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© Charlene Garcia Simms |
Legislature
Immigration laws are endless, with the
implementation of several border enforcement operations such as:
Operation Hold-the-Line, Operation Rio Grande, Operation Safeguard, and
Operation Gatekeeper. A good resource that details the most recent laws
is a recently published book, Crossings,
Mexican Immigration in Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, published by Harvard University Press.
The operation that affected an increase
of
crossers in Arizona was Operation Gatekeeper. It was launched on
October 1,1997, on the San Diego border, the busiest in the
nation. The
crossers switched to more dangerous areas such as the southern desert
of Arizona to cross.
[http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jun1999/ins-j25.shtml]
(Note: if this link does not work type in
Operation Gatekeeper in your browser).
Most recent initiative:In March 2004, an announcement was made
that
the Arizona Border Control Initiative (ABC) will add 200 agents, two
unmanned aerial vehicles, four helicopters and new holding facilities
in the form of air conditioned tents in Florence, capable of holding
about 500 more illegal entrants. The initiative is expected to cost
more than $10 million, to start in June and run through September 2004.
Asa Hutchinson, Undersecretary of Border and Transportation Security
for The Department of Homeland Security, stated that current
immigration polices are broken and no longer work, and that the Arizona
Border Control Initiative coupled with the president's guest worker
program, will make a difference. Meanwhile Humane Borders is preparing
20 more water stations for the crossers. Arizona shares more than 100 miles of
border
with Mexico.
Much of the land on the U. S. side is federal land that provides
habitat for
endangered species. Rep. Raúl Grijalva states that pushing people into
the
desert
will not solve the problem and it will harm our fragile environment.
We need to
know what environmental impact this plan will have on places like the
Cabeza
Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Organ
Pipe National Monument, but the agencies have not
revealed this
potential impact. He further states that the ABC initiative is clearly
another effort by the
Bush
administration to bypass environmental
laws without public involvement.
A Marshall Plan for Mexico?
[http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/migrants/viewpoints.html]
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