Thread: It will take more than fences USA TODAY

Our view on illegal immigration: It will take more than fences

The Bush administration touted it as a smart, high-tech solution to one of the nation's most vexing problems: illegal immigration. A "virtual fence" of radar, sensors and towers equipped with night-vision cameras would feed real-time pictures of illegal intruders to a central control room. There, the Border Patrol could see the intruders, safely dispatch agents and apprehend illegal immigrants and smugglers.

But, like so many grand government schemes, the virtual fence fizzled. A week ago, the Obama administration put it quietly to rest.

OPPOSING VIEW: Embrace SBInet

Small wonder. Originally announced in 2006 as a $67 million project to be completed by the spring of 2007, "SBInet" finally went into operation nearly four years later along 53 miles of Arizona's porous border with Mexico. The Boeing project was hampered by bureaucracy, environmental reviews, construction delays, cost overruns, technology glitches and political wrangling. The usual stuff. Its ultimate price tag? Nearly $1 billion.

In an assessment of the project, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, said essentially that while the initial section works to apprehend intruders, the project is not "cost-effective" and would not be extended elsewhere. And, at $19 million a mile, who would argue?

Newspapers in the Southwest applauded Napolitano's move, as did the project's critics in Congress. But the decision to let the virtual fence strategy quietly die is no more a solution to the nation's immigration problems than was the decision to build it.

Over the past two decades, Congress has thrown billions of dollars, hundreds of miles of fencing, truckloads of fancy technology and ever-increasing numbers of border agents into a battle to seal the nation's 2,000-mile border with Mexico. And now Homeland Security promises to deploy more "proven" technology, from truck-mounted radar to unmanned aircraft, to cover the other 323 miles of the Arizona border for what the department touts as "less than $750 million."

So is the public getting its money's worth?

Hard to say. According to Mexican government figures, immigration to the U.S. is down 50% from 2006 to 2009. What's not clear is how much of that is the result of border enforcement and how much is because of economic factors. The old joke among experts in the field goes: "How do you stop illegal immigration? Have a depression." America came close.

The 850 miles of fencing approved by Congress in 2006 was part of a sensible overall strategy championed by the Bush administration — one that coupled border control with tough workplace enforcement to deter businesses from hiring immigrants illegally: temporary worker permits so employers could legally hire the labor they need, and a path to legality for migrants who stayed out of trouble and paid their taxes. A shortsighted Congress defeated comprehensive reform in 2007, leaving the nation with "enforcement-only" instead of an "enforcement-first" approach.

Secure borders and fences are an obvious part of any immigration strategy. But they don't work as the whole strategy. They don't deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the USA, or stop people who come here legally but overstay their visas, or create more good jobs in Mexico. Exchanging one billion-dollar boondoggle for $750 million worth of different technology doesn't change that reality.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... 1_ST_N.htm

Opposing view on illegal immigration: Keep 'SBInet'

The Obama administration's unbelievable message that our border with Mexico is "as secure now as it has ever been" puts public safety and U.S. sovereignty increasingly at risk. Today's border is ravaged by violence spilling from Mexico that is already a U.S. national security emergency.

OUR VIEW: Fences just a piece of immigration strategy

Texas' Department of Public Safety has declared war against the drug cartels, while Arizona has suffered kidnappings, murders, destruction of its wilderness, and warnings about danger posed by cartels and smugglers as far as 80 miles from the border.

So what should Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano be doing about this? In 2009 when she got the job, she should have issued an effective, end-to-end border strategy geared to deterring border threats and achieving border control. That would include three main elements:

•Enforcing immigration laws.

•Building appropriate fencing.

•Enhancing the Border Patrol's ability to operate successfully, safely and efficiently.

The last element seemed frustratingly out of reach in 2009. Technology was not available to enable the Border Patrol to know what was happening in real time along the border. All that changed, however, last year, with the deployment of a 53-mile network of towers, sensors, radars and other devices that communicated with a central control room.

That version of "SBInet" in Arizona's Tucson and Ajo sectors — areas trampled by smugglers— provided 80% visibility from a control room in places that patrols could previously only see in person. With the new technology, the agents gained "situational awareness," the ability to see illegal activity in real time and decide when and how to interdict. With it, the Border Patrol could cut the number of agents needed in the field at one time from 24 to just four.

Instead of embracing this new tool, Napolitano announced an end to the program last Friday.

For agents reeling from the recent, on-the-job murder of colleague Brian Terry just east of where SBInet ended, the technology provided unprecedented safety. Agents no longer feared being outnumbered by groups of smugglers or not knowing whether smugglers were carrying guns or drugs. Agents knew ahead of time and could plan accordingly. It is shameful that none of that seems to matter to this administration.

Janice Kephart, a former counsel to the Sept. 11 Commission, is the director of national security policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that supports tighter control on immigration.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... _ST1_N.htm

Boeing needs to pay all that money back to the US government and continue working on its technologies to try again at some point in the future. In the meantime, we need to hire 40,000 citizens and create a Wall of Americans to guard the southern border. With26 million unemployed Americans, I'm sure we can find the best of the best and the cream of the crop to provide this service at a fair wage and benefits for the term required. There's 2,000 miles of border, with 6 civilians per mile on 3 shifts, covering it 24/7/365, we'll stop illegal immigration from the south in no time flat. Sign 3 year contracts, renewable for another 2 years at $20 an hour so we can seal this border while Congress and the states pass and implement the necessary actions to cut-off the jobs and hand-outs and complete deportations.

It will be the best $20 an hour we've ever spent. Lets do it.