U.S. border needs greater control

If we all generally agree that one strength of this great nation is that we accept with open arms those who seek the freedom afforded here, then it's important to examine the ingredients in this "melting pot" that we call America.

If you want to make the perfect stew then you first must carefully select the appropriate ingredients. Simply mixing everything that comes along will not assure a good stew. In fact, by adding some wrong ingredients, you can actually ruin that stew.

That much I know from experience.

Our overly-porous southern border with Mexico brings in ingredients everyday to add to the "stew" that is America. Some of those ingredients add flavor and texture and quality to the stew. Others clearly do not.

I make this point to illustrate the growing need for much greater control of our southern border.

And here is but the latest example.

Authorities this week made the gruesome discovery of 72 bodies killed by drug cartel gangs just 100 miles south of the U.S. border. These migrants killed by the drug gangs were just the latest in an escalating pattern of drug-induced violence slowly creeping into our backdoor.

The slain migrants were captured traveling to the United States. The motive was to find those who may have had relatives in this country in order to extract ransom. Others were captured to be forced into running drugs into this country. Those who fell outside of these two categories were simply slaughtered.

Don't naively think that some imaginary border with the United States will stop these drug cartels from exporting their slaughter into this country. We've already seen examples.

The problem is complex at best. Like it or not, we export illegal weapons to Mexico and Mexico exports illegal drugs to the United States. The result is escalating violence that will not stop until we make a firm commitment to address the question of border security.

The current administration - and yes, past administrations - have ignored the problem in an attempt to not offend a growing Hispanic voting bloc in this country.

If you want future stories to talk of mass murders in this country, then simply ignore the border issue and those stories are a virtual certainty.

Or drop the political correctness and declare an all-out war on the drug cartels as they inch closer and closer to our homes.

Seems to me like an easy choice.