Comments on debitage: "Illegals" and "Broken Windows"

Closing the border hasn't worked in the past; ...

2010-08-09T00:09:36.236-07:00

Closing the border hasn't worked in the past; why will it work now? The issue here is double. First, nativists are using the Mexican drug scare as an excuse for activities that have nothing to do with drugs, namely, search-and-destroy operations against illegal immigrants. And second, the US is fully complicit in helping Mexico militarize its northern areas, to the point that the Mexican military is now just another drug gang.

Yes, drugs have traditionally come through Mexico,...

2010-08-08T15:00:54.660-07:00

Yes, drugs have traditionally come through Mexico, but the sheer volume these days is a new phenomenon- as they say, quantity can be a quality of it's own. Look at those DEA figures: last year they seized three million pounds of marijuana coming across the southern border, and that loss was only a mosquito bite to the Mexican cartels; Mexican marijuana is still the cheapest, most readily available throughout the nation. They seized seventeen metric tons of cocaine- do you have any concept of how many doses a ton of cocaine is? According to the Justice Dept., it is now cheaper in many cities to buy Mexican meth than to buy the precursor chemicals and make it yourself. Compared to the old days of hippies hiding a brick in the frame of their Beetlebus, this is new, and rates "now".

I don't care about workers, and I'm not afraid of their taking my job. Give 'em all green cards... but close the damn bordersbefore those highway warning signs the federal government has been putting up- "Danger Public Warning Travel Not Recommended", and "Travel Caution Smuggling And Illegal Immigration May Be Encountered In This Area"- start appearing in more states; 80 miles deep into Arizona is enough no-man's-land to concede to criminal gangs

Joel, what do you mean, "Now"? Drugs oft...

2010-08-08T13:48:12.783-07:00

Joel, what do you mean, "Now"? Drugs often came from Mexico in George Jung's days, too. They moved on to Colombia when the civil war there made it easy to smuggle drugs, and now move back to Mexico now that Colombia's becoming a more lawful country while northern Mexico's becoming a failed state.

You misstate the "broken windows" theory...

2010-08-05T18:28:55.231-07:00

You misstate the "broken windows" theory; read the Wikipedia entry you referenced. They do not mean that individuals will escalate in criminal activity; it's that the existence of broken windows announce that nobody is watching, and nobody cares. That attracts criminals who have been having a harder time elsewhere.

That reading of illegal immigration as a broken window problem is hard to dispute; illicit drugs that used to enter the country through airports and seaports now come through the southern border, simply because they know they can get away with it. According to the DEA, the vast majority of marijuana, cocaine, meth, and heroin now come through Mexico, even if they originated elsewhere. Check out these stats from the DEA