Bienevidos (Welcome) to the New Serfdom

By Jeff M Newsome

How illegal immigration hurts everyone and what we should do about it.

In 1991 I was working out of the San Diego Patrol Office. Normally my beat was on the I-5 from La Jolla to Solana Beach, but on this particular evening I had been assigned to work within a two mile stretch of the same freeway at the San Ysidro Port of Entry at the US/Mexico Border. The Department's leaders had become very concerned after we had experienced an astounding number of pedestrian fatal collisions at the border. On some weekends we had two or three pedestrian vs. vehicle collisions within five miles of the border. The vast majority of those struck, mangled, and frequently killed by traffic on the freeway were illegal immigrants. The Department, which I am proud to say values life regardless of nationality, decided to focus an unprecedented amount of officers in an effort to slow traffic in the area and discourage pedestrians on the crowded freeway.

The undocumented workers making their way to the land of plenty had been denied access to the US via normal pedestrian routes by the Border Patrol and INS Agents, who performed their duty with gusto in spite of their pitiful staffing. The illegal immigrants, who found it most successful to cross the border to the west of the freeway but who needed to catch rides to the east of it, would have slogged through the drainage culverts under the pavement to bypass the 65 mph traffic, but for the Coyotes who prayed on them. The Coyotes robbed, and occasionally raped, the illegal immigrants, whom they called pollos (chickens). The undocumented workers did not call the police after the assaults, fearing deportation. They did not fight back, because the Coyotes and the Polleros who herded them across the border were armed and ready to kill. In short, they were the ideal victims of the criminals, often their own countrymen, who victimized them.

My partner on that evening was a brand new officer named Jorge Alvarez. Jorge was young, good looking, and dedicated as only a brand new graduate of the Academy can be. Jorge is dead now, but I remember him as if I saw him yesterday. He and I were assigned to patrol the freeway in two vehicles, running endless traffic escorts during our eight hour shift. At any given time, Jorge would be traveling on the opposite side of the I-5 from me as we made endless loops, turning at the first over crossing north of Mexico. We would be relieved by two other officers at midnight and the detail would continue for weeks. The purpose of the escorts, which the Department calls "Round Robins", was to slow and even stop traffic to keep motorists from striking the illegal immigrants crossing the freeway.

I was driving northbound on the freeway at about 9:00 PM when I saw a group of about twenty Latino pedestrians congregating at the edge of the slow lane on the southbound side of I-5, just north of the border. As I watched, the pedestrians began running across the lanes, directly in the path of traffic which was speeding toward Mexico like a freight train. To my amazement, they made it to the center divider untouched. I activated the emergency lights of the black and white Ford Mustang I was driving, and began swerving back and forth frantically in an effort to get traffic to the rear of me to slow. Normally, the illegal immigrants, who had grown used to the presence of police in the area, would have simply waited in the center divider for traffic to stop and then would have ran or walked past the patrol vehicle.

But this group was different. Perhaps they were new, or just easily panicked. They jumped the center divider and then seemed to become aware of the marked unit stopped on the freeway not twenty yards from them. As one, they turned and jumped back across the barrier wall separating the freeway lanes. My impression was that of a giant human caterpillar with forty legs, flowing back towards the southbound traffic. I got on the radio and tried to get Jorge to stop the opposing traffic, but he was just making his turn to go south, having been slowed by another large group of undocumented workers who had preceded the ones I was watching run into harm's way.

As if in slow motion I watched, powerless and unable to save the border crossers, as traffic in fast lanes of the freeway screeched to a halt, spinning out and nearly colliding with other vehicles. Vehicles in the slow lanes were much closer to the crossers by the time the drivers saw them. Cars and trucks weaved crazily past people, missing them all. I began to think I was witnessing the most amazingly fortunate chain of events in my thirty years when the terrible occurred. The two slowest members of the group, a sixty five year old man and a pregnant teenager, were in the slow lane, almost at the relatively safe haven of the shoulder of the freeway, when a pale blue Datsun B210 approached at over fifty five mph.

I watched, silently praying for their safety, as the corner of the B210 struck the man, nerfing him to the pavement like a rag doll. The girl was not as lucky. She was struck full on by the vehicle. It rolled over her like a speed bump, its front wheels bouncing off the ground. Her body was deposited on slow lane, limp and apparently lifeless. I briefly considered exiting my car and running across the freeway to help her. I knew I would not make it across the lanes without being struck myself. I did not want to be one of the three or four patrol officers killed every year, and I knew a dead officer helps no one, so I stayed in my car and ordered Jorge to stop all southbound traffic. I drove up the freeway at high speed with lights and siren going, and made the turn at the ramp. I was back to the scene in less than a minute.

Jorge too had stopped at the ghastly scene. He was getting his medical kit out of his trunk. We were both Emergency Medical Technicians, and he knew we would need all the stuff in his kit. Someone in the illegal immigrant group had dragged the injured man and girl out of the slow lane. The man was awake and sitting against the freeway perimeter fence. His legs were bent at odd angles, and I guessed he had a crushed pelvis as well. He did not make a sound. He sat stoically, observing us as we attended to the girl. She was in bad shape. Barely conscious, she was moaning in pain. She had terrible abrasions and it looked as if her legs and arms were broken. Worst of all, I was sure her unborn baby, apparently due in less than a month, was seriously hurt. We stopped her bleeding and put a C collar on her neck in case she had broken it too. I wondered what it took to leave her here alone. Women, especially pregnant women, rarely crossed unaccompanied. I was sure her family was watching us from the bushes, hoping she lived.

After what seemed like an eternity, but in fact was only minutes, the ambulance I had called arrived. I was never so relieved to see a paramedic in my life. I turned over patient care to the higher trained fire department professionals and began the collision investigation. The man and the young mother survived to be deposited in a Mexican hospital. The unborn child died.

The driver of the B210 had not stopped. That was not unusual in the border area, where the lawlessness from Mexico followed the flow of illegal immigrants. The driver fled south, where the Mexican border guard had simply waived him through. Perhaps the hit and run driver too was an undocumented worker. We'll never know.

I do know one thing. The assertions made by liberals then and now that illegal immigration does not really hurt anyone are nonsense. It hurt that man and young mother in 1991. It hurts those we use a grist for the worlds largest economy today. Illegal immigration damages our National sovereignty and threatens our safety. Border crossing is not limited to those fleeing dire circumstance in Mexico and trying to make a living here. Our borders are an ideal avenue for terrorists. If a pregnant teenager can make it across, an Al Qaeda agent with a backpack full of explosives certainly can.

The contention that our economy cannot function without illegal workers is also ludicrous. The same sort of thing was suggested in the old south where plantation owners said they could not survive without slave labor. Somehow, after the most violent upheaval in our history, they persevered. The truth is we don't know what the economic impact of undocumented workers is. Yes, they make lettuce and fast food cheaper. But they also cost millions of dollars in the taxes they, and those who employ them, don't pay and public services they use for free. The increasing cost of legal labor and the taxes we save by stopping illegal immigration may offset each other. I hope we find out.

There is a moral question here we often overlook. How long will we, the richest people in the world, continue to build our economy on the backs of illegal workers? I'm just a cop, and I tend to look at things in simple terms. Illegal immigration is just that, illegal. We should enforce the law in earnest or, and I oppose this, legalize all immigration and open the borders. In doing so, we should recognize that we will have abandoned all hope of keeping America safe.

So what should we do? Build a wall from the Pacific to the Gulf to keep undocumented workers and terrorists out? That will cost millions, perhaps billions of dollars and take ten years to build. And after we have spent all those years and all that money on the wall, the ever inventive undocumented workers and their polleros will go over it, around it, and under it. Like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape, they will dig tunnels worthy of a mining engineer to reach the land of the big PX.

I think the short term, economic solution is to use existing police officers like me to detain undocumented workers and transport them to a conveniently located Immigration and Naturalization facility where a Federal duty officer will determine their nationality and take the appropriate action. For a fraction of the cost of a wall, we can utilize thousands of pre-deployed, well trained officers to deal with our immigration problem. The use of local enforcement officers will free up federal officers to take action against undocumented worker employers. We should be aggressive in employer enforcement, because it's not fair to place all the burden of illegal immigration enforcement on the shoulders of hard working people just trying to make their lives, and the lives of their families, better. Its time those who employ the undocumented workers paid the price too.

How about a guest worker program? Bad idea. In the end, it's not much better than illegal immigration. At worst, the program will fail because it will not successfully contend with illegal immigration. After all, employers hire undocumented workers because they are cheaper, right? Illegal workers will underbid guest workers because all guest worker programs require taxes (more cost) to operate. We will spend millions to finance a guest worker program which can't compete.

At best, a guest worker program will create a class of permanent serfs who come here to work and send most of their money home to Mexico or points south, taking those dollars out of circulation in our economy and propping up corrupt oligarchies. Then, at some predetermined point, they will go home. We will sit in our comfy middle and upper class homes and wave goodbye as they catch a bus back the third world pit they came from. That is unless they decide to stay illegally. Either way, we will use the work of a class of people who will never truly know the blessings of liberty or the fruits of their labors as the foundation for our own single minded pursuit of affluence. Shame on us!

Why have we abandoned the immigration formula that has served us so well for two hundred years? If we truly require labor from south of the border, and I admit they may play a significant, albeit illegal, role in our work force, then let's make them citizens. Not through some ridiculous amnesty program, but through traditional port of entry site control. Let's open a new Ellis Island in the southwest. We can use time tested techniques, like naturalization programs, combined with new anti-terrorist screening technology to make new, loyal American citizens. Citizens whose children will attain the great American dream, not a class of new world serfs who will know nothing but the brief taste of liberty they get while mowing our lawns.

"THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS AND OPINIONS OF THE CANDIDATE. IT DOES NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS, NOR REPRESENT AN OFFICIAL POSITION, OF THE CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL. FURTHER, THE CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL DOES NOT ENDORSE CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE."