Thread: We must secure our borders

We must secure our borders



By Tom Tancredo
Thursday, February 2, 2006


WASHINGTON
The Senate soon will begin debate on several "guest-worker" plans as a solution to our nation's illegal alien fiasco. Unfortunately, no such plan can fix this problem.

America has no "immigration crisis"; we have an open-borders catastrophe.

Immigrants are people who come here legally through a port of entry. We need a debate about how many legal immigrants we can absorb. But that's different than stopping the flow of illegal aliens across our porous borders. Illegals are not immigrants; we can stop that flow only by securing our borders.


In 1986 Congress passed a general amnesty for more than 2 million illegal aliens on the promise that border security would be achieved and new laws barring the employment of illegal workers would be enforced. Neither of those promises was kept. That is why the House, on Dec. 16, passed the enforcement-first bill by a large margin.

There are practical reasons why the House is insisting on an enforcement-first strategy for fixing the immigration mess. The public has witnessed almost 20 years of nonenforcement of our laws and neglect of the border.

For example, in 2005 there were fewer than 1,300 agents assigned to locate and deport the 400,000 illegal aliens on the government's absconders list -- people who already have had a hearing and have been ordered deported.

No one has suggested that a border fence alone will secure our southern border. What we have suggested is a comprehensive system of border security that will include physical barriers, added sensors and cameras, airborne surveillance and a doubling of Border Patrol manpower over five years.

If a fence is such a bad idea and doomed to failure, why are the governments of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras raising such a fuss about it? It is ludicrous to suggest we cannot stop people who do not respect our borders, whether they are smuggling drugs, people or weapons to do us harm.

If Congress adopts the amnesty plan proposed by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., it will only encourage the next wave of illegal aliens on the hope and expectation that they, too, will eventually be granted amnesty. That has been the sorry history of the last 30 years, and it is time to call a halt to this nonsense.

All of the proposed temporary worker plans, including the one proposed by the president, are lacking in realism. Who believes that after three or six years on a temporary worker visa, these workers will go home voluntarily? Citizens in Europe can tell you that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary worker. Do we want to follow Europe down that path?

Immigration policy cannot be based on humanitarian concerns alone. There are at least one-half billion poor people on the planet who would love to come to the U.S. and work for lower wages than Americans, not to mention 46 percent of the Mexican public, according to a recent poll. They will eagerly help the president "match willing workers and willing employers." But is it in our national interest to encourage them to come by keeping our borders wide open?

We may consider guest workers where a genuine need can be demonstrated -- but only after we have demonstrated we have achieved secure borders.

It is dishonest to say that a general amnesty is the only alternative to mass deportations of 10 million people; the specter of mass roundups is a red herring.

All we have to do is to begin enforcing our labor laws. When the illegal jobs slowly disappear because employers prefer to raise wages and attract legal workers instead of going to jail, most illegal aliens will go home voluntarily.

Amnesty has been tried and it has failed. Individuals who cross our borders illegally do not earn a three-year work visa merely by avoiding capture. A paltry $2,000 fine as proposed in the president's plan will not be a deterrent to future waves of border-jumpers.

It's time to get serious about border security and to quit promising a painless way out of our long addiction to cheap labor. The House took a giant step in December. Now it's time for the Senate to wake up and join the battle. Let's first secure our borders. Then we can debate how many guest workers we really need, if any.

Tom Tancredo, a four-term Republican representing Colorado in the U.S. House, is chairman of the 92-member Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune ... 19474.html

Even if the Senate passes a bill with amnesty/temporary worker in it, as I understand the process, the House and Senate would have to work out a compromise bill, since the House bill does not support amnesty/temporary worker. I'm wondering if the House Republicans will stick to their guns and not allow the amnesty/temporary worker provision, or will they cave in and say "oh well, we really, really tried" please vote for us in November.