http://www.desertdispatch.com/2005/111841040986751.html

Dessert Dispatch
June 10, 2005
Barry Gadbois

COMMENTARY: President must commit to protecting southern border

The realization that the President of the United States has a greater commitment to securing Iraq's borders than he does our own has been somewhat dismaying to me. The chaos on America's southern border continues unchecked, and leaders willing to just stay out of the fight are actually doing less damage than those, like the President, who may actually be exacerbating the problem.

Our own country's immigration enforcement officials seem content to oversee a system which allows virtually anyone to cross the border on foot. Employers openly flout the immigration laws, and pro-illegal immigration groups decry anyone who points out the dangers of this lawlessness as racist xenophobes. The situation has gotten so out of hand that civilian patrols have taken to the Arizona border in an effort to spot illegals slinking into America, and alert border patrol agents who have been told by their politically motivated superiors to turn the other way.

The left-leaning Los Angeles Times published an article on May 29 (Employers of illegal immigrants face little risk of penalty) that should serve as a virtual advertisement for cheap illegal labor. The article essentially pointed out the fact that many businesses in Southern California employ illegal aliens with no fear of the law. George Garcia, for example, owns a car wash in Los Angeles and said that vetting the immigration status of prospective hires is simply not a priority.

"It's not my job to figure out who is legal and who is not legal. It's their job to stop them at the border," he told the Times. The people whose job he refers to are a government agency now known as ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Acting under ever-increasing political pressure from certain voting blocks, the agency's appetite for enforcement is steadily decreasing.

One of the least-used tools in combating illegal immigration is what's known as "work site enforcement," effectively meaning that law enforcement has no interest in catching illegals who are gainfully employed, such as those at Garcia's car wash. Perhaps they presume that these illegals are "doing jobs that Americans won't do." Between 1993 and 2003 the number of arrests at worksites nationwide plummeted from 7,630 to 445. The number of employer fines fell from 944 to 124 in that same period. This is surprising, considering that the flood of illegals has increased greatly over the same period.

Understanding that our border patrol and immigration enforcement officers have been neutered by politicians is what will resolve those numbers for you. In fact, at this point, any tips regarding the whereabouts of aliens in the country that do not appear related to homeland security are "put in a file cabinet and filed," according to ICE.

Manny Van Pelt, a Washington mouthpiece for ICE essentially said that the government has no interest in detaining or deporting illegal immigrants who are not known terrorists. He claims that the agency is stretched too thin, they don't have enough agents to secure the border while ensuring that homeland security needs are met. In the Los Angeles area there are a finite number of ICE agents.

"How thin can you stretch roughly 400 employees with all our responsibilities?" asked Kevin Jeffrey; deputy special agent in charge with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles. It seems a fair question and a good excuse at all the same time. Hard to blame the agency if they are lacking in agents; therefore I blame the Executive branch, which oversees the department.

On March 15, 2004, in an official release on the White House website, the administration brags that there are "8,000 border personnel in Iraq, and the Iraqi Border Police force will soon double." If Bush can find 16,000 people to guard Iraq's border, can't he muster up a few hundred more for Los Angeles? How can the White House possibly expect their constituency to accept the cost of securing Iraq when the President expresses no interest in securing the United States?

To be fair to George Bush, speaking out against the lawlessness on the Mexican Border is not popular. There are people who will read this and think that I'm a bigot. After all that's the card that the open-border crazies will always play. If you want to shut down illegal immigration, they call you a racist. Most people are afraid of being called something ugly like that, so politicians like Bush tend to keep their heads down.

Gov. Schwarzenegger has taken a beating from fringe groups for his stance on immigration. Schwarzenegger, an immigrant himself, has had some despots claim that he is "anti-immigrant." Those who hide behind the flag of diversity while promoting an insane level of lawlessness represent a real danger to America. They are the true enemy of any working person, regardless of creed, color, or origin.

The president has, in my opinion, sold out Americans on the issue of immigration. Didn't he pretend to be a conservative once upon an election? The reality is that the federal officials whom we trust to keep the nation secure are doing so poor a job that civilians and state officers are needed to keep illegals from simply walking unmolested into the United States. One of the tenets of Bush's perverse amnesty plan is that the illegals can do jobs that "Americans won't do." Perhaps they'd like to be border patrol agents -- no one seems to be doing that job right now.