Landmark Legislation for Our Freshman Senator

Senator,

'Tis a time for this, simply because the problem is so large, it fits this need.

Landmark legislation, from Utah's freshman senator, could change the face of our problems at the border.

Instead of immigration reform, Senator, let's reform our border patrol, and let's reform our laws dealing with drug crime coming across the border.

Senator, I do not need to tell you how serious a problem drugs pouring across our border has become. The Department of Justice suggests the Mexican drug cartels -- not the mafia and not the Cripps and Bloods -- are our foremost organized crime problem. We are told the Mexican cartels have their gang members in 250 of our cities.

Talk suggests Mexico's government might collapse to the cartels. Just talk, perhaps, but then again, the threat is rising.

So serious is the problem, we need to take action. If this were a government in the Middle East that was toppling, would we act? If our security was threatened by something going on in the Middle East, would we act?

Then, shouldn't we act the quicker if the country is our neighbor?

Senator, of course I am not talking of sending troops into Mexico, but I do believe we should send our law enforcement into Mexico.

We should go right into that country to fight the crime. If that is where the criminals are, then we must go after them, there. We cannot simply stand on this side of the border, snatching off poor people coming into our country in hopes of a better life and suppose we are fighting the drug lords sitting comfortably outside our border and outside our reach. They should be laughing at us for all we are doing.

Yes, this will require an agreement with Mexico, allowing our investigators and our officers to go down there to enforce U.S. laws.

Landmark legislation, then, is what is required. I don't know how many countries have ever had such agreements. Maybe this would be a first. I do not know. But, this is what the circumstances demand that we do.

We need laws -- new laws -- that specifically address the crimes being committed. We have laws against cultivating drugs, but do we have any suggesting if you raise drugs in a foreign land, it is an offense in the USA? Do we have a law saying if you raise a drug that potentially could be sold in the U.S., we will come after you? Do we have a law that says if you direct or coordinate the flow of drugs from outside the U.S. into the U.S., you are guilty of a U.S. offense?

Perhaps most telling, do have a law making it a crime to recruit someone to bring drugs across our border? If we did, the immigrant -- sometimes forced to become a human pack mule at point of life -- could finger the drug runners and serve as a witness for the prosecution.

And, our border patrol: It is not much more than a paperwork police. The officers often do nothing more than escort illegal immigrants back across the border. That is not a heavy lot of police work getting done, despite the fact the southern border is home to some of our most serious crime.

We need a real police agency at the border.

So, get the agreement with Mexico, allowing our border agents to go right down into that country, empowering them to fight crime, not people without paperwork.

Senator, if we don't know the difference between crime and immigration, we are never going to solve either. Crime is such a large problem, we better get a clue soon. If we do no more than slap immigration answers on what is a crime problem, we cannot expect to ever adequately solve the problem. Deciding whether children should be allowed college educations (the DREAM Act) is not going to solve the problem of all the crime entering the U.S. at our Mexican border.

Let's fight crime, not immigration.