Finding Borders

Where should borders exist and how should they be enforced?  Half a journal assignment, half a question surfacing after arriving in Agua Prieta, Mexico, I’m wondering what the answers are for the American southwest.  There are many parties benefiting from the geographical relationship between Mexico and the U.S.  To know and understand who they are and what their relationships are built on could help us deliver an answer for the questions I have posed.

In Agua Prieta, there live people from all places and backgrounds.  Visiting the Border Patrol station and listening to Agent Mike describe how there were migrants going north who immigrated from Eastern Europe helped reinforce this idea.  There are no common migrants or average Mexicans crossing the border.  On the first day in Mexico, we met The Wall as introduced by Anne, our guide from Frontera de Cristo.  That strip of land ranging between the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego, measured in width by feet, stood tall as it was made up of 30 foot iron posts.  Anne took us there to present 500 years of border history.  While we were participating in one of her activities, a family walked by carrying a ladder. 

If we were to measure the gain that someone would make from crossing the border into America, how would we do that with a family?  In America, you can work for a career.  In America, you can work for insurance, a big home, and a new car.  You can educate your children.  Those are satisfactory gains coming from a place, not necessarily Mexico the country, but poverty in Mexico.  And there is a lot of risk taken to cross, not for getting caught, but for surviving the trek.  This includes hiring a coyote, paying the cartel to cross, battling freezing winds at night and broiling days in the sun.  Suffering sabotage from ranchers, betrayal by your guide through robbery, abandonment or both, so does the gain outweigh what you can lose? 

The family is part of a larger group of migrants who I choose to refer to as economic refugees.  The Border Patrol will try and apprehend any suspected crosser, no matter their apparel or accessories.  I do not doubt that, but when they are looking through their telescopes and spot a group of people, two carrying arms and packs, they will be targeted differently. 

Those entering the United States through undesignated port of entries will always be viewed by law enforcement with equal discrimination.  For those two people who are carrying weapons and drugs, there are ten who are not.  And we must question for whose benefit are those smuggling breaking the law?  Easy answers do not exist for often confusing questions.