Monday, September 16, 2013

Meanwhile back in the Homeland

From 2005 to 2007 I lived in Arivaca, Arizona. To get to Arivaca you have to pass a Border Patrol checkpoint that is located 30 miles north of the border. There is no other road to get to Arivaca from Green Valley, Tucson, or Nogales. So every time somebody living in Arivaca wants to go into town they have to pass through a border check point even though they have not left Pima County yet alone the US. This checkpoint essentially creates a border zone separate from the rest of the US in the vicinity of Arivaca. This means that the US citizens and legal resident aliens living in Arivaca are not treated with the same respect by the US government as people living elsewhere. Instead they are viewed as suspects with regards to the laws dealing with the cross-border smuggling of migrants and drugs. Now granted having to stop and show ID at an artificial internal border while dogs sniff your vehicle every time you want to leave your home town is not the worst possible fate. But, it is a considerable annoyance. Especially since I haven't seen any evidence that harassing people in this manner has any effect at all on illegal immigration or drug importation into the US. Well, now there are some residents of Arivaca organizing to protest against the check point. There is a meeting on  22 September 2013 at the Arivaca Community Center to discuss the issue. It will be interesting to see what develops.

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