Thread: Border inaction backfires, keeps entrants in U.S.

Over 100 comments left after this article at the source link.
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Border inaction backfires, keeps entrants in U.S.
Dec 16, 2007

Our view: Many illegal entrants aren't going home for the holidays for fear they won't be able to get back to the U.S.
Over the next week or so, it's estimated that just over 1 million U.S. residents of Mexican descent will head south of the border to visit family and friends for the Christmas and New Year's holidays. That number would be far greater if the United States' immigration system weren't so broken.
The annual holiday migration points out the success, but mostly the utter failure, of the enforcement-only approach the federal government has taken to address problems related to the 12 million or so illegal immigrants in the United States.
Indeed, the border is more fortified. Walls and fences are in every urban center, new fences are going up along remote stretches, and the Border Patrol's ranks have grown markedly in the past decade. Entering the United States illegally may be harder than ever.
However, by failing to give Mexican workers a fast, safe and legal way to enter the United States, Congress is actually making the illegal immigration problem worse.
One of the topics that came up repeatedly at an immigration forum held in Phoenix last week was that many undocumented workers in the United States don't come with the intention of living here permanently.
Speakers at the forum sponsored by the Communications Institute said undocumented workers usually plan to spend anywhere from a few months to several years in the United States and then return to Mexico.
However, increased border security in the absence of other reforms changes those plans.
For example, among the throngs heading south for the holidays, there will probably be relatively few illegal immigrants, because those people know they would have a difficult time getting back to homes and jobs in the United States.
Entrants are staying put
Because they cannot easily make it back, many will choose to stay put. Once they decide to stay, often their spouses and children follow them across the border. Pretty soon, one illegal immigrant becomes several.
"Mexicans were better off with a better-lubricated system of circularity to immigration," Carlos Flores, consul general for the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix, said at the forum. "People would stay a couple of years, maybe six months, and then they would go back. They were not meaning to come and stay."
Flores said about 1.2 million legal Mexican residents will return to visit Mexico during the holidays.
While many people opposed to immigration reform argue that would-be immigrants should go through the legal process and wait to enter the country legally, they ignore the fact that the wait could last up to 15 years.
When you're poor, can't provide for your family and know that jobs are plentiful in the United States, waiting 15 years is not an option. That's why many risk everything to cross the border illegally.
Creating a guest-worker program to let Mexicans come and go whenever they please would not only help the U.S. economy, it would reduce border crime and deaths.
Some participants at the forum , including Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group of volunteers who periodically watch the border for illegal crossers, insisted that the border be secured before compromises are made.
Two-pronged approach
Many forum participants, however, said border enforcement and reforms to allow legalized entry can go hand in hand. In fact, many said such an approach would work better.
We agree.
Daniel T. Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policies at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said, "I don't think we should wait until the border is under control before we do other things that are in our interest.
"In fact, I think a sensible temporary-worker program . . . will make border security more realizable. We'll start to drain the swamp of smuggling and document fraud that facilitates illegal immigration."
Griswold also noted that in the 1950s during the Bracero program, which started in the '40s as an effort to import Mexican farmworkers during World War II, Congress intensified border enforcement while simultaneously increasing the number of work visas available to foreign workers.
As a result, Griswold said, border apprehensions dropped 95 percent.
Congress should take that lesson from the Bracero program and apply it to today's illegal-entrant problem.
If a guest-worker program were created, the only people who would need to cross the border illegally would be drug smugglers and other criminals.
Such a program would almost surely cut down on border crime and deaths. At least 900 illegal-entrant deaths have occurred since 1994, according to the Star's database.
The odds that immigration laws can be reformed in an election year are slim, given the volatility that surrounds the issue.
However, we are hopeful sensible members of Congress will keep the issue in mind and seek opportunities to change the law so that hard-working immigrants don't have to wait 15 years to work for American firms that could benefit from their labor.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/216249

If, and only if, it is proven we need extra workers, DO NOT call them 'guest workers'. They are not 'guests'. That is something that just makes my blood boil. It implys we are inviting those people here and we are going to garciously share our home with them. You don't demand guests work, or pay their way.

Bring in workers for a period of time they are needed, a matter of months, then they go home. They do not come complete with family, children for us to educate, medicate, and house.

The employer should be responsible for seeing these peole have a place to live, food and medical care - not the taxpayers.

One of the topics that came up repeatedly at an immigration forum held in Phoenix last week was that many undocumented workers in the United States don't come with the intention of living here permanently.

Get a load of this general reference to a forum. Every one of these forums that I have attended was packed full of OBLs talking about the poor illegal aliens. Sob story after sob story and what we should be doing for the foreigners.

"Mexicans were better off with a better-lubricated system...

Carlos Flores, consul general for the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix, said at the forum. "People would stay a couple of years, maybe six months, and then they would go back. They were not meaning to come and stay."

Then why all of the anchor babies? Why were there 7 thousand in one county hospital in Texas? Those people are not leaving, they are squatting and getting welfare!!!!!!

Dixie

An honest politician would explain to Carlos Flores, consul general for the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix, that the citizens of the United States do not have a whole lot of reason to trust his views, or Mexican citizens coming in on a guest worker program to leave. Rather it seems that Mexico's objective is to interfere with our political system as Jorge Bustamante suggested. Not that this is for the benefit of Mexico's citizenry, rather I suspect it is for the benefit of the political elite in the U.S. and Mexico, in their hopes of a NAU and One World Government.