Playing politics with border security

By: JOHN LYNN - Commentary
NORTH COUNTY TIMES
21 SEPTEMBER 2007

A few months back I decided I wanted to tell our senators in Washington how I felt about border security and ask about their positions. I decided to use their Web sites to address the issue, but quickly discovered that border security was welded to immigration in their minds.

Both Web sites are automated, meaning that if you desire to know the senator's position on an issue you must select a topic from a list provided on the site. It then responds with a canned response appropriate to the topic you selected.

Absent from both Web sites was the topic "border security." Both senators do, however, provide an automated response under the topic "immigration" (Feinstein) or "immigration reform" (Boxer).

Since I couldn't select "border security" on either site, I selected the immigration topic and sent e-mail messages. A short time later I received their canned responses, which addressed both immigration reform and border security but didn't satisfy my interest.

So I wrote letters to both senators on the Fourth of July, asking for answers to two questions: Do you support existing immigration law and its enforcement? Would you support legislation that would address border security without mention of immigration policy? As of this date I've received no answer from either senator.

Border security and immigration reform are two issues with different solutions. Basically, border security is concerned with exclusion of illegal traffic across our borders, while immigration is concerned with policies regarding who is allowed to immigrate, in what numbers, and immigrant status.

Our Border Patrol does its job; it apprehends many illegal entrants ---- only to have to do it again and again as illegals are released and repeat their violations of the border. The crossings at Otay Mesa and San Ysidro are supposed to be control points; yet illegal traffic goes around them and over and under the border endlessly.

Something must be done, and done quickly. We don't have the faintest idea who ---- or what ---- is entering San Diego County across that border. Drugs? Terrorists? We have very attractive targets in the area, such as Qualcomm, Petco Park, Camp Pendleton, and airports. All targets for human bomb terrorists.

So why is it that neither Sen. Feinstein nor Sen. Boxer provides a separate category for border security on their Web sites? Two possible answers:

1. Politicians play this game all the time. You package a solution you want but the other party doesn't with a solution the other party wants but you don't. Stalemate. As intended. The borders remain open, business gets cheap labor and immigration remains uncontrolled.

2. By not providing a separate category for border security, the senators are making a statement that they won't act unless their immigration ideas are in play.

But it is obvious to me, as I believe it is to most citizens, that immigration "reform" cannot be effective until control of our borders has first been established. Either the senators don't understand that or they don't want to.

I don't know which choice is the more deplorable.

John Lynn lives in Carlsbad.

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