Almost six hundred thousand people lost their jobs in January. National unemployment is at 7.9% and Oregon's is even higher than that. Craigslist job ads are looking for a graphic designer to help with a "gangster-themed Facebook app" and Greenpeace canvassers. Times are grim.

And right when so many people are out of work, the U.S. Border Patrol announced it's hiring 11,000 new agents and officers to guard the southern border. And they have the flashing bouncy balls to prove it!

This week the Border Patrol is holding recruiting events all over the country to hire the new recruits. The ad that ran in Portland a few weeks ago reads like a summary of a macho action flick:

"As part of the Border Patrol you'll use every muscle in your body and every inch of your mind as you work to protect more than 8,000 miles of international boundaries that we're sworn to protect. Whether it's on an ATV or the back of a horse, up in a chopper or out in a heavy-duty 4x4, you'll be keeping the country safe from terrorism, drugs and criminals by stopping them at the border."

Yeeha! Last Thursday I headed out to the recruitment open house at the airport Embassy Suites. Choppers, 4x4s and horses were noticeably absent, though one truck in the packed parking lot bore a "terrorist hunting permit" sticker.

I was curious about who would go out for Border Patrol jobs here in Portland. Offering a stable $35K job (plus benefits) these days is like dangling a steak in front of the unemployed masses - so who's biting? I walked past the waterfall in the Embassy Suite's lobby to the recruitment event's small meeting room. A dozen people — two other women and nine men of varying burliness stood around talking to uniformed Border Patrol agents.

The big step to becoming a border patrol agent turns out to be taking a written intelligence test.
"We just got another test date in February that we called for yesterday in Bellevue and I just heard it's already filled up, seventy spots," says a recruiter to a small circle, "Just like oil gushing right now."
"With the way the economy is, too, it's going to be more of an abundance of traffic on the applicants," says one of the potential recruits.
"Yeah, unfortunately, you know, it actually means good time for me as a recruiter," replies the officer, "I don't even have to lift a finger and they're coming out of the woodwork." The Army's seen a similar rush of applicants — 2008 became the first year since 2004 that Army recruiters were able to meet their quotas, luring new soldiers with a total of $600 million in signing bonuses. Tough economic times are forcing people into jobs they would otherwise not have considered and business is booming in the Army and Border Patrol.

In the hour I was there at the Embassy Suites, fifteen people showed up to learn more about the job. Starting pay is $35,000 a year, but you have to live for the first year somewhere along the southern border, usually in a remote town.

I asked a different recruiter about the possibility of riding in a helicopter on the job and he laughs, saying that there are cool things like driving the Border Patrol car but also a ton of paperwork. He says each ones of the border-crossing immigrants the guards pick up takes 40 minutes to process. During one shift in San Diego, his team would sometimes catch 800 people.

Below the cut - catching up with some potential new recruits.

We all sit down to watch a five minute long recruitment video that I can't find anywhere on the internet, but the theme of it is: "Border Patrol - Protect America. Are you up to the challenge?" When it's over, the recruiter dryly asks, "Alright, you fired up?" and then goes over retirement packages and salary options for about fifteen minutes.

Everyone filtered out and I caught up with some of my fellow potential recruits in the parking lot. "If you don't want to get laid off, you need a government job," laughed a short woman with a rainbow earring, "I'm trying to keep my options open. I'm looking to live somewhere sunny, where the cost of living is less expensive." This woman has a job, but is looking to change. She's thinking she'll either go back to school to be a surgical technician or join the border patrol. After hearing that new recruits are placed in podunk Southwestern towns, she's less sure. "I don't think it's a fit for my lifestyle. Being openly gay in a remote area, we don't want to be bashed or whatnot."

A tall blonde guy named Troy came to the recruitment with a professional black blazer and notebook walked away equally unsure about joining up, though he was a little more desperate. Since graduating from college in December, Troy has been living with in-laws in Tualatin, caring a four-month old kid and applying to grad school. He's been trolling Craigslist ads and was recently rejected from a job as manager of Hollywood Video. "Competition is fierce, everyone is losing their jobs," lamented Troy with a good-natured shrug. He's going to take the Border Patrol test, but he wasn't too excited about the whole macho recruitment shtick. "I was kind of left with a bad taste in my mouth, I think the ads are kind of deceiving," he says. "I was looking at the recruiters and they don't look very in shape. I was like, 'You guys must be doing a lot of work from behind a desk.'"