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In Our Backyard

katrina

Well-known member
Leo Banks, the author of this piece, is a very respected free-lance writer living in Tucson. He has been printed in almost every major publication in the US and has an enviable reputation as a terrific reporter.

May 11, 2006, 6:10 a.m.

In Our Backyard
If only McCain and Kennedy lived on ranches in southern Arizona.

By Leo W. Banks

I know how to kill the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill and the illusions that inspire it. We need every citizen to spend a day at John and Pat King's Anvil Ranch in southern Arizona. The experience would create an overnight revolution in America's view of this domestic crisis.

The Kings live every day with barking dogs, vandalism, guns at their bedside, trash on their land, and most tragically, human remains. The bodies of seven illegals were found on the 50,000-acre Anvil last year.

Can you imagine dying of heat prostration out there, says Pat King, a 62-year-old former nurse? It has got to be the most awful thing. I wish the two countries would get together and stop this. In this whole 50-mile area, there is no law. It's a frontier.

I visited the Anvil a week ago Sunday. The night before, the Minutemen
had wrapped up a month-long watch at the ranch, and the nationwide
demonstrations to demand rights for illegal immigrants would begin the
next morning.

I've visited many Arizona ranches, and it always surprises me how quickly I can travel from Tucson to a combat zone. It takes 50 minutes to reach Anvil's headquarters in heavily-crossed Altar Valley, located to the southwest of the city. Even with that proximity, most people in Tucson‹to say nothing of Maine or Washington, D.C.‹live in blissful ignorance of the worsening situation here.

When Pat discusses the problem with friends, they say, Don't you think you're exaggerating? No one would ask that if they saw the 40 bicycles stacked against one of the Anvil's out-buildings. They're the Favored means of transportation for drug smugglers, who pack their cargo onto saddlebags and pedal across our border, then abandon the bikes.

As for vandalism, Pat describes what they experience today as wanton, water troughs filled with garbage, pipes cut, valves hammered to pieces. She jokes that they're thinking of putting a tetherball by the troughs to occupy the illegals so they aren't so destructive.

You have to understand, we're under siege here, she says. Every day my son and husband check water and fences and redo the damage they've done. Not to get on with our work, but to undo the damage. Every. Day.

Micaela McGibbon, Pat's daughter, took me on a ranch tour, and in one mile we crossed 30 smuggling trails. In a wash, we inspected sophisticated brush huts in which illegals rest during trips north.

But this nightmare comes right to the Kings' doorstep. Imagine living under permanent stakeout. The Kings do. They removed mesquite trees from around their house because illegals would hide underneath them and wait for the house to empty.

For nine years, the family has been unable to leave home unless someone stays to guard against burglars. They celebrate Christmas in shifts. On Christmas Eve, Pat's son and daughter-in-law go to Tucson to visit family, and when they return John and Pat go on Christmas morning.

Micaela can no longer do chores unless accompanied by her father or a
brother, and taking her 4-year-old daughter out on horseback is forbidden. We can't go anywhere without an escort, Micaela says.

The Kings have complained to politicians and law enforcement for years. They talk this rule of law stuff, but it doesn't mean a thing, Pat says. When you realize nothing's going to happen, you have to do self-protection.

During their April watch, Minutemen spotted 1,501 illegals on the Anvil, and of these the Border Patrol arrested 500. But it turned into a circus. ACLU volunteers showed up every day to monitor and harass the Minutemen, at times sounding car horns and flashing lights to alert the illegals that the Border Patrol was coming.

This is the border crisis in microcosm confused Americans rush to defend lawbreakers while ignoring, even demonizing, law-abiding citizens who suffer daily affronts to basic liberties on land their family has tended for 115 years.

The Anvil's location, 38 miles north of the border, means that by the time illegals arrive there, they've been walking for days and are sometimes in desperate shape.

Between May and August last year, cowboy Jason Cathcart found four sets of human remains. He came to dread spotting what looked like little white balls in the distance. Those balls turned out to be human skulls.

In March, a man arrived at the Anvil's front gate so distraught that he ran into the yard and tried to impale himself on a pitchfork. Later he took up a bale hook and used the pointed end to slash his throat.

This is what life is like in the Altar Valley, says Pat.

Certainly the McCain-Kennedy bill will do nothing to change life here. Pat likens the bill, with its plan for amnesty, a guest-worker program, and negligible enforcement, to swatting flies in your house with the doors and windows wide open.

Ask yourself: Would the Altar Valley be a war zone if McCain lived here? If Kennedy's Hyannis Port compound were magically transplanted to southern Arizona, how long do you think it'd be before he rewrote his bill? The first time Kennedy saw 30 illegals dashing across his property, he'd trip over his Guatemalan lawn guy rushing to the Senate floor to demand enforcement.

That's one of the American tragedies at play here, the abandonment of
ordinary citizens by our country's elites, and most strikingly, the abandonment of the very laws they themselves have written.

The resulting invasion has driven legal Arizona residents from their land, including John King's aunt. She lived south of the Anvil for more than 40 years, but sold out rather than keep fighting a battle the federal government has no intention of winning.

Pat thinks the street demonstrators, she calls them cowards, need to show their bravery by returning to Mexico and changing that country, not ours.

We did that with the Boston Tea Party, she says. We were taxed without representation and we rose up and changed it. I think the students in the streets and these young ACLU individuals here are being used. When you talk to them you realize it's all emotion. There's no logic. They don't have a clue.

When it comes to what's really happening on our southern border, neither does the rest of the country. But that would change if every American spent a day at the Anvil.

Leo W. Banks is a writer in Tucson.


The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
— George Bernard Shaw
 

Cowpuncher

Well-known member
Sad story. But as soon as they are given citizenship, they will become model citizens and offerf to repay the damage they did on the way in. Yeah. :roll: :roll:
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
ROTFLMAO! You name McCain and Kennedy. Apparently President George W. Bush also supports the Senate immigration bill. How come no mention of his name? :lol: Bush was fond of some Mexicans who worked for his family when he was a child. Like Saddam, this is personal with him.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
I see you are back, Dis.

Could you give us a full report on George W. Bushs friendship with
the Mexicans that worked for his family? Please tell us how long that
friendship lasted, how it developed, how old were the Mexicans,
how long had they been employed by the Bush family, what were
they hired to do, what they were paid and what became of them.
I'm sure with your connections you will have no problem
coming up with the information.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
I see you are back, Dis.

Could you give us a full report on George W. Bushs friendship with
the Mexicans that worked for his family? Please tell us how long that
friendship lasted, how it developed, how old were the Mexicans,
how long had they been employed by the Bush family, what were
they hired to do, what they were paid and what became of them.
I'm sure with your connections you will have no problem
coming up with the information.

Spin, spin. I point out that Bush supports this plan, you try to change the subject. :lol:
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Oh, no. You are spinning now.

You are the one who originally made an off-the-wall statement about the Mexicans that worked for the Bush family, included President Bush in the statement and I want to know how the hell you know so much.

Carry on. Tell us the whole story. Back up your statement.
 

ranchwife

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
Oh, no. You are spinning now.

You are the one who originally made an off-the-wall statement about the Mexicans that worked for the Bush family, included President Bush in the statement and I want to know how the hell you know so much.

Carry on. Tell us the whole story. Back up your statement.

we're WAITING, dis!! Answer the question!!!!!!! :? :?
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
Oh, no. You are spinning now.

You are the one who originally made an off-the-wall statement about the Mexicans that worked for the Bush family, included President Bush in the statement and I want to know how the hell you know so much.

Carry on. Tell us the whole story. Back up your statement.

Language, language. Shame on you Faster Horses. A good Christian woman like you, using such language! Your mother would blush hearing such words coming out of your mouth.

Unlike you, I can back up what I put out here. And just for you, just this time, I'll do it. :lol: From your own favorite source, NewsMax.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/21/161734.shtml?s=ic

The same information is available at the Newsweek site, but using this one is so much more fun!

Here's a link to the Newsweek article, too.

"President George W. Bush seemed unusually heartfelt when he addressed the nation last week on immigration reform. For the president, immigration is not just a matter of politics or policy, it's personal. Bush has always been drawn to stories of Latino immigrants who came up by their bootstraps. In an interview with Hispanic Magazine in 2004, he described Paula Rendón, "who came up from Mexico to work in our house" when Bush was a boy growing up in Midland, Texas. "She loved me. She chewed me out. She tried to shape me up," said Bush. "And I have grown to love her like a second mom." Bush recalled Rendón's pride in seeing "her grandkids go to college for the first time."

Isn't that heartwarming? Check out the picture of Bush on the border and remember Dukakis in the tank. Do we all feel safer now? :roll:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12892962/site/newsweek
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
You mean that's all there is?

Surely there is more to it than that, for you to mention it as you did.
Remember, this is supposed to be something that would turn us against George W. Bush.

You are gonna hafta to better than that, Dis.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
You mean that's all there is?

Surely there is more to it than that, for you to mention it as you did.
Remember, this is supposed to be something that would turn us against George W. Bush.

What a dirty little mind you have, Faster Horses. :shock: I would never expect anything to turn you against Bush. You have faith. All the lies, death, debt, he's reponsible for doesn't matter to you.

You are gonna hafta to better than that, Dis.

No, I don't. You asked for proof that his stand on immigration was personal, I gave it to you. He had a personal vendetta with Saddam and sent our young men and women off to die. He has close personal friends who came up from Mexico (legally or otherwise) and thinks they should be allowed to stay. Immigration is personal with him, that's why he's teamed up with :shock: Teddy Kennedy and not the House version of the immigration bill.

Katrina posted the article blasting Kennedy and McCain, but didn't bother to point out that Bush supports their plan. I just thought it should be mentioned. :lol:
 

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