Southern Border

On Nov. 3, the day before Americans elected Barack Obama president, drug cartel henchmen murdered 58 people in Mexico. It was the highest number killed in one day since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. By comparison, on average 26 people -- Americans and Iraqis combined -- died daily in Iraq in 2008. Mexico's casualty list on Nov. 3 included a man beheaded in Ciudad Juarez whose bloody corpse was suspended along an overpass for hours.

A record number of immigrants were deported in fiscal 2011. You'd think that would be greeted as good news by Republicans, who have repeatedly demanded that the Obama administration crack down on illegal immigration. But it won't be. The latest numbers, released last week, are unlikely to sway the current field of Republican presidential hopefuls, who steadfastly refuse to discuss fixing the broken immigration system, arguing that only stricter enforcement, tougher penalties and a 100% secured border will satisfy them.

AMONG THE MANY measures and half-measures that are being proposed to solve the crisis of illegal immigration, there have been some real doozies: a 700-mile wall to keep people out (or in?); a temporary guest-worker program that may end up harming both American and Mexican employees; even a scheme for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. But here's one good idea you won't hear about.

President Obama visited the southern border Tuesday to push for an overhaul of the immigration system, part of a renewed effort to shore up his standing among Latinos and paint Republicans as hostile to a minority group that is a growing force in U.S. politics. In a speech at the Chamizal National Memorial, Obama also sought to link the challenge of illegal immigration with another major political concern: economic anxiety. He said immigration reform "is an economic imperative. " "One way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system so that there's no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else," he said.

Re "Ranks of Uninsured in State Expand," Jan. 20: Your story indicates that the uninsured will grow by 23,000 per month. Simple solution: Stop laying out the welcome mat for immigrants, legal and otherwise, who are streaming through our southern border. JACK BERKUS Playa del Rey

The United Nations refugee agency began trucking an estimated 50,000 refugees away from Guinea's southern border, where they are threatened by frontier fighting in West Africa. The refugees, from Sierra Leone and Liberia, fled civil wars in their homelands in the 1990s for the relative safety of Guinea but have been caught up in a widening conflict around the diamond fields where the three countries' borders meet.

Nicaraguan rebels acknowledged that two of their bases were destroyed and supply lines cut after two weeks of ground and air strikes by government troops near Nicaragua's southern border. In a broadcast, the Costa Rica-based Democratic Revolutionary Alliance said Sandinista forces bombed the bases at El Castillo and La Penca in late May. Contradicting reports of heavy casualties, the guerrillas reported only two dead.

Re " 'That's It. Vamonos. Gone.' " by Peter King, Feb. 28: It is indeed sad that so many immigrants are losing their lives trying to enter the U.S. illegally. It would seem that President Vicente Fox would make sure that his people are not dying by stopping them on the Mexican side. Mexico does not have any trouble stopping the people from Guatemala trying to enter on its southern border. Fox should push for the foreign companies doing business in his country to pay the people a decent wage instead of the very low wages--and thus encourage them to stay home.

Vice President George Bush's task force to combat drug smugglers has done little to slow the flow of illegal narcotics across U.S. borders, General Accounting Office auditors told a House panel. While the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, or NNBIS, claimed to be involved in 136 of 2,289 drug seizures along the Southern border in the first year of operation, the task force contributed to only 39 interdictions, said William J. Anderson of the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress.

In response to Max Boot's Memorial Day Op-Ed article in The Times, "America is still the best guarantor of freedom and prosperity," I must say that as much as I love the country that provided me with a wonderful life, I don't believe that our role is to be the world's military protector. Boot writes: "The very fact that the entire world is divided up into American military commands is significant. There is no French, Indian or Brazilian equivalent — not yet even a Chinese counterpart.

Sour notes Re "Barbs reveal a 'Ring' divided," May 14 At last! It is revealed that Emperor Achim Freyer has no clothes, something patently obvious to those of us who have endured his abortive "Ring of the Nibelung" production these last two seasons at the Los Angeles Opera. Freyer's cartoonish concepts mocked Richard Wagner's complex dramatic vision and transcendent musical score. He ignored completely the practical issues of performers. It was pathetic to observe a fine singer like John Treleaven injure himself and then bravely soldier on in this idiotic production.

The Obama administration outlined several Southwest border initiatives Tuesday with two clear goals: to prevent the violence of Mexico's drug war from spilling over into the United States, and to help President Felipe Calderon crack down on the drug cartels threatening the stability of his country.

Re "The war on our southern border," Opinion, Dec. 10 David Danelo's Op-Ed article is on target. The mass murder by the drug cartels in Mexico is at least equal to the Mumbai tragedy as a threat to our national security. Yet our leaders fumble their attempts to address this crisis, Mexico's security forces are outgunned, and its people continue to bleed to death. Why can't the U.S. and the world rally to Mexico's defense and put together a strike force that would send the cartels packing?

On Nov. 3, the day before Americans elected Barack Obama president, drug cartel henchmen murdered 58 people in Mexico. It was the highest number killed in one day since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. By comparison, on average 26 people -- Americans and Iraqis combined -- died daily in Iraq in 2008. Mexico's casualty list on Nov. 3 included a man beheaded in Ciudad Juarez whose bloody corpse was suspended along an overpass for hours.

About 160 million people with incomes a fifth or less than the average U.S. income now reside less than 1,500 miles from our southern border. Given this huge income gap, more border agents and more miles of fence cannot prevent substantial illegal migration. But such migration is actually the United States' most effective foreign aid program, helping some of the poorest people in the world. Some believe such migration should be tolerated, not fought to the death.

AMONG THE MANY measures and half-measures that are being proposed to solve the crisis of illegal immigration, there have been some real doozies: a 700-mile wall to keep people out (or in?); a temporary guest-worker program that may end up harming both American and Mexican employees; even a scheme for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. But here's one good idea you won't hear about.