Thread: Illegal Immigration, It's Just Getting Worse

http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.d ... /306200001

Illegal Immigration, It's Just Getting Worse
Huge Boost In Enforcement Fails To Deter Border Crossings

Daniel González and Susan Carroll
The Arizona Republic
June 20, 2005

It's a simple idea: Make it tougher to cross the U.S.-Mexican border illegally and fewer migrants will try to sneak in.
For 12 years, the United States has backed that strategy, pumping billions of dollars into fortifying the border. Annual spending on border enforcement has nearly tripled; the Border Patrol has almost tripled its ranks; and the Southwestern border has become heavily militarized with fences, aircraft, sensors and cameras.

It hasn't worked.

In that same time, illegal immigration from Mexico has almost doubled, millions more undocumented immigrants have settled in the United States permanently, and the human-smuggling trade has boomed.

Instead of thwarting illegal border crossings, the Southwestern border has simply become an expensive obstacle course that hundreds of thousands of migrants successfully overcome each year, more than ever relying on professional smugglers.

Drawn by plentiful jobs in this country and driven by a scarcity in their own, the migrants are being fenced in by the tighter border security that was supposed to keep them out in the first place.

Consider:

Since 1993, when the federal government began its major push to secure the borders, annual spending on border enforcement has gone from $480million (adjusted for inflation) to $1.4billion, most of it for the Southwestern border.

The Border Patrol's ranks along the 1,950-mile Southwestern border have swelled to more than 9,700 agents from 3,389 agents to become the nation's largest uniformed police force.

Towering steel fences, sensors and cameras are in place to make crossing difficult and daunting. Agents are equipped with helicopters, Humvees, hovercrafts, ATVs and fixed-wing aircraft to patrol the vast expanse.

About 1.14million arrests were made on the Southwestern border last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, an average of one undocumented immigrant arrest every 30 seconds.

"We feel we have become extremely effective in border enforcement," said Mario Villarreal, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

On the surface, that appears to be true.

But by other measures, illegal immigration has only gotten worse.

The number of undocumented migrants from Mexico entering the country increased to the current 485,000 from 260,000 a year in the early 1990s, according to a March study by the Pew Hispanic Center using 2004 data.

Legal immigration from Mexico actually decreased, from 110,000 legal immigrants a year to 90,000, the study by the nonpartisan research organization said.

The undocumented-immigrant population in the United States shot up to the current 11million from about 6million in 1997, fueled largely by illegal immigration from Mexico, according to the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Hundreds of people keep dying trying to cross the Southwestern border. Last year, 330 migrants lost their lives in the crossing. The tally was up from the 266 migrant deaths logged by the Border Patrol in 1998, the first year the agency began keeping track, though down from the record 383 who died in 2000.

And in 1993, the year the border strategy kicked off in Texas, the Border Patrol actually made more arrests, 1.21million, than last year, and that was before all the extra money, equipment and manpower.

"The current border crisis has been years in the making, but it now appears to have reached a critical mass," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said June 7 in congressional testimony. He called the U.S.-Mexican border situation "catastrophic."

Turning to smugglers

There is no question that fortifying the border with more agents, aircraft and technology has made it less porous.
Beefed-up Border Patrol operations sharply reduced illegal immigration through ElPaso, San Diego and Nogales, the main gateways of the past. And since last Sept. 1, biometric-fingerprinting technology has helped Border Patrol agents stop more than 16,260 suspected criminals from entering the country, including 364 homicide suspects.

But although more money and manpower curtailed illegal immigration in some places, it simply was rechanneled to more remote desert and mountain areas. The squeeze in border towns from the east and west has turned Arizona into a superhighway for illegal immigration.

The tighter controls also mean more and more migrants have turned to professional smugglers, or coyotes.

In 1993, crossing the border was so easy, most migrants didn't bother with a smuggler. Those who did paid only a few hundred dollars.

"It used to be your friend or uncle would smuggle you in. Now, it's in the hands of the professionals," said Deborah Meyers, border policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that studies migration worldwide.

And in the cat-and-mouse game that plays out thousands of times a day along the border, the professionals have helped tip the balance in favor of the migrants.

"One clear consequence of the fact that a higher percentage of migrants are using coyotes is that more and more of them are able to get through because they are making professional-assisted crossings," said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Studies at UC San Diego and one of the nation's foremost experts on Mexican immigration and border enforcement.

Take Phoenix tire worker Jose Aguayo, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico, who first crossed the border illegally in 1990. All he had to do was jump a fence at the border in Nogales, Sonora, and take a taxi from a McDonald's to Phoenix.

Those days are gone.

Keep on trying

With so much at stake, migrants make repeated attempts to cross the border. The Border Patrol would not say how many of the 1.14million arrests last year were of people caught multiple times.
But officials acknowledged that many of those who are caught and returned to Mexico just turn around and try again.

And again. And again.

One recent Monday, June 6, Brauilio Benitez Serno was arrested on his second attempt to make it across the desert outside Yuma.

The 19-year-old from Aguascalientes was scanned into the Border Patrol's fingerprinting system and later dropped back at the border. Benitez said he paid a smuggler $1,500 and wasn't planning on giving up until he reached his destination, Los Angeles.

"Everybody said it would be hard," he said. "I still have hope."

The high smugglers fees would seem to be a deterrent to most cash-poor migrants. But relatives already working in the United States usually help defray the costs.

In a January survey of 603 people from Jalisco and Zacatecas, two high-migration states in Mexico, 84 percent admitted hiring a coyote. The researchers from UC San Diego surveyed residents ages 15 to 65 who had migrated to the United States at least once since 1993 as well as potential first-time migrants.

Ninety-two percent said they made it into the United States within five tries, according to the survey. Seventy percent said they made it across on their first or second tries.

Only 8 percent failed to get in and went home.

Most also said they knew crossing the border had become harder and more dangerous. Sixty-four percent knew someone who had died trying. Still, nearly half said they planned to try again in 2005.

Only 20 percent of those who didn't plan to try cited tougher border enforcement as the main reason.

"We've got a revolving door at the border, and what we've done by spending all this new money on border enforcement is speed up the revolving door," Cornelius said.

More are staying

Fortifying the border is supposed to keep undocumented immigrants out. But, instead, it has hemmed many in.
In the past, when border enforcement was more lax, undocumented immigrants tended to be men who shuttled between jobs in the United States and families in Mexico.

Now, once they get across, more undocumented immigrants stay out of fear they will be caught on another attempt and to make the high smuggling fees worth their while. Migrants are more likely to arrange for their families to cross to join them in the United States.

"They don't want to risk coming back and forth," said Belinda Reyes, a social sciences professor at the University of California, Merced. She co-authored a 2002 study that said the economic rewards of a job in the United States outweigh all risks linked to illegally crossing the border. The study was based on census data, focus groups and the Mexican Migration Project, a database dating to 1982 compiled by researchers from the United States and Mexico.

Undocumented migrants who shuttled between Mexico and the United States stayed in this country an average of about six months during 1993-97, according to Mexican government surveys. The stays had increased to more than a year by 2001-04, Mexico's National Population Council said.

The longer migrants stay, the more likely they are to settle permanently in the United States, experts say.

Aguayo, 30, who jumped the fence at the border in Nogales 15 years ago, found that the longer he stayed, the tougher it got to cross.

He is now married to a woman who also is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. The couple have four U.S.-born children.

"If there wasn't so much border security, I would return. But the reality is my life is here now," Aguayo said.

The tougher border security is one of the main reasons the number of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States has grown so rapidly and why so many are now women and children. In fact, women and children now make up nearly half of the nation's undocumented population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

"This is a logical consequence of making it more costly and more dangerous to come and go across the border," Cornelius said. "The strategy has really been a powerful stimulus for family reunification on the U.S. side of the border."

Of course, not all undocumented immigrants sneak across the border. Some enter the country legally using tourist and other types of temporary visas and then remain in the country as "overstays" after their visas expire.

But the "vast majority" of undocumented Mexican immigrants sneak across the border, said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center who studies the undocumented population.

The federal government does not track visa overstays by country. In January 2000, there were roughly 2.3million people residing in the country who had overstayed their visas, according to congressional auditors.

Death toll climbs

In 2000, Doris Meissner, then-Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, acknowledged that the Southwestern border strategy had one major "unintended consequence": the growing number of deaths.
The strategy was based on deterrence, and the Border Patrol built walls and saturated popular border cities with agents, figuring the mountains and deserts would act as natural barriers. But the strategy underestimated just how determined migrants would be, and the federal government found itself confronted with a growing death toll as smugglers led more and more people through Arizona.

In 1998, the agency launched its Border Safety Initiative and created search-and-rescue squads, hoping to reduce the growing number of exposure-related deaths. Under pressure from human rights groups, the Border Patrol for the first time agreed that year to keep track of deaths along the border and counted 28 in the state.

Last year, the agency counted a record 172, although a review by The Arizona Republic, based on data from medical examiners and foreign consulates, put that total much higher, at 219.

More of the same

Experts say fortifying the border has not worked because it ignores the "job magnet" in this country and the lack of good jobs south of the border.
"The forces that are driving people out of Mexico and pulling them into the United States are still extremely strong and haven't diminished in the last 10 years. If anything, they've intensified," said Cornelius.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank, that favors tighter limits on immigration, supports more border enforcement. But he said it can work only when coupled with tougher enforcement inside the country.

Federal immigration officials rarely investigate employers. When they do, their priority is to combat terrorism, major smuggling and criminal operations. From 1995 to 2003, the number of businesses fined for immigration violations declined to 909 from 124.

"It's a fantasy that the Border Patrol alone can solve the problem," Krikorian said.

Political leaders are starting to recognize that a broader approach is needed to deal with illegal immigration.

President Bush has called on Congress to adopt a temporary-worker program. In May, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced a bipartisan bill that aims to improve border security but also increases temporary-worker visas and gives undocumented immigrants a chance at legal residency.

Kyl and fellow GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas also have announced plans for an immigration bill that includes a guest-worker program.

Theirs would require workers to leave the United States in three years and calls for the government to make good on its promise to add 10,000 more Border Patrol agents on the Mexican and Canadian borders within five years and add 1,000 immigration inspectors at the ports of entry at a cost of $500million a year.

Any kind of immigration reform, however, faces a fierce battle in Congress.

In the meantime, the government keeps pouring more money into tougher border enforcement.

And the migrants keep coming.

Arizona Republic reporters Chris Hawley and Jon Kamman contributed to this article.

In the meantime, the government keeps pouring more money into tougher border enforcement.

It is?

In this country?

We don't seem to be getting much benefit from it, if it's true.

Originally Posted by CountFloyd

In the meantime, the government keeps pouring more money into tougher border enforcement.

It is?

In this country?

We don't seem to be getting much benefit from it, if it's true.

Are they talking aobut the U.S.?

QUOTE:
It's a simple idea: Make it tougher to cross the U.S.-Mexican border illegally and fewer migrants will try to sneak in.
For 12 years, the United States has backed that strategy, pumping billions of dollars into fortifying the border. Annual spending on border enforcement has nearly tripled; the Border Patrol has almost tripled its ranks; and the Southwestern border has become heavily militarized with fences, aircraft, sensors and cameras.
It hasn't worked.
In that same time, illegal immigration from Mexico has almost doubled, millions more undocumented immigrants have settled in the United States permanently, and the human-smuggling trade has boomed

I'm sorry. But I haven't seen where the United States fixed or reinforeced any of our fences, and I do not believe that our Border Patrol has tripled in size. And how has the SW border become heavily militarized? Is this with our troops, or Mexican corrupt troops?
And from what I understand, sensors enrage our border agents by forcing them to check for intruders more often, aircraft fly very seldomly to make a difference, and the cameras on the border have become a big joke according to some congressional sources.
So this piece of your article is just dumb.
NO WONDER IT HASN'T WORKED, YET. WE HAVEN'T EVEN BEGUN THE WORK YET. BUT WHEN WE ARE FINISHED, BETWEEN REBUILDING FENCES, AND PUTTING OUR MILITARY ON THE BORDER, WE WILL WIN!