Benefits of border patrol

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Border patrol are a group of officers those who patrol the border of a country.

In United States of America, the USBP (United States Border Patrol) is an US federal law enforcement agency, which believes in its mission to detect and prevent illegal terrorists, aliens and terrorist weapons from entering the United States. It is also an agency that helps in preventing illegal trafficking of people and contraband goods from entering USA.

The US Border Patrol is an agency, which is within CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) and is a component of DHS (US Department of Home Security).

The US Border Patrol agency has 21,000 agents and is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in USA.

Since 2010 Michael J. Fisher has been the Chief of the US Border Patrol.

As early as 1904, mounted watchmen of the United States Immigration Service has been patrolling the US borders in an effort to prevent illegal crossing of unauthorized people into the US soil. However during those times the efforts of US border patrol were irregular as they were undertaken only when resource permitted. The border patrols, which never totaled more than 75 in those days and were known as “mounted guards’ operated out of El Paso, Texas and they patrolled as far as California in pursuit of restricting the incessant flow of Chinese illegal immigrants into USA.

It was only on May 28, 1924 that the present day US Border Patrol agency was found under the United States Department of Labor to prevent illegal entry of immigrants along the United States-Canada border and Mexico-United States border.

Later on additional stations were also temporarily added along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Cost, Florida during 1960s after the ‘ Cuban politician and revolutionary Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (Fidel Castro) trumped in the Cuban Revolution, which was followed by the thirteen days Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

As of 2012, the US Border Patrol has employed 21,394 agents who controls illegal drugs, weapons and immigrants trafficking into USA.

Some of the benefits of being employed as a US Border Patrol agent are:

Special salary rates

US Federal law enforcers are paid at a special salary rate. The basic salary of an US Border Patrol can range anywhere in-between $38,000 to $63,000 annually. Moreover, the Marine Interdiction Agents are paid a slightly higher starting pay which amounts to approximately $49,000 per year.

Chances to work overtime

There are a lot of chances for the US Border Patrol employees to work overtime and thus earn extra pay. It has been observed that an agent in the US Border Patrol can easily earn 10-25 percent extra for doing extra duty time.

Other awesome benefits and perks

Apart from salary and overtime US Border Patrol agents also get Federal benefit package that includes health insurance, life insurance, thrift saving-plan, generous-retirement-benefits and also at times special locality-pay.

Chances to move up the career ladder

As a law enforcer agents those who are hired at the GL-5 level gets eligible for promotion to GL-7 after successful completing their probationary period of 6 ‘½ months. For those who are recruited in GL-7 gets promoted to GL-9 and then GS-11 and GS-12 after completing one year at the preceding lower grade levels. After GS-12 all positions are filled by merit promotion competitions.

Special retirement benefits

After completing at least 20 years of service, all agents can retire when they become 50 years old even though the mandatory retirement age for this job with 20 years of service is 57 years.

But to get all these employment benefits one need to pass the rigorous selection process before they can reap the harvest of the much envied US Border patrolling jobs.

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