Would for Hatch to Introduce this Legislation

I just sailed this email off to Senator Orrin Hatch without editing it, since I was using a library computer and my computer time was limited. I'll post it without any editing.

Senator,


'Tis a time for this. 1.) It would be landmark legislation; 2.) Your 2012 campaign will get a boost; 3.) It is simply something we should do.

Instead of immigration reform, Senator, let's reform our border patrol, and let's reform our laws dealing with drug crimes at 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 cartels are stationed in, I believe, 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 what was going on it a foreign land, would we act?

And, what if this country was 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 down into Mexico to fight the crime that is crossing our southern border. How do you fight crime, if you do not go where the criminals are and arrest them and bring them back? Yes, this will require an agreement with Mexico, allowing our investigators and our officers to go down there to enforce U.S. laws.

As I said, landmark legislation. I don't know how many countries have ever had agreements with other countries allowing for such an arrangement, but if this is the first, so be it. 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 one saying 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 -- even though you are outside our borders -- direct or coordinate the flow of drugs 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 -- who is sometimes forced to become a human pack mule at point of his life -- could finger the drug runners once they crossed into the U.S.

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 of the problems. The crime problem is big enough, we better get a clue soon. We will never solve the crime question if we do no more than to slap immigration answers on it. Deciding whether children should be allowed college educations (the DREAM Act) has nothing or hardly anything do with crime coming into the U.S.

We need to fight crime, not immigration.