Thursday, June 21, 2007

Getting it backwards when it comes to Mexico


Today I had to dig a job in Chula Vista, California, right next to the Mexican Border. I was on the road quite early, 4:30 am, so that I could get down there by seven in the morning. I arrived ten minutes after my target time.

Anyhow, I not only operate a trenching machine, but I also drive an eighteen-wheeler to transport my equipment. As I approached the border (my exit was to be the final exit before reaching the Mexican Border) the California Highway Patrol had set up an inspection station for big rigs on the right side of the road.

California, as well as the rest of our great nation, has stringent rules regarding rigs. But what I found fascinating is that they were inspecting the big rigs heading to Mexico to make sure they were up to standards, but there was no such inspection stop going the other way.

So let me get this straight. Rigs that are coming from an area that practices the safest standards need to be inspected once again, just as they may have been at any number of weigh stations on the way toward the border, but the ones coming from Mexico are not. And guess what? A number of the trucks coming down the opposite way from Mexico had Mexican license plates.

How safe were those vehicles? When was the last time they were inspected? And were there illegals hiding somewhere inside them?

Seems to me they had the inspection station on the wrong side of the road.

Oh, and the fence with razor wire between me and the border? There was a jacket flung over the top of it to protect the climbers from the evening's activities. The jacket remained, but who knows where the border jumpers were.

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