The officer from the U.S. Custom and Border Protection was concerned. He had read the stories in the Echo and wanted to remind the writer that protecting the borders of the United States was a vital and, right now, a particularly difficult job.

No argument with that. Border agent and Inside File [the author’s column in Irish Echo] talked over the issues for a while on the phone the other day.

The agent was not working on the border with Mexico right now, though he was familiar with it. He was adamant that illegal movement across the frontier had to be controlled.

This was the federal law enforcement officer talking.

On another level, both agent and Inside File were in a agreement that if he stood in trying to support his or her family, of course our eyes would turn northward to the United States. The gravitational pull of the land of the gringos would simply be too powerful to resist.

This was a discussion of a human element to the immigration crisis.

The economic, cultural and legal aspects were other matters altogether. This particular officer was not a soft touch on any of these. America had to be defended, made secure.

And of course, he was right, objectively, legally, officially.

But how do you go about it?

The argument over how to manage the southern frontier, not just with Mexico, but effectively with many other countries, is going to rage well beyond the current debate on immigration reform in Washington.

And what happens along the Rio Grande, in the vastness of the scrub and desert, or in the back streets of Tijuana, will have a profound effect on the future course of immigration from Central and South America, indeed from all corners of the world, not the least of them Ireland.

Mexico, simply, is a big neighbor. It covers close to three-quarters of a million miles in land area and its population is over 100 million.

As much as Mexico, and that part of its population that seems to be perpetually moving north, causes concern among many in the United States it also intrigues.

Mexico is an up-close alternative to workaday America, an alter ego. It prompts thoughts of warm sun and good times. It is a place where the usual rules are relaxed, sometimes thrown out the window entirely. Just ask Clint Eastwood or John Wayne.

Mexico, simply put, is easy if you are on vacation with Yankee dollars to spend.

But Mexico is also a hard grind for millions of its own people. Drive a few miles out of glitzy Cancún, for example, and you see men and women walking the roadways with bundles of firewood on their backs tied to their foreheads with rope or cloth.

It is a sight straight out of a time that long precedes the Mexican republic. These people are doing what their Mayan ancestors did before the days of the Conquistadores.

Mexico’s history is no less exciting than that of its larger northern neighbor. But Mexico has had a more difficult time shedding the less savory aspects of it national story.

The first years of the 21st century, however, seem to point to better and more stable times ahead. Certainly, as Mexican presidents go, Vicente Fox has been a steady and sober force.

Perhaps it’s his paternal Irish blood.

The Irish connections with Mexico run long and deep so it’s not entirely inappropriate that the fate of millions of illegal Mexicans and thousands of undocumented Irish are currently entwined so closely.

Mexico, indeed, traces its very first efforts to secure independence to an Irishman.

William Lamport was born in Wexford in 1615. A soldier, pirate, adventurer and brilliant linguist, the Jesuit-educated Lamport is credited by some historians as being the inspiration for the literary character “Zorro.”

Indeed it has been argued that Lamport himself sported the nickname of El Zorro, or the Fox.

Lamport fought for the Spanish against Sweden and was duly rewarded by the Spanish court. But he got himself into romantic trouble and was exiled to Mexico where he was arrested by no less than the dreaded Spanish Inquisition on charges of plotting a coup against Spanish rule. He was sentenced to 10 years, escaped and was recaptured and put to death as a heretic in 1659.

Lamport – whose life story has more than a whiff of Australia’s Ned Kelly about itself – crafted a declaration of independence, the first in the new world, for his fellow Mexicans. It was a startling piece of work for the time. Lamport’s declaration pledged equality of opportunity, racial equality, land reform and a monarch elected by popular vote.

No surprise that the Inquisition couldn’t wait to burn the man at the stake.

A couple of centuries after Lamport, the San Patricio Irish soldiers were fighting for Mexico against Irish soldiers fighting for the United States in the Mexican-American War.

And Vicente Fox isn’t the first Irish-Mexican presidente.

Alvaro Obregón served as president in the 1920s. His name is derived from the surname O’Brien.

And we can’t forget the late Oscar-winning actor Anthony Quinn, son of an Irish father and Mexican mother.

So the ties are there. And they are present too in the present battle for comprehensive immigration reform. The Irish, however, find themselves relatively sidelined in the drama being played out on the streets of cities and in the halls of Capitol Hill.

This doubtless makes some Irish a little uncomfortable. The sheer size and clout of the Mexican and broader Hispanic community is a double-edged sword. It can quite simply pull you along or pull you down. Just which of the two comes to pass will become clearer in the coming weeks.

But back to that phone conversation with the customs and border protection agent. Another area of immediate agreement was the need to somehow assist Mexico in raising its economic game. This would mean fewer Mexicans having to sneak across the border in the dead of night and a more orderly situation within U.S. borders and would, presumably, be a smaller legislative pill for Congress to swallow.

Of course, Inside File and the border officer were just about to solve the economic conundrum when duty called – his being to protect the nation’s land and sea borders, Inside File’s being to write about why so many want to cross the same and benefit, ironically, from the protections they provide.