The war for Arizona â€“ and America

While Americans were celebrating Independence Day weekend, news of a gun battle near the Arizona-Mexico border, rivaling anything from the old "Wild West" days, wasn't getting much attention.

Here's what you likely missed: Rival Mexican drug gangs shot it out 12 miles outside of Arizona, leaving 21 dead. At least six others were wounded.

About the same time, elsewhere along the border, gunmen killed an assistant attorney general for Chihuahua state and one of her bodyguards. After being chased through the darkened city streets of Ciudad Juarez by assailants with automatic weapons, Sandra Salas Garcia was murdered. A second bodyguard was wounded. Salas was responsible for evaluating the work of prosecutors and special investigations units in Chihuahua.

That weekend's murder spree brought the death toll due to drug violence along the border since 2006 to 23,000. That's about half the number of Americans killed in Vietnam in a decade.

In Ciudad Juarez, more than 4,300 people have been murdered in that same time period.

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There's a war going on a few miles south of the U.S. border – and no one in Washington seems to be the least bit concerned.

They're more concerned with losing their 9-year-long war in Afghanistan.

Go figure.

Six weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was cutting millions of dollars intended for the high-tech "virtual fence" along the Mexican border. The project began in 2005 and was supposed to be complete by now – covering the entire 2,000-mile border. So far, $1.1 billion has been spent with nothing to show except two small testing sites in the Arizona desert.

Meanwhile, talk of amnesty is back in the air.

Congress doesn't have the guts to approve it in a volatile election year, but Barack Obama is threatening to misuse his executive authority to impose the unpopular measure.

A few years ago, George Bush justified amnesty for illegal aliens because they would "do the jobs Americans wouldn't do." Today, with 40 million Americans out of work, I wonder what the justification would be?

Consider the fact that about 20 million illegal aliens are currently working in America today. By sending them back home, the unemployment rate for Americans would be cut in half.

But nobody in Washington talks about that.

As the nation goes broke, however, it's time to consider the toll of illegal immigration:

$11 billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments;
$2.2 billion a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps and free school lunches for illegal aliens;
$2.5 billion a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens;
$12 billion a year is spent on primary- and secondary-school education for children here illegally;
$17 billion a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens;
$3 million a DAY is spent incarcerating illegal aliens;
30 percent of all federal prison inmates are illegal aliens;
$90 billion a year is spent on illegal aliens for welfare and social services;
$200 billion a year in suppressed American wages is attributable to illegal aliens;
Illegal aliens have a crime rate two and a half times that of legal immigrants;
Illegal aliens send home $45 billion annually.

In fact, all told, the cost of illegal immigration to the United States is $338.3 billion a year.

Yet, if you listen to Barack Obama, you would think the real crisis in America today is that the Arizona Legislature and governor have taken a modest action to try to protect their citizens.

Amazing.