 BORDER NEWS
While the attention of the nation and the world has been on the September 11th terrorist attacks and the subsequent military actions in Afghanistan , President Bush took time out to reaffirm his commitment to Mexican immigration issues. Last week in a joint statement, Bush, along with Mexican President Vicente Fox, who was in Washington , D.C. , said that work on migration issues between the two countries continues. Indeed, aides to congressional leaders say that they have not stopped work on other immigration issues and that the immediate focus on security issues is actually giving them an opportunity to hammer out an agreement. Staff for Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) are working on a compromise between competing agricultural worker bills introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Larry Craig (R-ID)
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Many people on the Southwest border, tired of the hours long delays that have been present since the September 11th terrorist attacks, are using bicycles to make their cross border trips quicker. While the wait for a passenger car to cross the border remains long – in some cases more than three hours – bicycles pass through in a matter of minutes. Border inspectors report about 1,500 bicycles pass through on weekday mornings, compared with barely a few dozen on whole days before the attacks.
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The Border Patrol reports that the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended trying to enter the US dropped dramatically last year. The agency says that 1.24 million people were caught trying to enter the US from Mexico during fiscal year 2001, which ended September 30, 2001. This was 24 percent less than the previous year, but still substantially higher than numbers before the border crackdown. In 1994, only 979,000 people were arrested.
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