How Illegal Immigration and The Failed War On Drugs Intersect

Over the past fourteen months, we have seen how ineptly the political class has struggled to solve one problem, rising health care costs. Their bungling and childish haggling has resulted in a potential bill that is neither effective or efficient relative to controlling health care costs and which may not even pass Congress anyway. Their fourteen months of getting nothing accomplished shows how incompetent they are when they focus, and fail, on just a single issue.

Now, imagine how long it will take for them to solve large interrelated problems, given they cannot solve a single issue. Today we will look at the first of interrelated problems and issues, namely the failed War On Drugs and illegal immigration. We will examine similar intersections in subsequent posts. Consider the following information that has recently been published:

• The March 5, 2010 issue of The Week magazine had a synopsis of an article by Gregory Rodriguez of the LA Times, "Mexicans Who Fear Mexico." According to the article, the current drug war and the resultant killings going on in Mexico may cause millions of Mexican immigrants to not return to their homeland, after working and saving in the United States, like they have done in past generations. This generation may decide that returning home, even for a visit, is just too dangerous and the risk of staying in the U.S. is well worth it. As fewer and fewer of the current illegal residents in the country decide not to go home and more and more Mexican flee to this country to both work and avoid the drug killings, we will be faced with a growing illegal immigrant situation. I am not saying this is good or bad, just that it will occur.
• An Associated Press (AP) investigation and article by Alicia Caldwell, that was published on March 1, 2010, described how the Mexican drug gangs have set up extensive marijuana growing farms on public lands out west. The gangs use armed guards and trip wire bombs to protect their growing fields, endangering U.S. citizens who might be out hiking or camping in our national forests. The DEA said that police destroyed 7.6 marijuana plants from 20,000 pot fields in 2008. The article does not say what percentage of the total crop is represented by the 7.6 million plants but it certainly appears to be a major problem with one quote from a law enforcement agent estimating that they confiscate far less than 50% of what is grown on public lands. The drug gangs also kidnap and/or force illegal immigrants to work in the marijuana fields which are highly sophisticated growing operations. And finally, their use of high concentrations of fertilizer and other chemicals have created significant pollution problems around their growing fields.
• For those of you that are no aware, there are over six thousand drug-related murders every year in Mexico. Many of these murders are often grisly and may involve Innocent bystanders to gun battles between rival drug gangs or between the authorities and the drug gangs. Thus, almost twenty people are killed every day in Mexico because of the drug trade and industry.

Thus, two major issues facing America today, the failed War on Drugs and illegal immigration, are highly related. Current illegal immigrants will not go home because of the drug trade murders, many illegal immigrants are brought into the U.S. to work in the illegal marijuana fields, and we are seeing a major battle underway just below our southern border with the possibility that if the government loses its battle with the drug gangs, we will have a lawless narco state right next door.

Now, honestly ask yourself: given the bumbling of the political class in trying to solve the single issue of health care reform, what chance do we have that they can solve the interrelated issues of drugs and illegal immigration? I would say that even if they ever get around to it, the chance of them effectively and efficiently solving these joint issues is next to nothing. These are the same people running our government who significantly overran their budget and schedule in just trying to build a visitor's center in D.C. No way they can come up with a policy and legislation that is effective in the drug and immigration areas.

That is why Steps 26 and 29 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important. Using the model of citizen, expert panels that this country has successfully used in the past (e.g. Manhattan Project, Apollo space mission, the Grace Commission on government waste, the military base closing commission the 9-11 Commission, etc.), the government should impanel separate but conjoined panels to investigate and analyze all of the options relative to the war on drugs and illegal immigration. We can not afford to go slow on these issues and waiting for the political class to finally address them and then fail to do anything is not an option. These panels would be comprised of experts from a diverse set of fields and would bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the problem. They would then put together a set of different options for addressing these interrelated problems and the American public would vote on the options they want to see implemented.

This would bypass Congress and the President altogether, but given that Congress and the President have proven impotent relative to solving any issue, we need to take the initiative and solve it ourselves. The clock is ticking, as Mexico comes closer and closer to a narco state, our illegal immigrant population grows, and our woods and streams are polluted by illegal marijuana fields, we can not wait while the political class bumbles along like it has on health care reform.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.