crazy: Minutemen installing Ariz. border fence

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps plans to install a combination of barbed wire, razor wire, and in some spots, steel rail barriers along the 10-mile stretch of private land in southeastern Arizona.

Why are drug runners and illegal immigrants lumped together? No one is going to question someone that wants to stop drug trafficking.

What I would really like to know is this: how many members or supporters of the Minuteman effort would be willing to take the kinds of jobs offered to illegal immigrants? And no, not at the American minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.

If the answer is none of them, then what's with all the complaining? Many people come to the USA looking to earn a decent wage, so that they can send some money back to their families. So let's look at the minimum wage in Mexico:

47.05 MXN a day, according to Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social.
Which happens to be about $4.23.

Not to mention

The blue collar work force is accustomed to a six-day, 48-hour work week, the maximum allowed by law.

Sure, I'll bet lots of people would be willing to work for $25.38 a week. And a six-day, 48 hour week at that. Most Americans spend more than that every week on coffee and newspapers.

A decent wage to someone accustomed to receiving $25.38 a week could very well be thirty bucks a week, plus free room and board with twenty other guys in the same studio apartment. That doesn't include whatever the illegal immigrant owes to whoever smuggled him/her into the country, of course.

Perhaps the Minutemen just want the expanding desert to themselves.