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Smugglers: Tighten borders

The people who ferry migrants illegally into the U.S. from Mexico say restrictions make their prices rise.

DOLORES HIDALGO, Mexico - Barely 18, Jose belongs to Mexico's new generation of migrant smugglers - young, savvy and happy to see Uncle Sam tighten border security.

Why? It's good for business, he says.

Jose figures more migrants will seek his help if the U.S. Senate approves legislation to double the Border Patrol and put up a virtual wall of unmanned vehicles, cameras and sensors to monitor the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Border experts say the price for helping Mexicans move north has quadrupled from $300 to $1,200 since 1994, when the United States last tightened the rules. Cases are coming to light of smugglers making $1-million or more. And Jose reckons the earnings will rise yet higher if new obstacles go up.

"This is never going to end," he said. "The United States cannot work without Mexicans."

Jose is a lanky, baby-faced teen in a baseball cap who says he started smuggling people late last year and made $16,000 in his first three months. His mother worries, but needs the money - Jose was making $53 a week cutting lettuce. Talking to a reporter outside their humble, adobe house near this city in central Mexico, Jose and his mother asked to withhold their surname for fear of arrest.

"We're always going to look for a way to get in, and there's always a way," Jose said. "This is a business for everyone."

Not so, says John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who chairs the Senate's Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship subcommittee. The way to hurt smugglers' business is by "securing our borders and working cooperatively with other nations on enforcement," along with providing a temporary worker program, he said in a statement e-mailed to the Associated Press.

Victor Clark, a Mexican border expert in Tijuana who has studied smugglers' patterns for decades, agrees with Jose. "This is going to have the opposite effect of what the U.S. government wants, since the demand for migrant smugglers is going to go up," he said.

The smuggling business flourished after the U.S. Border Patrol cracked down on the busiest crossings into Texas and California in 1994.

Migrants were funneled into the remote Arizona desert, and domestic flights into Hermosillo, Sonora, the biggest Mexican city near the Arizona border, jumped from 20 a week in 1994 to nearly 500 today.

Many risk death walking for 30 hours in 100 degree temperatures through remote desert terrain. The smuggler leading them may well be linked to organized crime, though Jose says he isn't.

That too is a change from the days when it was considered something of a community service in Mexican villages and older, trusted men would show relatives and neighbors the safest routes.

Now a growing number of smugglers are like Jose - in it just for the money.

Smuggling people into the United States from around the world has become a $10-billion-a-year business rivaling drug profits, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who started tracking smuggler profits three years ago.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate swung between compromise and gridlock Wednesday on the most sweeping immigration bill in two decades, the future of an estimated 11-million illegal aliens at the mercy of unpredictable election-year maneuvering.

Key senators haggled over a proposed deal to confer legal status on a large majority of the 11-million men, women and children, but compromise remained elusive.

Democrats blocked votes on several politically charged amendments, but set up a test vote for today on legislation that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee more than a week ago with a bipartisan majority before it ran into Republican resistance on the floor.

[Last modified April 6, 2006, 02:00:13]