Thread: LOCKING DOWN THE BORDER

LOCKING DOWN THE BORDER

Senate’s immigration measure puts emphasis on additional fencing, more personnel and enforcement benchmarks

By Elizabeth Aguilera12:01 a.m.June 2, 2013Updated8:35 p.m.May 30, 2013
Fortifying border security is a cardinal priority in a comprehensive immigration reform proposal set to go before the full Senate by month’s end.
It’s also expected to be the leading focus of immigration discussions in the House, which is starting to ramp up activity on the issue.
The Senate bill’s emphasis on border security — further strengthened by dozens of amendments in recent days — has spurred questions about the United States’ current level of control over that territory and what might be the best ways to increase enforcement.
The measure calls for hiring more border officers, providing around-the-clock surveillance aircraft, using National Guard troops and erecting new fencing along hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico boundary. It includes billions of dollars in new federal funding for additional immigration judges, horse patrols, surveillance cameras and border substations.
The success or failure of those strategies is pivotal to another major part of the Senate legislation: Certain border-security thresholds must be met before millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are allowed to register for legal status.
Legalization and eventual U.S. citizenship for those immigrants are also tied to the “90 percent” milestone — a stipulation that the Department of Homeland Security needs to reach 90 percent “effectiveness” in known hot spots along the border.
What would it take to attain that benchmark?
The agency would have to prove that it is providing enough enforcement to keep out nine of every 10 unauthorized border-crossers in those sectors, counting detainees and people who are quickly turned back at the border by U.S. agents or run away on their own.
The hot spots, also called high-risk sectors, logged more than 30,000 apprehensions each during the previous year. They are in Tucson, Ariz., and the Rio Grande and Laredo stretches of Texas.
Amid the heightened attention to immigration by Congress and President Barack Obama, some experts on the topic said the U.S.-Mexico border has never been more secure, thanks to billions of dollars spent to boost enforcement staffing and surveillance technology.
They said pouring in billions more to pursue even greater security might yield few gains if the government also does not change quotas for legal immigration, expand guest-worker visas for industries such as agriculture and create a technology intelligence network that enables authorities to evaluate all border data in their quest to establish the best enforcement methods.
“They are increasingly able to map the border and know what the apprehension (rates) are and the turn-backs are, and so it really does appear that this is a set of requirements” that Homeland Security can meet in the Senate bill’s prescribed timeline, said Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and former head of the nation’s immigration service under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
The following is a look at what the Senate legislation and immigration experts have identified as important ways to meet the 90 percent effectiveness requirement and elevate overall border security.
elizabeth.aguilera @utsandiego.com (619) 293-1717
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jun/02/tp-locking-down-the-border/all/?print

Where does this article come from? It misrepresents the S 744 bill as much as the baloney radio ads that Marko Rubio has so shamelessly lent his voice to and the billionaire Zuckerberger is bankrolling. Any honest person more than ten years old knows full well there will be amnesty but nothing more that a sham effort (to camouflage actual open borders policies) at controlling illegal immigration. Everyone knows from the 1986 amnesty that this government -- Democrats and RINO Republicans, will never honor any promises they make about controlling illegal immigration or securing the border. And people, in your spare time use every opportunity to make caustic remarks about Sean Hannity's betrayal of patriots when he did a total turnaround and changed from opposing amnesty to an amnesty supporter. There are still to many conservatives who do not shun him the way he deserves to be. You can not be a real conservative and for amnesty.

Originally Posted by csarbww

Where does this article come from? . . .

elizabeth.aguilera @utsandiego.com (619) 293-1717