Plunge in border crossings leaves agents fighting boredom (not the onion)

[Blue_Tires]

Reporting from San Luis, Ariz. -- The border fence ran right in front of Jeff Byerly's post, a straight line of steel that stretched beyond town and deep into the desert. As a U.S. Border Patrol agent on America's front line, Byerly's job was to stop anyone from scaling the barrier. Hours into his midnight shift, his stare was still fixed, but all was quiet.

He pounded energy drinks. He walked around his government vehicle. On the other side of the fence, the bars in the Mexican town of San Luis Rio Colorado closed, and only the sound of a passing car broke the silence. Byerly, 31, switched on his DVD player. Minutes later, a supervisor knocked on the window: The slapstick comedy "Johnny English" was on; Byerly was fast asleep.

Wild foot chases and dust-swirling car pursuits may be the adrenaline-pumping stuff of recruitment efforts, but agents on the U.S.-Mexico border these days have to deal with a more mundane occupational reality: the boredom of guarding a frontier where illegal crossings have dipped to record low levels.

Porous corridors along the 2,000-mile border do remain, mostly in the Tucson area, requiring constant vigilance. But beefed-up enforcement and the job-killing effects of the great recession have combined to reduce the flood of immigrants in many former hot spots to a trickle.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-border-boredom-20110421,0,2700894.story

[leveymg]

1. All the more reason to spend X billions of dollars more on drones and border technology.

btw: If CBP shot Byerly for sleeping on watch during "wartime", did that open up a job for a robot?

[DCKit]

4. TPTB and Republicans would argue it's the drones that reduced the crossings.

NOT what Wall St., the Banksters and a complete lack of regulatory enforcement did to our economy.

Gotta keep those $$$$$ flowing to the MIC.

[leveymg]

14. Don't be silly, it's the land mines and the Confederate Air Force that keep us safe.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_iLjPFcOVE8c/ScWvwK2y-oI/AAAAAAAAAI8/_3sVzY9Wblg/s400/3-29-1862+HARPERS+WEEKLY+COLUMBUS+land+mine.jpg

[dkf]

2. Enforcement works.

[sabrina 1]

6. Immigration has been down for a long time. The visions of

hoards of illegals massing at the border, was meant to arouse anti-immigrant anger in the American people.

The main reason, however, for the drop in immigration had nothing to do with enforcement, it has to do with the economy and the fact that people on the whole, don't view the U.S. as a land of opportunity anymore.

Enforcement kills and tortures, btw. Personally I have zero problem with people whose country's economy was destroyed by NAFTA with over 10 million small businesses there being shut down, trying to find a way to keep their families from starving.

We owe them.

[dkf]

8. If Nafta was really the problem why hasn't Canada been harmed?

They are stronger than ever. Mexico has bigger problems than Nafta.

[marmar]

9. Apples and oranges. Canada was a wealthy country before NAFTA.

nt

[dkf]

10. Why doesn't Mexico have the jobs instead of China?

It makes no sense that we choose somewhere much farther away to trade with.

Again it's something to do with Mexico.

Maybe Mexicos biggest problem is that they all want to leave instead of building something that works for them. Their leaders would rather their people do well elsewhere and send funds back.

But something is dysfunctional there. Even the Brazilians have their act together.

[Lucky Luciano]

16. Canada us all about commodities. nt

[JonLP24]

11. Canada benefited the most from NAFTA

More than the US. Anyways manufacturing jobs were lost in Mexico, China surpassed Mexico as the #1 producer of imported goods for the US, and they had an economic crisis the year NAFTA went into effect.

Here is a PDF that goes more in detail.
http://giannini.ucop.edu/Mex_USMigration.pdf

There are plenty of sources all over the place that show this. You should be able find out easily through Google.

[dkf]

12. The poster above seems to think that it was designed to do damage to Mexico so we owe them

Free rights of association.

My point is that it didn't affect Canada badly so it is something within Mexico that made it bad for them.

[sabrina 1]

13. Canada did not have a corrupt government.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Mission Accomplished.....

the best strategy to fight illegal immigration is to destroy our economy so people won't want to come here because there aren't any jobs anyway. Would you risk your life for a minimum wge job in a foreign country?

:shrug:

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Well, not quite accomplished -

it will be mission accomplished when they can pay US workers the wages they currently pay them in China and Indonesia. THEN, the factories will return and we will have full employment again - at a dollar fifty an hour.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. When PEMEX's oil production goes completely off a cliff...

...then we can have a border war to worry about instead of fucking "crossings".

Coming soon to a Desert Southwest state near you.

[Blue_Tires]

15. The drug wars along the border aren't even over yet

just not reported on...