Border Fights Heat Up - Literally

July, 2006, wildfire near Sedona, Arizona by Desert Wanderer

Another one of those very important stories that aren't getting much play in the media. This is the shape of things to come; I guarantee you that it will get much worse before it gets better:

U.S. Border Patrol agents seeking to secure the nation's border in some of the country's most pristine national forests are being targeted by illegal aliens, who are using intentionally set fires to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes.

The wildfires have destroyed valuable natural and cultural resources in the National Forest System and pose an ongoing threat to visitors, residents and responding firefighters, according to federal law-enforcement authorities and others.
...
Wildfires are being set by alien and drug smugglers, authorities said, to create a diversion in an attempt to gain undetected access across the border. The fires correspond to a dramatic rise in assaults against Border Patrol agents — up more than 100 percent over last year.

On "Free Republic", one reader had a comment:

Just starting the forest fires Americans won't start.

An recent increase in apprehensions and drug interdictions along the border, combined with other rumors of strengthening the border patrol and building a border fence has led to illegal immigrants and smugglers employing increasingly desperate and dangerous tactics. These stem both from smuggler's and drug runner's fears of losing their livelihoods, along with desperation of increased numbers of people willing to cross the border to the north.

This trend is not confined to the US/Mexican border. At sea, the US Coast Guard has has to deal with increasingly hostile migrants, in several cases attacked outright or even attacking members of their own group.

Other nations have experienced exactly the same kind of desperate tactics after making some progress at cracking down on illegal immigration and bogus asylum applications. In 2000, Britain's wake-up call came when a plane from Afghanistan was hijacked and allowed to land there. It turned out the only reason for the hijack was so that those on board could claim asylum on the island. Well, saying "wake-up call" may have been premature here... the British courts have granted all the hijackers permission to stay in the UK, in a ruling last year that understandably, greatly displeased the Prime Minister.

Italy's own wake-up call came in 2002, in a dramatic case that shocked the country, when a rusting boat with almost 1000 Kurdish migrants was intercepted at sea, and the migrants threatened to throw some of their children overboard unless they were allowed to land in Italy. When faced with what is essentially hostage taking, what can you do but let them land? Hopefully, some of those who made the threats were prosecuted for it, but I greatly doubt it.

Spain has seen smugglers at sea take longer, more dangerous routes as it steps up patrols, with a corresponding rise in deaths. Meanwhile, the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco frequently come under siege by individuals employing reckless tactics to storm the fence.

In Australia, in 2001, Prime Minister Howard incorrectly claimed (some say deliberately lied) that migrants aboard one ship, or a "SIEV" (suspected illegal entry vehicle) also threatened to throw their children overboard if it was not allowed to land. This was during an election campaign and caused a political firestorm. But some disturbing facts seemed to be forgotten in all the political fighting. An Australian Senate inquiry concluded that:

passengers aboard other SIEVs had threatened children, sabotaged their own vessels, committed self-harm, and, in the case of SIEV-7 on 22 October, a child had been thrown overboard and rescued by another asylum seeker.

So what to do about all this? Well, if you favor securing the border (as do I), you have to deal with harsh the reality that these people are not simply going away anytime soon, and not in the future either, judging by the rate of population increase in the Third World. Currently, the fertility rate for Europe as a whole is 1.5. That means the average European woman has 1.5 children in her entire lifetime. The fertility rate for the United States is 2.0. The fertility rate for Africa as a whole is 5.4... more than five children born to every woman on average. And it gets worse; the rate for war torn nations like Somalia and Afghanistan respectively are an incredible 6.68 and 6.64! At the current rate, the African continent will double its population in 30 years - Europe will take over 300 to do this. When you look at the numbers, and how grave the situation is right now, imagine how much worse it will be in the time of our children's generation if nothing is done.

Whether in the US, Europe, or other developed nations, if you want to secure your border, you have to be prepared to fight for it, because a fight is exactly what you are going to have. Fortunately, there are still alternatives to open conflict.

Other options: Amnesty just invites more illegal immigration, and deporting people after they have already arrived is costly, inefficient, and politically ugly. The only way to deal with it in the long run, and avoid a never-ending border battle, is to improve the economies of Third World nations (yes I know, that's easier said than done - that subject will fill volumes), ban "asylum shopping" and force people to declare asylum in the first safe nation they came to, repeal or reinterpret the 14th Amendment in the US (which is currently interpreted to grant citizenship to children born of illegal aliens), and most crucially, find every possible way to encourage Third World nations to reduce their birthrates, before their populations are reduced by war instead.

Drastic? You bet. But so is the problem. No matter how generous they are, the reality is that the Western World simply cannot absorb all the world's immigrants. A good illustration of exactly why not can be viewed here.

UPDATE: (Fixed Links)

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