectively shut down more populated portions of the Arizona border, illegal aliens and the smugglers who guide them into the US have been forced to use more remote areas.
 According to a lawsuit, the United States isn't allowed to protect its own borders |
According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 54 per cent
of all illegal immigrants coming into the US in 1997 were Mexicans. More
recent statistics are not available, but the traffic of aliens across
the border has not declined. Indeed, there is another area of friction
between Mexico and the United States, and it is the armed incursions by
Mexican soldiers and police. The US Border Patrol reports that there were
23 such incursions in 2001. The Mexican government insists they were fighting
the drug trade and "got lost", but the likelihood is that they
were providing protection for drug smugglers. Arizona's border remains
a popular route for smuggling, particularly along the 60-mile stretch
of desert in the Coronado National Forest.
One is always attacked for being anti-Mexican when these issues are raised,
but let it be said that I am not. I am opposed, however, to the utter
indifference of the Mexican government to this problem. The idea that
the United States should be sued because it did not tend to the needs
of those entering illegally isn't just irrational, it is an attack on
our national sovereignty. A nation that cannot or will not protect and
defend its borders is in big trouble.
More than a thousand migrants-illegal aliens---have died of various causes trying to enter the United States over the past three years. Their deaths are a tragedy. They demonstrate that Mexico has turned a blind eye to this human traffic and that the United States is not providing adequate funding to insure illegal entry is thwarted.
A key to understanding the effort, despite the dangers, to enter the United States is President Bush's support for yet another amnesty for illegal aliens. It is an open invitation to illegal immigrants from Mexico and others from Latin and South American nations. It tells them that, if they can get into the US, they have a fair chance of going to the head of the line when the next amnesty comes. It eviscerates the rule of law; in this case immigration law. It defies common sense.
At the current rate of both legal and illegal immigration, the United States will double its population within the lifetimes of today's college students. In the last decade, the 11.2 million immigrants, along with the 6.4 million children born to them, equal nearly 70 per cent of the nation's total population growth. The nation cannot absorb that many people, assimilate them, educate them and care for them without putting significant economic burdens on native-born and naturalized Americans. And a nation under attack by other illegal aliens, namely militant Islams, cannot deal with that problem while trying to stem the flow of those across the southern border. It is a no-win situation.
The United States is experiencing an invasion from Mexico, but we are
not calling it that. It's time we did. 
Tom DeWeese is president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots,
activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, VA. The Center maintains
an Internet site at www.americanpolicy.org.
(c) Tom DeWeese, 2002
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