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 News from Around the Americas | February 2006 
Border Wall May be Boon for Smugglers
 Alfredo Corchado - The Dallas Morning News
| | A U.S. construction worker signals to a crane operator during re-construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall as Mexican federal congress members watch on in Tijuana, Mexico. Sixteen members of Mexico's congress started a one-day fast, as well as a leafletting at the border crossing, to protest U.S. immigration policies and the U.S. proposal to build a triple wall between the two countries. (AP/David Maung) |
A bill to erect a wall to help keep illegal immigrants out of the United States has not been approved by Congress, but it probably can count on support from an unlikely constituency - people smugglers.
That's because along the border, and in places such as this town in San Luis Potosi state, smugglers expect that such a wall would lead to an increase in their business moving people across the Rio Grande.
Already some coyotes, as the smugglers are known, are pumping up their prices. The fee they charge to take a Mexican to Dallas, for instance, has increased from $1,200 to $1,500, some residents say.
"That's the way it is," said a smuggler who identified himself as Gregorio Prieto as he played pool and negotiated with prospective clients at the Ahualulco Billiards hall near the town's central plaza.
"Any time the crossing gets harder, the price also goes up. Because nothing will stop the flow as long as Americans want their labor. They're just making it more difficult for the ilegales and more profitable for us."
In December, the House approved a bill that included plans to erect 700 miles of physical barriers in key zones of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Advocates say the fence will keep out drug smugglers, terrorists and illegal immigrants, especially in high-volume areas.
"A lot of the people coming across the border are criminals and potentially terrorists - people who have a mind to commit crimes against Americans and maybe to blow us all up and kill us," Rep. James Sensenbrenner said at a recent meeting with a sheriffs' coalition in Houston. The Wisconsin Republican is one of the bill's authors.
Critics say the barriers would simply push traffic to weak points along the border.
The bill is awaiting action by the Senate, which is likely to reject the measure, analysts say.
But even the possibility of a wall is affecting informal commerce, such as traffic in Mexican beer and culinary delicacies like gorditas, corn tortillas fried and filled with some combination of meat, beans, cheese, potatoes and nopales, or cactus, that are popular with Mexicans.
One family that has made a business of sending homemade gorditas to Dallas is considering relocating to North Texas, in part over concern that a wall would hurt business.
Family matriarch Dona Constantina Rivera, who has long sent gorditas to her emigrant children in Dallas, says she may abandon the practice.
When Rivera's children left for Texas in the late 1990s, she tried to assuage their nostalgia for home, doing what came naturally: She baked gorditas and sent them off to her homesick offspring with the help of informal couriers who ferry goods across the border.
The gorditas were so tasty that other immigrants sought them out. Demand grew, and so did the number of gorditas sent north, sometime hundreds a week.
But the informal business drew attention. When Rivera's gordita trade was featured on the front pages of Mexican newspapers and on television newscasts, San Luis Potosi state authorities tried to collect taxes from her.
She's fighting those efforts, arguing that the business doesn't generate enough to pay taxes.
Now, talk of a "Berlin Wall," as President Vicente Fox described the proposed barrier, has made the Rivera family so nervous that Rivera and other relatives are planning to move to Dallas before any barrier goes up. "Half our family lives in Dallas," said daughter Anita, 24. "No wall is going to separate us."
This would not be the first time American legislation significantly affected affairs on the Mexican side.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 allowed millions of illegal immigrants residing in the United States to become legal permanent residents. But the amnesty bill also led to coyotes raising the prices they charged to smuggle people across the Rio Grande. Some Mexican families living in the United States were effectively fenced in, unable to move back and forth between the two countries.
Following devaluation of the peso in 1994, the number of Mexicans attempting to cross the border illegally increased, and the United States responded with a series of border-control operations, including Operation Hold the Line in Texas.
The operation, which involved the addition of hundreds of Border Patrol agents, was credited with reducing crime as well as illegal immigration into the El Paso area.
It also contributed to a significant increase in the death toll, critics said, as immigrants tried to cross in less heavily patrolled areas where the terrain was more dangerous. Last year, an estimated 500 Mexicans died trying to cross the border.
Now, the wall proposal has been drawing similar criticism.
"The bill is good business for the smuggling business," said Mexican Consul Juan Carlos Foncerrada Berumen in El Paso, who has heard reports of border crossers in the region. "Coyotes are good at exploiting and manipulating the news about a possible wall. This is good for business because they can justify raising the prices."
In Ahualulco, near a recently closed bar called Los Amigos del Norte (Friends of the North), shop owner Tomas Galabis, 66, said the talk on the street about border barriers has people stirred up.
"Even the bar owners left recently, afraid that the wall would keep them out," he said. "The risks have people nervous."
Playing pool at Ahualulco Billiards, Lazaro Rivas, 22, talked about the higher prices being charged by smugglers. "I'm planning to go to Dallas," he said, "but $1,500 is a lot of money. I'll still go, but I have to dig deeper to come up with the extra cash."
Rivera family members say they believe the time has come to make a move.
"If we don't leave now, it will be harder, and coyotes will take advantage of us," said 27-year-old Jesus, husband of Anita Rivera. "It's happened before." |
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