The other side of smuggling

Being from San Diego, Ive always been interested in the different sides of smuggling illegal contraband into the united states, so when I saw the H-borderlands thread i decided to investigate. It took me ages to find something that wasn't pertaining to a job opportunity, or some seminar on latino rights, but I eventually came across the post titled "Contraband Unlimited."

This post was aimed at reviling the other sides to smuggling that the main stream media doesn't deem worthy enough to report on. Mostly what your every day person hears about are the 200 kilo drug busts, and guns hidden in an assortment of creative ways in attempts to get them into our country. What you don't hear about is the 80 billion dollar a year business of smuggling things such as clothes, watches, backpacks, luggage and wallets into the US. The article provides an interesting point of view into an issue that is over looked, and in most cases unknown, about smuggling illegal contraband between the US and Mexico. The article goes on to describe how the smuggling of exotic goods such as python and armadillo skin wallets makes up another large portion of the underground economy between the United States and Mexico. 

Overall, the article doesn't hold a whole bunch of historical value, but i think it does well at providing a grey area into to what some see as a very black and white issue. 

Heres the link to the post:

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Borderlands&month=1210&week=c&msg=cU9jq/LHVozvB8aZkC/V1Q&user=&pw=

Peace out, A-town down