Smuggling crisis

San Antonio deaths are another indication of the need to reform our immigration laws.

Unfortunately, the horrific deaths in San Antonio of 10 undocumented immigrants being transported on Sunday in a hot, airless tractor trailer were not the first such tragedy we’ve seen in Texas and certainly won’t be the last.

In 2003, 19 immigrants died locked up in a truck in Victoria and in 1987, 18 people died in a railroad boxcar in Sierra Blanca, Texas.

Over the course of time, untold numbers of people have perished making their way north from Mexico and Central America across the arid, rugged borderlands in pursuit of a better life in the United States.

Border Patrol agents routinely find the remains of immigrants who drowned crossing the Rio Grande or died in the southwestern desert.

And what do we get from our elected leaders? President Donald Trump says the best way to stop this human tragedy is to build a wall sealing off our 2,000-mile border with Mexico, for which the current estimated cost is close to $30 billion. Contrary to Trump’s campaign promises, the bill will be paid by U.S. taxpayers, not the Mexican government. And in Austin, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blamed “Democrat policies” for the tragedy.

People desperate to escape poverty — and in many cases violence — in their homeland are not easily dissuaded from pursuing their dreams. America has long been the destination for people sailing across oceans to a land they’ve never seen in a place with a language they’ve never heard.

Building a wall or driving the undocumented into the shadows of society only empowers the criminals who are to blame for these actions.

It is not difficult to craft a legal solution to these problems, whether it be new immigration laws, targeting the employers who hire the undocumented or helping our neighbors to the south fight drug cartels that smuggle both narcotics and humans.

But for now we should mourn. And we should not forget. Let’s not use this unfathomable event as just another political cudgel to beat the anti-immigration drum.

People desperate to escape poverty — and in many cases violence — in their homeland are not easily dissuaded from pursuing their dreams.