Thread: Border solutions sought

Border solutions sought
U.S. immigration policy fragmented
Monica Rodriguez, Staff Writer
Created: 04/10/2011 09:29:00 PM PDT

To many, the federal government's immigration policy is a bit like its border fence - expensive and full of holes.

The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on various approaches, including a $2.4 billion border fence effort, two deployments of National Guard troops to help the Border Patrol, and a now-scrapped $1 billion "virtual fence" that covered 53 miles of the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

But both sides of the argument agree there's no easy way to explain the government's policy.

"In spite of an effort to do more, there does not appear to be a plan in place that actually accomplishes the objectives of a secure border," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a recent speech to the U.S.-Mexico Congressional Border Issues Conference.

Roderic Camp, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College whose area of expertise is Mexico, said he believes the U.S. does have a security policy but it is one that is not always clearly defined due to the existence of federal, state and local policies.

For many years, neighboring border cities, such as El Paso and Ciudad Juarez or San Diego and Tijuana, have worked together to address matters of mutual concern ranging from the handling of sewage and electrical power to migration, Camp said.

However, at times, states located farther to the north of the border will encounter an issue with a connection to the border region. Unlike border cities or states where officials turn to
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their Mexican counterparts to resolve a problem, states removed from the border will take their concerns to federal officials resulting in another policy at a different level of government, Camp said.

The result is two or more sets of policies - one local or regional and one federal.

"Sometimes those relationships are in conflict," Camp said. "That's what makes it appear we don't have a policy because they run into each other."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the Obama administration's efforts to secure the border are working, and she points to a 36 percent drop in apprehensions at the border and the addition of thousands of newly hired Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents. Those successes, she told Congress, need to be built upon.

"In March 2009, the Obama administration launched the Southwest Border Initiative to bring focus and intensity to Southwest border security, coupled with a reinvigorated, smart and effective approach to enforcing immigration laws in the interior of our country," Napolitano said in written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee recently.

"We are now two years into this strategy and, based on our own indicators of progress as well as previous benchmarks by Congress, it is clear that this approach is working."

But that initiative focused almost entirely on adding people and financial resources to the border, an effort that experts say is incomplete without a wider strategy that focuses on hard information about what and who is getting across the border daily, statistics the administration has been unable to collect.

Economy's impact

Jose Calderon, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont, said the number of immigrants crossing the border is down but it has little to do with the administration's efforts.

The economic downturn has had a significant effect on the number of border crossings, Calderon said.

People who want to come to the U.S. are not doing so because they know few jobs are available.

Those in the country illegally aren't leaving. Instead, they are waiting for economic conditions to improve, "realizing it's going to be much more difficult to return," Calderon said.

Some undocumented immigrants have left the U.S. after determining "they would be better off being with their family back home," he said.

Once the economy improves, "regardless of any fence" the number of people crossing into the country illegally will increase again because U.S. employers need that labor, Calderon said.

Most of the government planning is focused on the busy Arizona-Mexico border. But critics say a strategy is needed for the entire border from the Pacific to the Gulf Coast.

Bradley Schreiber, a former Homeland Security senior adviser and current vice president for the Applied Science Foundation for Homeland Security, said the government has employed a piecemeal strategy using technology or personnel. But so far, the government hasn't developed a solid way to measure the threat and therefore can't know for sure if it is really responding to it in the best way.

"We don't know what the threat is because we haven't done a thorough assessment," Schreiber said. "We don't know what's coming across, and we don't have a strategy to address it."

Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute and one-time head of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, said she doesn't see a clear goal or way to get there.

"There are a series of pieces," Meissner said. A comprehensive strategy "may already be there, but you can't tell because there is no goal."

She said the first step should be to define "secure." Congress has asked for operational control, which it considers the "prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States," including terrorists, illegal immigrants and drugs.

But Napolitano and other department officials say the goal is to keep illegal crossings and smuggling to a "manageable" level.

David Aguilar, deputy commissioner for Customs and Border Protection and former Border Patrol chief, said the government's strategy is pretty simple: Mitigate the risk at the border, reduce that risk, and expand control across the border.

He said doing that includes a mix of technology, personnel and enforcement that stretches beyond just the immediate border region and relies heavily on a risk assessment that will vary from area to area. The government is working to collect data on who and what is coming across the border without being caught immediately, Aguilar said, but it's unclear when that data will be available.

"We will have to be constantly adjusting," Aguilar said.

He added that U.S. authorities also take a close look at intelligence and data from Mexico, including the numbers of people traveling to well-known smuggling staging areas and the amount of bed space at guest houses where migrants often stay before being smuggled across the border.

Illegal border crossers have dropped to the lowest levels since the 1970s, and seizures of illegal drugs coming north and cash and weapons heading south have increased.

The fear of what could be unleashed next from Mexican President Felipe Calderon's four-year-old war against the drug cartels has border-state officials nervous. So far, about 35,000 people have been killed, including several dozen Americans. A recent report suggested about a quarter-million Mexicans have been displaced from their homes and about a quarter of those have come to the United States.

Border violence

The violence taking place along the border in northern Mexico should be addressed as part of a larger discussion on comprehensive immigration reform.

Many different topics such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, labor exchange, multi-level security and cultural matters must be part of the conversation, said Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor of history and Chicano studies at Pomona College.

However, "No one has expressed the political will to carry out that debate," Tinker Salas said. "After 9-ll everything focused on defense."

The violence is tied to drug traffickers and their battles over domain of routes to move their merchandise the U.S., Camp said.

"Mexico is the shipment point for a drug demand that exists in the United States," Tinker Salas said.

Securing the border and drug trafficking should be part of the same discourse and same solution, he said.

However, the U.S. must also accept it has a problem with drug consumption and also accept that illegal firearms smuggling is also part of the problem but the latter is not likely to happen, Tinker Salas said.

"The U.S. can declare an arms embargo" for Mexico but it won't happen because officials "don't want to touch automatic weapons in the U.S.," he said.

While some may be worried about the violence affecting northern Mexico spilling across the border into the U.S., that's something that will not happen, Camp said.

Ciudad Juarez is considered among the most dangerous places around, yet El Paso on the other side of the border "is one of the safest metropolitan areas in the United States," Camp said.

Even though Ciudad Juarez is becoming infamous for the violence taking place there, countries such as Guatemala and Venezuela have more problems with violence, he said.

The reason the U.S. must pay attention to Mexico's drug trafficking and violence problems is because in some instances drug traffickers are taking over illegal immigration routes, Camp said.

Unlike human smugglers of the past, today's smugglers with ties to drug trafficking are much more sophisticated in their tactics and "don't care who they transport," Camp said.

The nation needed comprehensive immigration reform 15 years ago and taking on that now would go far in addressing many of the current problems, Tinker Salas said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_1781665 ... ost_viewed

Once the economy improves, "regardless of any fence" the number of people crossing into the country illegally will increase again because U.S. employers need that labor, Calderon said.

Then we need to increase fines & jail time for employers who hire illegal aliens, make it so prohibitive, that employers would not dare hire illegal aliens.

We need to make life miserable for anyone here illegally,that they will have no choice but to self-deport. Yes, that includes taking their anchors with them. NO freebies, NO welfare, NOTHING unless the parents can prove legal residency.

Hospitals need to stop providing anything except urgent, emergency care, then call ICE. One way tickets home for all, after processing.

We do that and the only ones to watch out for at the border are drug smugglers.

It's quite elementary my dear Watson:

Mandate E-Verify and crucify a few employers who have illegals working for them

along with eliminating Birthright citizenship

as well using E-verify for any, and all, entitlement qualification