Prohibition Boosts Criminals

One of the ironies of the Prohibition era was that criminal activity was given a big boost when legal manufacture of alcoholic beverages was ended. Anyone who wanted a drink had to commit an illegal act.

This principal is evoked in our present border fence circus. A ludicrous mime of giving America security by fences on the border has created any number of sideshows (not the pleasant kind, like Avedon's). We have pieces of property along the border being encroached on, split, and confiscated by the federal government - as long as they don't belong to friends of the war criminals. We can see any number of films of illegal immigrants scaling, boring through and tunneling under the existing fences. Good sense is not a factor in the "security" fence being touted by the DHS.

Predictably, with the infamous criminal element in the executive branch making their illicit gains by promoting the ludicrous, there is a growing element along the border taking a cut out of the same traffic.

It should surprise no one that people smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border are adopting the same routes and tactics employed by major drug traffickers. Illegal immigrants are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to ride in the hollowed-out spaces and false bottoms of vehicles crossing the border.

For smuggling groups, human cargo is highly profitable and far less risky than moving drugs. For immigrants, this is the quickest and surest way to get into the United States. Studies in recent years indicate that as border enforcement tightens, demand jumps for these smugglers. So do profits. According to one U.S. specialist, Mexican border smugglers are sitting atop a $5 billion industry.

That's why corruption is growing rapidly among the U.S. border patrol officers charged with stopping it. Like drug traffickers, people smugglers are targeting American law enforcement personnel whose low pay makes them susceptible to the lure of bribery. When enforcers look the other way and wave smuggling vehicles through, America's illegal immigrant population grows.
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A better way to halt this scourge is through comprehensive reform of America's immigration laws, giving immigrant workers greater access to legal jobs in this country though a guest-worker program.

There needs to be a well-structured system that tells immigrant workers: If you abide by the system, you can come out of the shadows and work legally. Tougher workplace enforcement, coupled with a well-defined pathway to regularization for existing immigrants, would help thin the ranks of illegal migrants and reduce demand for people smugglers.

Congress' failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform is a major reason smuggling rings are thriving and corruption among our border officials is rising. Immigration reform won't halt corruption, but it will dramatically reduce the illicit market that keeps the smugglers in business.

Setting up unrealistic controls at the border is nothing but a boondoggle, and promotes crime. The cynicism of this occupied white house is so great that nothing embarrasses its personnel. Hacks in high office love the opportunities for graft, and use it accordingly. No wonder that the other criminal elements take their cut as well.

Sane, reasoned policy will be a welcome relief when this bunch of petty thieves is finally swept out.


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After an interesting discussion this morning in Eschaton comments about the many uses of hemp, an ideal switchgrass, I was fascinated to turn up this transcript of a film made in WWII to promote planting hemp for wartime usage:

Long ago when these ancient Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850 all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails.

For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable. A 44-gun frigate like our cherished Old Ironsides took over 60 tons of hemp for rigging, including an anchor cable 25 inches in circumference. The Conestoga wagons and prairie schooners of pioneer days were covered with hemp canvas. Indeed the very word canvas comes from the Arabic word for hemp. In those days hemp was an important crop in Kentucky and Missouri. Then came cheaper imported fibers for cordage, like jute, sisal and Manila hemp, and the culture of hemp in America declined.

But now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese, and shipment of jute from India curtailed, American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our Industry. In 1942, patriotic farmers at the government's request planted 36,000 acres of seed hemp, an increase of several thousand percent. The goal for 1943 is 50,000 acres of seed hemp.

Lots of fun with this transcript, which goes on to laud the noble seed. And of course, hemp is illegal to grow in this country, although it is not the same as marijuana.