Alicia A. Caldwell, AP, May 1, 2009
This dusty little border town with almost no visible means of support has been seeing something of a boom in the past year: Brand-new Lincoln Navigators and Cadillac Escalades with flashy hubcaps are parked just off the bleak main drag. Homes are selling quickly, sometimes for cash. The source of this sudden wealth? An influx of Mexican drug smugglers, investigators say.
The smugglers are fleeing the Mexican army’s occupation of the town of Palomas, on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, and settling in Columbus, where there has been a law enforcement vacuum. The four-man police force in Columbus has turned over seven times in three years because of scandal or apathy.
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So far, Columbus has been spared any violence, even though the sheriff’s investigators estimate 10 percent of the population of 2,000 may be involved in illegal activity.
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Ranches and farms in the area are the largest legitimate employers, along with the few shops and cafes in town. Officially, the median income is less than $15,000 a year, a sum that is hard to reconcile with the sudden prosperity around town.
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Real estate agent Martha Skinner, a former Columbus mayor, said she had her best year in 2008, selling about $500,000 in property in town, some to locals, some to Mexican buyers. The median home value in Columbus is about $52,000.
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Some residents and local officials say that without the illegal cash, the town might not survive.
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It is not clear whether the smugglers are legal or illegal immigrants, but local law enforcement authorities say that’s not their business, it’s the federal government’s. And townspeople don’t seem to care either way.
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Original article
(Posted on May 4, 2009)
Comments
I can attest to the fact that many Mexican illegals bring prosperity to us here in the good old U.S.A. For example, graffitti, helps paint sales and creates jobs both in the paint stores and for those who clean it up. Tire outlets benefit from tire theft, car dealers from auto theft.
Why just about three weeks ago, I took my dogs to the local park, and got my side window bashed in. The park is very narrow but very long. My dogs and myself were too far away to get at the little gangbanger that tried to steal something out of my car. I helplessly watched from a distance as he ever so causualy drove around my car in circles, on a small bike, before bashing the window in causing my useless car alarm to go off. I then started to run towards the car with my dogs but we were just too far away and the little gangbanger just slowly drove off into the nearby illegal alien infested town, that bordes the park and disappeared.
But no matter, the little gangbanger created business for the local glass shop, even though by criminal means. because the side window cost me 65 bucks. I didn’t call the cops, because as the above article says,..”its not the business of local law enforcement, it’s the business of the federal government.
Conclusion: Yes,it’s time to acknowledge that many illegal alien Mexicans living in the U.S. help the economy immensely.
This is a good example of immigrants’ capacity for lifting the U.S. out of its economic slump. They bring cash for capital and real estate investing, as well as needed job skills and great work ethic. The neoCons have been proclaiming this for months; Allen Greenspan did so last week at a Congressional hearing. Nativist-Americans don’t seem to have understood this great wisdom.
“Some residents and local officials say that without the illegal cash, the town might not survive.”
Some towns shouldn’t survive.
“The four-man police force in Columbus has turned over seven times in three years because of scandal or apathy.”
Well, with all that drug money there now, I think they’ll get a police force that will stay, because they’ll be bought and paid for just like a few politicians in this country and huge numbers of them in Mexico.
Is this even further proof of the degeneration of this country?
Real estate agent Martha Skinner, a former Columbus mayor, said she had her best year in 2008,
Like Jeff Goldblum said in “Lost World” first there’s ooooh’s and aaaahhhh’s then later, there’s RUNNING and SCREAMING, I’m sure it will happen.
“Conclusion: Yes,it’s time to acknowledge that many illegal alien Mexicans living in the U.S. help the economy immensely.”
Every fact published on the subject says exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.
Download the “Hispanic” booklet Amren has compliled and see for yourself. Far left radicals criticize it, but not a single one of them can offer anything substantive that every word written isn’t absolutely correct.
Mexico is a failed narco-state and a shame to the world. Though they are one of the wealthiest latin countries they can’t provide the jobs necessary for their own people, and the government sends their illiterates and non-skilled poulace to other countries in order to find work. It’s shameful.
Mexico will be taken over by the drug lords. The US will have to defeat them militarily and assume control of the country in order to rebuild it the correct way, because the Mexican people are just not smart enough to create a successful society.
Sorry to burst your mythical bubble, but these are the facts.
Columbus = yet another no go zone. Imagine tourists from Europe, wanting to see the American SW, maybe drive on Route 66, mistakenly stumbling into that town and running into trouble. We need uniform justice and safety in EVERY US city and town, not a patchwork of no go zones and “good” and “bad” neighborhoods. As it is, there’s huge chunks of the country that we, the normal people, can’t go into and expect safety and law enforcement protection. As an attorney, that really bothers me.
This dusty little border town is likely almost completely hispanic anyway, that is why the residents and law enforcement don’t care about the law or where the money comes from. This is just a small picture of what the rest of the USA will become in the future if things don’t change, a replica of Mexico.
“Some residents and local officials say that without the illegal cash, the town might not survive.”
Columbus was established in 1891 and there was never much of an economy there. I think it can survive without criminal cash. Besides, this is the town that Pancho Villa invaded in 1916, and the U.S. Army and the townspeople gave his raiders a sound thrashing. What happened to that American spirit? This isn’t the same country anymore.
ice, on May 5, brother, I was writing some of my statements tongue in cheek. Read my post again.
“ice, on May 5, brother, I was writing some of my statements tongue in cheek. Read my post again.”
You’re right, guy. My mistake. Sorry. I skipped through it too quickly without getting the crux of what you were saying.
Some residents and local officials say that without the illegal cash, the town might not survive.”
Perhaps these drug lords should look into Detroit soon.
