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Organ Pipe Cactus
February 20, 2018	An online publication of The Anonymous Anything Society

 BAD NEWS/GOOD NEWS AT THE BORDER: A quandary

    Organ Pipe National monument is isolated on the border, 40 to 50 miles southwest of Tucson; on the way to nowhere. The Organ Pipe Cacti (above) are unique. The patch of them there exists nowhere else. The National monument is visited occasionally by a few tourists, especially horticulturists. 

    In a copyrighted story, the Washington Post published a story this week about a group of several hundred border crossers from Central America who showed up at the Monument with a great number of children, suffering various illnesses, mostly fatigue from the arduous trip from their home countries in Latin America. The surge was expected, but not necessarily out in the boondocks. The area has been used by smugglers for decades, necessitating a growing number of Border Protection Agents.

    That's a good thing, for at the behest of Kirsten Nielson, Director of Homeland Security, there has been a surge also in humanitarian aid, including food, water, medicines and transportation for the sick kids to medical facilities, when called for.

    This comes on the heels of an investigation into the deaths of a 7-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy, both from Guatemala, in separate incidents, while in U.S. custody, in December, 2018. 

    Unfortunately, the root cause of problems at our borders is poverty, crime and corruption in their home countries, about which the U.S. can do little to change. It does buttress Trump's call for a wall that will help even less, since the main amount of smuggling takes place at ports of entry.   

-Phil Richardson, Observer of the Human Condition and Storyteller 

    "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself."—Joseph Menchen

Our unending thanks to Jim Bromley, who programs our Archive of Prior Commentaries

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