Mexican immigrants continue to die trying to enter the United States in search of work. Human smugglers are often causing their deaths.
On Nov. 11, the New York Times reported on this billion-dollar business and the increase in violence against immigrants. Smugglers sometimes abandon immigrants to die in the desert. And a new and more violent group of criminals kidnap immigrants from the smugglers and hold them for ransom.
Smugglers now charge Mexican immigrants more than $1,500 to cross the border in order to go to cities such as Phoenix, the article says. Immigrants from other countries pay even more exorbitant prices. Smugglers have found the business of sneaking immigrants into the United States an extremely profitable endeavor.
There are two main reasons for this. First, desperation has grown among Mexican workers unable to find employment in their country. Second, U.S. policies have made it more difficult to cross the border, particularly in the wake of Sept. 11.
With the tightening of the Texas and California borders because of increased surveillance, it has become more difficult to cross into those states.
As a result, the Arizona border has become a death trap where immigrants attempt dangerous crossings. In the first eight months of this year, the Mexican consulates in Arizona towns of Tucson, Douglas and Nogales reported that 152 Mexicans had died trying to cross the Arizona border.
Last year, 205 undocumented immigrants were found dead in Arizona.
The Arizona desert is unforgiving. The ground temperature can reach 160 degrees in the desert because of the presence of volcanic rock, the Arizona Republic reports. The deaths are slow. The heat eventually cooks the brain.
Now kidnappers have added to the dangers by "stealing" immigrants from the smugglers. Their violence is hard to believe.
The Times reported that in Phoenix, kidnappers threatened to cut off the hand of a 9-year-old girl if they did not receive a ransom. Immigrant women have been raped and other immigrants shot and stabbed.
In response to the escalating violence, this week officials announced the creation of a taskforce comprised of local, state and federal agencies targeting smugglers in Arizona. The taskforce would bring increasing military technology to the border to stop smugglers.
Human smuggling is a despicable crime. Undocumented immigrants, already vulnerable, need protection from the violence of smugglers and kidnappers. But increasing militarization of the border will not solve the problem.
Militarization of the border over the past 20 years has only created more problems. U.S. policies, intended to close the border, have played a large part in creating the conditions that have made smuggling profitable.
As smuggling has become more profitable, smuggling gangs have become more professional and more violent. What would help end the violence?
For one, a humane immigration policy is needed to allow would-be workers to enter the United States without having to turn to smugglers. It is clear the U.S. economy depends on immigrant workers to perform many of the jobs that others will not do. Legislation is needed to provide a guest-worker program that does not exploit workers or separate families.
To take it one step further, current immigration laws need to be expanded to allow undocumented workers the chance to gain legal status. Also, a stronger Mexican economy that could provide employment for Mexican workers would help curtail the need to risk life and limb to find jobs. In 2001 alone, more than a quarter of a million jobs, mostly low-wage manufacturing jobs, left Mexico.
About 70 percent of them moved to China, according to an article last year in Newsweek. U.S. policy needs to curb corporations' appetite for cheap labor and free trade, and instead insist on fair trade and labor legislation for Mexican workers.
The kidnappings, torture, rapes and killings must end. No one, regardless of his or her residency status, should have to die trying to find a better life.
Yolanda Chávez Leyva is a historian at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she specializes in border and Mexican American history. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.