Monday, December 16, 2013

Peter Gemma: Perils of a Porous Border

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

Perils of a Porous Border

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Protecting the 1,954-mile Mexico-U.S. border, as some pundits assert, is not just an economic issue, or a problem of criminal drug trafficking and gun running. It threatens America’s national security. In an August 13, 2013 op/ed in The Washington Times, Retired Admiral James Lyons, who was senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations, stated, “Fixing our porous borders is one of combating the threat of terrorism that America faces. In the various efforts to reform the U.S. immigration system, often overlooked in the debate is its impact on national security.”

The statistics are alarming: according to an August 1, 2011 investigative report in the Columbus Dispatch, the United Nations estimates that 97 percent of the illegal immigrants who enter the U.S. clandestinely do so across the U.S.-Mexican border. However, only 20 percent of illegal aliens are caught. Smuggling illegal aliens across the border is now a $6.6 billion industry for Mexican crime syndicates….

Ongoing, even increasing, human trafficking and drug smuggling has a new wrinkle: Michael Braun, former Chief of Operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency, testified at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on February 2, 2012 that suspected terrorists have now formed alliances with Mexican drug lords, which allows them to “operate freely in our neighborhood.”…

According to the Customs and Border Protection’s Immigration Yearbook 2011:

  • 108 Syrians were apprehended at the border; 1,353 have been caught over the past ten years.
  • 198 Sudanese were arrested, bringing the ten year total up to 1,207;
  • 276 Iranians were nabbed in 2010; 2,310 were captured over the previous ten years;
  • 525 Pakistanis were caught sneaking across the Mexican border, bringing their ten year total to 10,682.

These are not political refugees or those seeking green cards — they are illegal aliens who deliberately chart an expensive and secret course to the U.S. via our spongy border with Mexico.

Peter B. Gemma is an award-winning writer who has been published in a variety of venues including USA Today (where more than 100 of his commentaries have appeared), Military History, the DailyCaller.com, The Washington Examiner, the EconomicPopulist.org, and Congressman Ron Paul’s CampaignForLiberty.org.
 

[Read the whole thing here.]

1 comment:

jeigheff said...

It grieves me that our country is too stupid to protect itself.