by James Glaser
March 31, 2005

Yes, we have troops fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan and Washington will tell you that they are defending our country, but while we have hundreds of thousands of American troops "defending our nation" from over seas, we have millions of illegal aliens sneaking into our country.

Most estimates put the number of illegal aliens at over 10 million. That is 10,000,000 people living in our country, who have no right to be here. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, but there is a legal way to come here and thousands do every year and we have a legal process set up to allow those people in. What we have now though is an out and out invasion of people who care nothing for our laws and just by sneaking in, are breaking them.

So, because George Bush refuses to protect our borders, it is now up to our citizens to do it. CBS News reports, "Hundreds of volunteers, some of them armed, are expected to take positions along the Mexican border Friday and begin patrolling for illegal immigrants---an exercise some fear could attract racist crackpots and lead to vigilante violence."

Last December President Bush signed a law that said that he would increase the size of our Border Patrol by 2,000 agents a year and provide the funds. Our government would do that for five years, placing 10,000 new agents in service in those five years.

This is the first year for that law and already Bush is falling short. "The US Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday the second phase of the Arizona Control Initiative, known as the ABC Initiative. The program unveiled in Tucson, will effectively increase the number of Border Patrol personnel by 500 along the Arizona border with Mexico to reduce the flow of illegal migrants."

Of course that is 1,500 agents short of what the law says and now four months after signing the bill they are just now announcing the program and we have no idea of how long it will take to hire and train these new people.

Meanwhile, American citizens who are fed up with Washington have formed a group called the Minuteman Project. It is made up of civilian volunteers, many recruited on the internet, who will meet in Tombstone, Az. on Friday and then they will spread out across the 23 mile wide San Pedro Valley, for a month of watching, counting, and reporting just how many illegals are coming across the border.

The Minuteman director Chris Simcox told CBS News this project is "the nation's largest neighborhood watch group."

Here is how big the problem is. Last year 1,100,000 illegal immigrants were caught by the Border Patrol and the estimate is that 8,000 get by and are not caught, each and every night.

Washington is supposed to protect our nation from invasion and they are not doing that. Corporations want cheap labor and President Bush claims that these people coming across the border are only taking jobs Americans don't want.

It is true that these people will work for low wages and corporations are making huge profits off of them, but they are costing us a bundle. Some come here to be criminals, but they are the minority, but millions of them bring children we pay to educate, millions are here that we provide health care for, and these people keep the pay low for millions of legal American Citizens.

Americans want good paying jobs with benefits and corporations don't want to pay that, so with the help of Washington, they have opened up our borders to allow this flood of cheap labor in. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to keep our airlines and ports safe from terrorists, while we turn a blind eye to the land entrance to America.

If you were a terrorist which way would you use to get here?