Okay, warm weather and lots of non-whites walking in a very open high dry area. If you are on the Canadian boarder its not nearly as policed as the south. Is it any wonder as a teen in Minnesota "Canadian pot" was more popular. As well as stuff from Vancouver. However, Mexican pot is easier to get. The cold weather shuts it down a lot of the time! I'm not surprised, the cartels and running that stuff across the boarder. However, I don't believe everyone on the boarder is smuggly drugs some do just want a better life. No work in Mexico and you cannot go anywhere without murder. This is a war there, we have to have some compassion for the some of the people fleeing their war torn country.

Illegal aliens ARE NOT immigrants. They ARE by definition criminals. Their illegal presence here DOES NOT entitle them to my life, liberty or property. Aiding and abetting a criminal IS A CRIME. Obama and Bolton are GUILTY AS CHARGED.

I feel for the Mexican people. But, it's their home to take care of. Running to ruin my home is not a good option. We should secure our border and then try to help them if we can. What is "their" government doing to end the problem? Blaming the US. Among their problems is the openness of the border to possible terrorist. In our local paper the publish court reports. Read the stops and many, more than half the stops, are Spanish sir names for no license and or no insurance, and many time drugs. I live on a main corridor to Chicago.

(Jenn)Besides as you said the "pot" in Canada slows with the cool weather. Perhaps it's all those darned Canadians running to the border for cheap pot and plentiful medicine to sell to the US citizens going to Canada for their medicine. Canadians gone wild.

Why is it that as a country, under both Republican and Democratic control, we do so little to deter drug use? Why are there no public service announcements linking drug use to the murders in Mexico and in the US? If we can decrease drug use we can reduce crime. If impressionable junior high and high schoolers understand that purchasing a dime bag of drugs contributes to this crime wave maybe they don't buy the drugs!!

I agree with Paul. Illicit drugs are like any other business. Take away the consumer and the business dries up and goes away. I would think that Mexico has enough prospective tourist locations that they could make visiting much more attractive not only for Americans, but Canadians too. Year-round Tourism could create a huge service workforce and create work for everyone. They also have most of our small manufacturing plants through NAFTA. So, why are they not creating more jobs and why aren't Americans running to Mexico to work.

I agree with Bruce. Also, Charlie Echo says it best. The Mexican people should take care of their own home, not come to the US to ruin my home and take it away from me. I have worked extremely hard all of my life and I think I deserve what I have accumulated.

The revolving doors. My son is a policeman. He at one time worked on a state drug task force. The budget was and the officers went onto or back to their other assignments. Arrest after arrest the small timers were released. It took several years to finally catch and convict one of the prominent local dealers. Others are awaiting trial We see drunk drivers caught multiple times. Finally when someone is killed or severely injured they will do time.

We have the same problem with immigration on the Mexico border. The immigrants, illegal I will add, whether from Mexico or points South return after exportation. What is the draw? Our local news paper publishes court reports. More than half of the recently posted traffic stops are Spanish sir named persons. Either stopped for no license or no insurance. Some are stopped and found with drugs. We live near a major route into Chicago.

We need to secure the border and enforce the law. It's not going to be easy or cheap. But, like anything worthily it will benefit in the long run.

I do not expect our current leadership to address the issue.

jennifer, I think you must have smoked too much of that Canadian pot as a teen. If you look at the numbers in the article, clearly most of those are NOT just looking for a better life. They are criminals the moment they cross into the USA, their crimes just multiply from there.

There may be a war going on in Mexico, but that is no reason to bring it to the US. We need to enforce our border with Mexico to keep the war down there. We HAVE tried to support the Mexican government in that battle and the forces we trained for Mexico to use against the cartels (Los Zetas) turned tail and worked for the cartels. Mexico has not been too frugal with the funds we send them, corruption abounds and the funding doesn't go where it is supposed to.

Ronald, trying to change a country's source of income, especially when the majority of their income is from OUR country isn't going to work. We've tried that. It was a dismal failure. However, like you said, the business of drugs can be manipulated by the supply/demand principle has merit. Problem is, educating teens about the dangers of drug use is not working very well. This war against drugs has been waging for decades. Our education efforts have been pendulumic. When something seems to work--it slowly sinks (from unknown pressures).

What we need is a secure border--secured by agents/officers or military with orders to use deadly force. Laws like Arizona passed and law enforcenment leaders like Sherrif Joe. And an educated public that understands why all this is necessary and not politicize it.

JMHO

You will never, and I mean never, take away the consumer from the drugs. As a matter of fact, with all the Billions of dollars thrown down the drain in the drug war, and all the lives ruined, drugs are now better, and cheaper than they ever have been, and the pecentage of people that are lifetime users has not gone down.

The majority of the damage done has actually been by the drug war itself, much like with alcohol prohibition. You want to take the black market out of the equation for drugs? Simple, stop making it illegal. Cannabis has been proven time and time again to be far less harmful than alcohol or cigarettes. You cannot afterall OD on pot.

The drug war is what makes these people rich, nothing more. And they are laundering their ill gotten gains with banks that are all too complicet in the laundering (Wachovia and Bank of America are the 2 that happened to get caught).

Besides, is it really anybody else's business what someone chooses, as a sovereign, free person, to put in their bodies, so long as they are doing no harm? You can say "Well people will drive stoned!", all you want. I would reply, "they probably already do!). So when someone get's caught doing something stupid like that, they get charged with the appropriate crime. Someone kills another person while under the influence? Fine, charge them with murder. Stop filling our jails up with non violent cannabis users, and make room for child molesters, killers, and rapists, you know, the people that really do belong in jail.

Mexico has been a mess for a long time, they give instructions and directions to aid the illegals. There is absolutely no law that money cannot buy in Mexico. The backflow of US Dollars is all that is keeping the country afloat. Corruption has been rampant for as long back as I can remember or hear about from older persons. We had to go invade it twice. I had the thought that if we instituted a chain gang sentence for 120 days and gave them left over MRE's and got them to pick up the trash, feces, and junk dropped by other illegals that might prove to be the best deterrent for a while. nobummer has sent The National Guard to " protect the rights of aliens" rather than to enforce the law

Mexico is doing just fine. They send tens of millions of their people up here illegally, get them to ship all the money they can back into their country, make babies that are automatically granted US citizenship and who grow up with ties back to their families and zero loyalty to their illegally gotten homeland, while they steal every dollar of social programs our crooks in government will give them, and make way for armies of their gangs to bring in guns and drugs and then they get us to buy all their oil exports they can ship. Yes, Mexico is doing just fine. And now king hussein in Washington wants to hand over our border to Calderon. Just like he wanted. Yes. Mexico is doing fine. They'll be doing even better when they reclaim the south and the west completely.

Jennifer....please learn to spell! The line of demarcation that sets one state or country apart from another is called a BORDER. When a "poor" Mexican crosses this border without permission, he is a criminal. Worse, he then becomes a BOARDER in our country. Obviously you don't live in a BORDER state; those of us in AZ, TX, CA, and NM are fed up with the BS. If we all acted with the PC "compassion" you suggest, then in order to be "fair" (the rallying cry of the liberal/progressives)we would just do away with all BORDER restrictions. Hell, let them come from EVERYWHERE---if they can get here they are in! Oh what a lovely country it would be---NOT!

The fact is, our forefathers founded this country for a "moral and religious" people whose thirst was for enduring personal liberty and equality UNDER THE LAW. How many immigrants have that kind of government where they come from? How would someone lacking those values, even if only due to ignorance, and understanding of our glorious history change the face of The US of A? Do you really believe our country could truly maintain the essential core beliefs that keep us as free as we can be? Do you think a new flood of immigrants will line up to fight with those of us who know the government has shredded the Constitution? Do you really think they care? Do you think that an American 25 year old today has any gut feeling about the Cold War or even the horrors of Viet Nam? Do you think schooling these criminals will somehow change their allegiance when even an American citizen hasn't mastered the spelling of BORDER? I think not.