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Polarized proof
Activities of 2 divergent groups are clear evidence of our failed immigration policies
Opinion
Apr. 1, 2005 12:00 AM

It's hard to think of two groups more different than the vigilante Minuteman Project, which has attracted favorable attention from White supremacists for its call to arms along the border, and Humane Borders, whose members spend long hours maintaining water stations for migrants who are at risk of death in the Arizona desert.

But both are products of a failed immigration policy.

Both scream frustration with the federal government's inability to control what happens on the southern border.

That failure is most costly and poignant in Arizona, which accounted for 51 percent of the 1.1 million apprehensions of undocumented immigrants along the U.S.-Mexican border last fiscal year.

That failure takes increasing numbers of lives as would-be workers from poor nations try to reach the jobs offered by American business.

It results in the degradation of valuable habitat on public and private lands, and puts costly burdens on local systems of law enforcement and medical care.

And, as clearly illustrated by the Minuteman group, also undermines confidence in the power of the rule of law to solve problems. That's bad news in a nation built on the rule of law.

The Minuteman Project says it will launch today a monthlong operation along the border with hundreds of volunteers, some armed, to report undocumented immigrants. Their shenanigans offer more evidence that the status quo on the border is not acceptable.

Meanwhile, the official announcement this week that an additional 534 Border Patrol agents will be dispatched to Arizona is welcome. But enforcement - absent a workable, realistic immigration policy - is not enough.

It can never be enough as long as poor migrants know that the reward of a job waits just on the other side of a hellish journey.

Congress and the president have talked about necessary reforms, which include bringing the current undocumented population of 11 million into legal status, creating a legal mechanism for employers to secure new immigrant workers and establishing a system to assure employers can no longer get away with hiring undocumented workers.

This would do more than a bunch of good old boys with guns to discourage illegal immigration. It would also reduce the flow of undocumented immigrants so that terrorists trying to cross the border would be more easily spotted and caught.

Minuteman goofy guys and the humanitarians who try to prevent death in the desert may represent polar opposites. But they both point to one unmistakable message: Immigration reform is needed now.