Today in class there was a handout. It is the 'Outline of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013'. So I went over it a little (it's very dry reading) and I found an interesting tidbit on the first page. The second goal for border security is "an Effectiveness Rate of 90% in a fiscal year for all High Risk Sectors along the Southern Border". A 'High Risk Border Sector' are "border sectors where apprehensions are above 30,000 individuals per year." I can see how this may make sense to some people, but my question is, if undocumented immigrants are, you know, undocumented, and thus we are unsure of how many are entering the country, how do we (well, Border Patrol) know if 90% of undocumented immigrants are apprehended. I can see two clerks in uniforms late at night saying 'eh, we caught 27,000, let's call it a fiscal year.' (I've only actually been friends with one Border Patrol Agent from a boxing class.) On the way North to Tucson there is a security checkpoint and I've never been searched. I believe it is because my whole family is white.

Different thought. The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 and it fell in 1989. There were about 40,000 East German escapees in that time period. There were about 700 deaths, give or take 200 because it's Communist statistics. Okay. Now for the U.S. Mexican border. From 1998 to 2004 (a little out of date) 1,954 people died. I could not find an exact statistic for those years for undocumented immigrants entering the U.S., but this is incredibly surprising. Keep in mind East German border guards had explicit shoot to kill orders. Whatever the statistics are now, this was a decade ago. With the 'Great Recession' I'm sure the numbers have gone down, but I do not want to check anymore. Our border has killed more people than the Berlin Wall.

Dennis, Mike (2000). The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic, 1945–90. Harlow: Longman.

Jarausch, Konrad Hugo (1994). The rush to German unity. New York City: Oxford University Press US. 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E4DB163CF930A35752C1A9629C8B63

So today I was talking with a friend and her associate when the conversation turned to where I live when I'm not at NAU. Learning that it is a border town the associate expressed some measure of surprise at 'how white you are'. I'm definitely 'white', but it was a startling revelation that she would expect someone to be a certain 'color' based on where they live. I'm not sure if it constitutes racism, but it is definitely an idea I do not encounter often.

Would she expect someone from Hawaii to be white, Hawaiian, or asian? I remember (years ago) watching a documentary on 'illegal' immigration and how 60% of a small Alaskan town were Hispanic or Latino. Bottom line: race and ethnicity do not know borders.