How Many Politicians Does It Take to Fix an Immigration Problem?

George Weissinger, Ph.D.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/ho ... id=1385391

Over time, very little has changed regarding the illegal alien problem. In the 1970s, INS devoted a small portion of its budget to interior enforcement. This is amusing when you realize that more and more illegal aliens stream into this country every day, and they can live and work without any real concern about getting caught by either local or federal authorities. Local law enforcement authorities avoid involvement in immigration enforcement for two reasons. Firstly, it is just too much work over and above their primary mission task, and secondly, they do not want to upset the politically correct politicians who pull their strings.



As far back as I can remember, the Commissioners of Immigration, all political appointees, continued to focus on border enforcement. They put interior enforcement at the bottom of the priority list, and treated the special agent as a pariah. If you were a special agent with the legacy INS, your energy was devoted to transferring to another federal law enforcement agency, not locating and apprehending illegal aliens. Now, DHS reports that they are concentrating on locating and removing criminal aliens from the U.S. That is a neat way to deflect attention from their other more important task of enforcing the immigration laws. They ignore the day laborer who is illegally working in the U.S., and resume the focus on the border apprehending as many Mexican border crossers as they can. This strategy fails to take into account that there are over 20 million illegal aliens inside the U.S., and the American taxpayer is overwhelmingly fed up with the status quo. Recently, the Secretary of DHS aligned his political correctness with a governor negotiating a driver’s license for illegal aliens program. It just never changes when it comes to immigration enforcement.



Immigration authorities prepare to build a fence that is supposed to stop the flow of illegal aliens, or at least control it somewhat. The fence will not stop illegal immigration. It is simply a gesture by politicians to build a perception that something is being done. The desperation of the illegal motivates that individual to come to the U.S. at any cost. As all the Border Patrol operations simply move the stream from one part of the border to another, the fence will not stop the illegal unless we create a police state similar to the communist bloc nations of the past. Americans do not want a police state. So, what can we do to stem the tide of illegal immigration?



A real solution would necessitate looking at the push-pull factors that create a steady flow of individuals from one country to another. Employing illegal aliens at lower wages and without benefits encourages more illegal immigration from sending countries. Failing to enforce the immigration laws creates a culture of disobedience to laws that are not enforced. After a while, we all simply throw up our hands and accept the situation. Allowing the sending country to continue to promote the northward flow of its population with impunity is simply unacceptable. There should be reparation for damages done. Mexico is not a poor country; it is a country with a large population of poor people.



So, why does the DHS refuse to do its job of enforcing the immigration laws in the U.S.? One answer to this question can be understood in terms of bureaucracy and the administration of law enforcement agencies. Originally, INS was a dual mandate agency. Its mission was to enforce the immigration laws and service those in need of immigration assistance, such as legal permanent residence applications, U.S. citizenship applications, and adjustments of legal status applications. This was no easy task, especially when you realize that it is much easier to give things away (service) than it is to apprehend and remove people (enforcement). It is a basic conflict. And, in the case of the legacy INS, service took a priority. That is why I was cautiously optimistic when INS transitioned into DHS. The assumption in the bureaucratic alignment that was created was that enforcement was a separate line, and service would not impede the enforcement mission.



However, another problem surfaced that only those inside the agency could appreciate. The legacy INS agents were joining with the more powerful U.S. Customs agents and it soon became obvious who would be running the show. The Customs people looked down on immigration enforcement and did not want to have anything to do with it. They would run the agency, and the legacy INS agents would be given all the immigration details and duties. Morale began to plummet and soon all parties realized that another impasse was created in the ever growing immigration problem. New positions were created and new strategies were formulated – including retrieving artifacts in war-torn Iraq, but the illegal alien population continued to grow and grow.



Every now and then, DHS would stage some media event and round up a few illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico and usually low-level visa abusers who were summarily released after posting a minimal bond. As Abe Lincoln once said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.â€