Guest Comment: Fear-generating tactics regarding the undocumented

I am writing in response to the “Guest Comment” by Gary Meinert, “Misplaced compassion,...” published March 30.

The commentary is an example of the fear-generating tactics of our government, the Border Patrol, the Minutemen and people like (Green Valley resident and occasional guest commentator) Don Severe and Mr. Meinert who see only fear in relation to undocumented people.

The majority of these people are trying to enter this country for employment and the ability to support their families left behind. (Illegal Aliens reduced to “IA” is dehumanizing and I will not use Mr. Meinert’s term.)

I hope that Mr. Meinert does not believe all the statistics used by the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol needs to justify the enormous expense that is going into personnel, border fencing and check points. A study in California demonstrated that Check Points are not a deterrent to people entering this country. Yes, undocumented workers have been caught, but at what cost, both financially and to our being a compassionate nation.

How many “terrorists” have been apprehended with explosives or the makings for a dirty bomb? Someone intent on destruction of American life or infrastructure is not going to struggle through the hardships and dangers of the Sonoran desert. They are going to arrive on First Class flights, like the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Then there are the drug-runners: they are in the desert with their burlap bags. How many drug “mules,” people who may have been recruited, perhaps at gunpoint, to carry drugs into the United States, have been apprehended? The Border Patrol makes publicity “hay” of “tons of marijuana.” It’s only coming into the United States because there are Americans wanting to purchase it. The “War on Drugs” is another failure because it has not addressed the causes of drug consumption.

And the diseases presumably brought in by undocumented people. People like Don Severe and Mr. Meinert can generate a list of horrible diseases that make people cringe; i.e., Leprosy, Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, Polio, etc. With tourists going to all nations of the world, why focus on undocumented people as the threat to our health?

We need to remember that the last case of virulent tuberculosis in this country was a wealthy American lawyer, not an economic refugee from Mexico or a Central American country. Realistically, how many undocumented people have been identified as ill with any of the diseases mentioned?

The Bush administration has used fear, particularly since 9/11 to manipulate the Congress and the American people into accepting the need for a Homeland Security Department and erosion of our constitutionally granted rights; i.e., wire-taps, incarceration and transfer of people to countries where it is known they will be tortured, Guantanamo Bay and “harsh interrogation techniques” like water boarding, to name a few.

We have a choice of constantly living in fear or living with a sense that this is a strong nation and we are a strong people as we take reasonable security precautions.

Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Authority, the Border Patrol, and the Minutemen all depend of fear for their existence. Personally, I am more afraid of the Border Patrol Agents who ran by me with AK-47s at the ready in the middle of Green Valley than I am of the slightly built undocumented man who ran across the street ahead of me.

If our country had a reasonable guest worker program, not based on fear and fantasy, then undocumented people could enter this country for employment and we could keep track of where they are and whether they have returned home when they should. Then, the only people sneaking through the desert would be people who should be caught because they would be people involved in criminal enterprise.

This solution seems so simple, but cannot be seen by people whose eyes and minds are filled with fear. These people can always find “evidence,” as distorted as it may be; to support their fear based arguments. Our government is doing it and individuals are doing it. My hope is that with a new president our country can move beyond fear and we can live as a compassionate reasonable society once again.

Green Valley resident Donald L. Weston, Ph.D. is a retired clinical psychologist. The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily this newspaper’s