"Hard to cross, but harder to see your children have little to eat"

[cynatnite]

Daniel Toto, 40, who was caught by the border patrol in Phoenix, Ariz., after walking the Arizona desert for 3 days, rests at a migrant shelter in Nogales, Mexico, Thursday, April 6, 2006. Illegal migrants are rushing to the Arizona border, encouraged by the prospect of a guest-worker program in the U.S. and anticipating a toughening of border security that would make a dangerous journey even more perilous. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060412/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_rush_lh1_1

Since the United States tightened security at the main crossing points in Texas and California in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of migrants have turned to the hard-to-patrol, mesquite-covered Arizona desert, risking rape, robbery and murder at the hands of gangs and now facing armed U.S. civilian groups.

About 2,000 people a day pass through Sasabe, a hamlet of just a few dozen houses and a Western Union office west of Nogales, says Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored group that tries to discourage migrants from crossing the border and helps people stranded in the desert.

On a recent afternoon, at least 40 vans overflowing with migrants arrived in the desert near Sasabe in less than an hour. Migrants and their smugglers waited for nightfall before starting a desert trek that would involve up to a week of walking in baking heat during the day and biting cold at night.

Grupo Beta agent Miguel Martinez mans a checkpoint 20 miles south of Sasabe, where he warns of the dangers of the desert, such as bandits armed with knives or guns who order migrants to strip naked, rob them and sometimes rape them.

He also tells about the volunteer border-watch groups that have sprung up in Arizona. "Right now there are migrant hunters who are armed, and you should be careful," Martinez told a group traveling in a rickety van missing some of its windows.

[Deja Q]

1. Just like how bankruptcy reform got people to declare it before it changed

Except that makes no sense.

This "guest reform" malarkey is quite the opposite of bankruptcy...

It's sad people live like violent animals... unfortunately, that's the responsibility of the country's government. To be a society and not piss on their people.

And I do welcome anybody who wants to be legal and support the United States. The problem is, I don't think our corporate interests see it the same way. They care for bottom-line profits and could otherwise care less. (which is a sad way to run a society...)