WP,pg1: U.S./Mexico border "feels and acts like a country unto itself"

[DeepModem Mom]

More Than A Line In the Desert
Flow of People and Trade Conquers 2,000-Mile Border Between U.S. and Mexico
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page A01

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- One hard kick launched the soccer ball around the rusted edge of the metal fence, down the sloping grade into a flat expanse of grass. Kids, giggling and jostling, bounded past the end of the fence line. Out of Mexico. Into the United States. No big deal.

It happens every day here in the rocky folds of desert hills where the Texas city, El Paso, and the New Mexico city, Sunland Park, rub against the Mexican city Ciudad Juarez. In this remote, dusty neighborhood called Colonia Rancho Anapra and all along the nearly 2,000 miles of U.S.-Mexican border, lives have been constructed for generations -- legally and illegally -- to straddle the border.

When 6,000 National Guard troops, whose deployment was announced by President Bush last week, arrive along the border, they will encounter something more complex than simply a line in the desert. They will find a place that feels and acts like a country unto itself, a place where countless people do not consider their lives complete on either side -- so they live them on both....A string of major Texas cities sits directly on the border, creating what may be the region's strongest cross-border connections. Some worry the new attention to border security could impede business and hurt the international reputation of the United States....Steve Ahlenius, president and chief executive of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce (says) "Every time somebody mentions a wall, it drives me crazy. It's a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem."

***

Hector M. Flores, a retired construction worker whose home is just up the road from the squat, chain-link fence that separates Sunland Park from Rancho Anapra, can sit on his stoop most nights and spot illegal immigrants slipping past....

***

In El Paso alone (in 2004), there were more than 680,000 pedestrian crossings. The walkers spill straight into downtown on something approaching a regular morning rush-hour schedule, and return in the evenings with sacks of groceries and briefcases over a bridge dedicated during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson....Spanish is a prerequisite to move efficiently in downtown El Paso; English is a must for success in Ciudad Juarez....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052001252.html?sub=AR

[acmavm]

1. Hurt the international reputation of the United States? That's one of the

dumbest statements I've heard in a long time. There's nothing left to hurt.

[ugarte]

2. Reminds me of the old Mexican-American saying

"We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." The people were one people already there, before the US divided them by imposing an artificial border based on a war of aggression and imperialist expansion.