*Worth Reading: *Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever explains why he
needs help on illegal immigration from the federal government, not
obstruction
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/opinion/13Dever.html?_r=1&ref=opinion>.
There is no river between Arizona and Mexico to create a natural
obstacle to illegal immigration, drug trafficking and human
smuggling, and our county is a major corridor for all these. At
best, illegal aliens and smugglers trespass, damage ranchers' land,
steal water and food and start fires. At worst, people who have
come here hoping for freedom and opportunity are raped or abandoned
by smugglers and left to die in the desert.
Nor are the migrants the only victims. Just over a year ago, while
officials at the Department of Homeland Security were declaring they
had secured "operational control" of most of the southern Arizona
border, my friend Robert N. Krentz Jr., a local rancher, was
murdered, most likely by drug smugglers.
The people of Cochise County support the state's immigration law
because we want this violence to end. Understandably, we get
frustrated and disheartened when the White House, which has failed
to secure the border for generations, sues us for trying to fill the
legal vacuum.
During the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson was admiring all the academic types
that John Kennedy had brought into his adminstration. Speaker Sam
Rayburn, a wiser man, replied with this
<http://thinkexist.com/quotation/they_may_be_just_as_intelligent_as_you_say-but_i/220364.html>:
They may be just as intelligent as you say. But I'd feel a helluva
lot better if just one of them had ever run for sheriff.
Sheriffs may not be right about everything, but they are in direct touch
with many problems, in ways that few other elected officials are.
(Here's some background on Cochise County
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochise_County>.)
- 12:48 PM, 13 May 2011 [link]
<http://www.seanet.com/%7Ejimxc/Politics/May2011_2.html#jrm9885>
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