It’s Like Giving Birth 52 Times a Year

1. Always “fun” to read yet another iteration of resident right-winger Leo Banks’ perennial story, “Man Life Is Shore Tough For Us Border Ranchers, What With All Them Messicans.” This is, what, the third — fourth? — time he’s written the same story?

   I guess it’s touching that the Weekly has a consistent commitment to airing even the views of the Minuteman-sympathizing crowd, but do you think someone could ask him to write a new story for once? Maybe, y’know, interview some of these illegals who he tells us are “land-rushing” for amnesty. It’s weird to see a story which purports to be about the effect of a group of people on others, and never actually citing what those people have to say.

   I’m just sayin’.

2. Kynn: I am stunned, quite frankly, by your remarks. Yeah, Leo’s written on ranchers and the border before. But this story wasn’t just about ranchers: It followed a specific trail where unbelievable stuff is happening, awful stuff, to the environment, to the migrants, to the residents. This full story of this trail has not been told before. And as for what the illegal immigrants themselves think … that’s not what this story’s about. Their tales have been told many times in the Weekly, including in this week’s Currents section (the Debbie Nathan piece.)

3. Sorry to stun you; I just roll my eyes each time the same thing comes out. Knowing that Leo’s got an agenda behind his writing doesn’t help much, either.
   Yeah, the trail is pretty bad. The problems stem from the ever-increasing ideas of “controlling teh border!!” — pushed by people like Leo (or, rather, by Leo AND people like Leo). It’s a problem which they’re exacerbating rather than solving, with the ultimate goal some sort of militarized border to fight off “the invasion.” Anyone who proposes anything other than using military force (i.e., killing) the “invaders” is either blind to the problem, a fifth columnist, or an appeasing “amnesty” proponent.
   I’ve heard it all before, and I’m bored with the tired, alarmist, and nativist propoganda of Mr. Banks.

4. You’re stunned? The article was without one iota of balance. Please point me to where the author expresses concern for the migrants on the Amnesty Trail–the fact that people are dying in our deserts was painted as more of an inconvenience to nearby residents (for example, the one resident’s reaction to finding a bloated, dead body) than as a travesty and result of inane border policy.

5. Let me quote:

   But heartrending encounters are not unusual in the Ironwood. In November, a man in his mid-50s showed up at the Copings’ corrals and said he’d been drinking his urine for four days. Cindy made him macaroni and cheese and watched him gobble it down. As he ate, he broke down in retching sobs.

   The man said he owned a small farm with 70 pigs in Colima, Mexico, and had seven sons living in Phoenix. Breaking her rule of not allowing strays to use the phone, Cindy allowed him to call them to pick him up. He waited and waited, but no one in his family came for him.

   That night, he slept in the bed of one of the pickups. In the morning, he gave Cindy several necklaces–depicting Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe and other images–then left, and Cindy isn’t sure in which direction he went. She never called the Border Patrol to pick him up.

   “They usually don’t come if it’s one or two strays,” she says. “But mostly I didn’t have the heart. I couldn’t do it after all he’d been through.”

   Cindy figures she and Bob have made six such “rescues” over the years. She has no choice. “If I don’t help them, they’ll die,” she says. “We’re 75 miles from the border. No one gets here without walking at least three days, and it’s another 20-mile walk out.”
   

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