Thread: Closing the border wouldn't stop illegal immigration-Opinion

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2680608


Navarrette: Closing the border wouldn't stop illegal immigration
Ruben Navarrette
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

I've had it with the bumper-sticker slogans that pop up in the debate over illegal immigration. You hear them all the time on ratings-driven television shows such as CNN's ''Lou Dobbs Tonight'' and you see them on signs waved in protests at the U.S-Mexican border. One of my favorites is: ''Deport all illegals.''
See, thanks to Americans' insatiable appetite for readily available cheap labor, there are now about 10 million illegal immigrants in this country. And we're supposed to deport them all one by one? How many buses are we talking about?
Simplistic solutions don't add a lot to the discussion. They're like: ''Immigration Reform for Dummies.''
That's the trap that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fell into this week when he explained to a meeting of newspaper publishers how he would go about terminating illegal immigration.
''It's a federal issue,'' Schwarzenegger said. ''And the only thing that I can say and add to this is, really, close the borders. Close the borders in California, and all across Mexico and the United States.''
Let's keep it real, Arnold. The United States can't actually close the border. We're talking about something like 2,000 miles between San Ysidro, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas. How would you ''close'' that - even if you wanted to?
The governor's spokeswoman immediately tried to do damage control, insisting that what Schwarzenegger meant to say was that the border should be secured, not closed. At a news conference the day after his comments, the governor apologized for his choice of words and tried to backtrack. The Austrian immigrant, for whom English is a second language, even played the language card.
''Yesterday was a total screw-up in the words I used,'' he said. ''Because instead of closing, I meant securing. I think maybe my English, I need to go back to school and study a little bit.''
First, you gotta give Schwarzenegger his props. He jumped right on this flap. He didn't hedge or spin or say that his remarks were taken out of context. He just admitted that he made a mistake. It's hard to find politicians who do that. Good for him.
Just for fun, let's say we could close the border. It still wouldn't do any good. The United States can deploy an army, build a wall, or even - for that matter - dig a moat and fill it with alligators.
Americans could do all
of the above. They might even feel as if they've accomplished something. But they'd be kidding themselves. It wouldn't do any good as long as U.S. employers continue to hire illegal immigrants. When employers do that, they hand immigrants the equivalent of an engraved invitation.
And as long as the invitation stands, the immigrants will find a way to get here, eager for - as President Bush likes to say - ''jobs that Americans won't do.'' Faced with having to feed their families, they're not going to be deterred by a wall or border guards. They'll dive into a tunnel - the fortified, industrial-strength kind that drug dealers build to transport drugs but also rent out to immigrant smugglers to transport people - or be smuggled ashore from tramp steamers. They'll do whatever it takes to get here, just as previous waves of immigrants did.
The answer to our illegal immigration woes isn't armies or walls or amnesty or guest workers. It isn't modern-day Minutemen, those lawn-chair vigilantes who defy law enforcement and then claim to be pro-cop. It isn't the insanity of deputizing police officers to enforce federal immigration law. And it isn't the outrageous idea of denying U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants even when they're born in the United States.
There is only one answer - quit beating our chests and revoke the invitation. Let's direct our enforcement efforts at every restaurant, hotel, construction site, ranch, farm or office complex in America that knowingly hires illegal immigrants in violation of the law. Let's also take a hard look at businesses that play dumb and pretend not to know whom they're hiring. And don't forget the ordinary folks who pull up to the local big-box home-improvement store on Saturday mornings and pull out with a carload of day laborers to help them build a deck or paint a room or plant a garden.
Of course, that doesn't fit on a bumper sticker.

No closing the border doesn't mean it will stop illegal immigration.There will still be some but not as much,which is better than what we have now.It would also,perhaps even more importantly, show a different attiitude towards crossing our borders illegally that would be very helpfull.Maybe even changing our Border Patrol to Border Guards like the rest of the world that takes illegal immigration seriously might help.The government wastes money on the war on drugs and spends billions on the war on terrorism but overlooks the most basic move there is in both wars:securing our borders.

Also,our government pays tons of money to the "civilians" that keep getting killed in Iraq;these "civilians" are primarily private soldiers working various securtiy details.Couldn't our government do the same with the border with private security?Perhaps instead of in Iraq?

Suggestion: This writer seems to have some good knowlege concerning the illegal drug trafficking through the borders. Why NOT:

1) close the borders

2) shut down the criminal organizations supporting the illegal trafficking of both people and drugs into the United States?

Does that sound beyond our capability? A Nation that can send men and machine to the Moon; Rover to Mars; knock out the Taliban in Afghanistan; and take out Saddam Hussein in Iraq??

I KNOW we can do it...wink wink!!

We're Americans....we can do almost anything for a good cause like.....Saving our Nation!!

It's just time to get on with it People.

Lets GO!!

P. S. However I do agree with Ruben Navarette of the San Diego Union Tribune.

It is going to take a whole lot more than a Bumper Sticker to solve and correct the problem of illegal immigration and all the plights on our society caused by it.

So, lets get the flow stopped and deal with the plights as best we can as quickly as possible.

Ruben Navarette's colleague at the San Diego Union Tribune,Mr.Leonel Sanchez-who is one of my best friends for the last 31 years,who immigrated here legally 36 years ago from Peru somes it up as "I'm sick of it (illegal immigration and them just hanging out on our streets everywhere) too".