While the Bush administration thinks amnesty is the way to deal with illegal immigration, the people who have to live with it are trying to control it themselves.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a recent sizeable story about the rise of citizens' patrols that police the borders in Arizona—where thousands of illegals come across every year and the federal border authorities do nothing to halt it. [DANGEROUS BORDER Militias round up illegal immigrants in desert, By Tyche Hendricks, May 31, 2004]

The rise of such private groups is what has excited a response—not the invasion of the state and the ruin of private property because of it. Self-appointed watchdog organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, "immigrants rights" organizations that never heard of rights for Americans, and ever-vigilant congressmen and local officials who worry about immigrants and do nothing for their own constituents have been whining about the "vigilantes" and demanding a government crackdown on them for years.

But in the first place they're not really "vigilantes." The patrols don't mete out punishment to immigrants or lynch them like real vigilantes. They simply catch them as they sneak over the border and rampage across private ranches and farm lands and hold them until the Border Patrol gets there—if it does get there.

"Someone needs to be doing the government's job," one patroller told the Chronicle.

"They're failing. They get an A for effort and an F for actuality," said another.

Both are members of one of the main such organizations called Ranch Rescue.

The Border Patrol itself says the groups are generally welcome to help. Border Patrol spokesman Charles Griffin remarks, "Every law enforcement agency appreciates a neighborhood watch. I would caution them to be very careful not to violate someone else's civil liberties."

That's fair enough, but the people whose civil liberties are being violated are the American citizens whose government has totally failed to protect its country and its people against the invasion.

Meanwhile, Arizona's elected leaders like Sen. John McCain and various Republican congressmen peddle amnesty in one form or another. Despite years of demands from citizens, they have done nothing to stop the invasion.

As a result, Arizona now faces costs of some $1.3 billion a year because of illegal immigration, according to a new study conducted by FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington. As FAIR's press release noted,

"The average native-born-headed household in Arizona now bears more than $700 a year in additional costs due to mass illegal immigration to the state, finds the report. The cost of providing education to illegal aliens and their children leads the way at $810 million a year. Health care for illegal immigrants, which threatens to bankrupt many Arizona hospitals and clinics, adds $400 million a year to the tab, while incarcerating illegal aliens costs Arizona taxpayers $80 million annually. Only a small fraction of these and other costs incurred by the state are offset by an estimated $257 million a year that illegal aliens pay in taxes to the state." [The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Arizonans (full report)]

Not only does their own government do nothing to stop the invasion but the Open Borders lobby is using the law to crack down on the citizens' patrols.

Some leaders of citizens groups have been jailed or fined for weapons violations or detaining and handcuffing illegal aliens.

One leader faces charges of beating two immigrants he nabbed last year. He says the charges are fake.

There seem to be few if any authentic stories of real crimes against immigrants.

Not surprisingly, the attitude of the citizens who formed the patrols toward their own government—and the future of the country—is pretty bitter.

"We've got about five more years and this country is ruined," says one rancher who helped create Ranch Rescue. "Illegals are destroying our fabric of life."

Another told the Chronicle, "Our country is going down the tubes. The people coming across here, they don't want to be assimilated. They don't want to use our language."

Why is it that Americans like these gentlemen understand what's going on when George Bush, John Kerry, senators and congressmen of both parties, most of the media and the vast apparat of the Open Borders Lobby in Washington and elsewhere don't have a clue?

The obvious answer is that the citizens' patrol guys understand because they live with and witness every day what's happening. The others have succeeded in insulating themselves from it.

The citizens patrols, as needed as they are, won't help in the long run to stop illegal immigration, but sooner or later they may kick off a network and a mass movement of Americans who know what's going on in and to this country and are determined to stop it.

Regardless of how many illegals they actually catch, that may be their most valuable achievement.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[Sam Francis [email him] is a nationally syndicated columnist. A selection of his columns, America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The Disintegration Of American Culture, is now available from Americans For Immigration Control. Click here for Sam Francis' website. Click here to orderhis monograph, Ethnopolitics: Immigration, Race, and the American Political Future and here for Glynn Custred's review.]