05 . Off-the-wall answers to immigration issues

Ever wonder why politicians enter government? In many cases, it’s because these are individuals who are so incompetent and so unwilling to confront problems that, if they had to make a living in the private sector, they might wind up in the street holding a tin cup.

Case in point: Five years ago, Congress and the White House promised to fix U.S. immigration policy. They were going to accomplish this, they said, by tightening the nation’s borders while loosening rules for the importation of foreign guest workers to do, as President George W. Bush likes to say, “jobs that Americans won’t do.”

Five years later, the best that Congress could come up with was 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border. Eager before the midterm elections to advance the illusion that Republicans accomplished something on immigration reform, the GOP-led Congress passed a bill calling for the fencing, and Bush pledged to sign it.

A fence. That’s it. And Congress didn’t even appropriate the funds to build the whole fence. Instead, it approved a $1.2 billion down payment on a project that could cost as much as $10 billion.

You could say the whole thing was for show. It showed America that folks in Washington don’t really understand how the border works.

First, as any border patrol agent will tell you, there’s no fence high enough, long enough or deep enough to stop someone who’s desperate enough to go over, go around, or go under.

Next, the only thing walls and fences do accomplish is to enhance the profit margins for smugglers, who respond by raising prices and becoming even more determined to stay in business, since business is good.

Lastly, these barriers backfire. As it becomes more difficult to go back and forth across the border, the undocumented are more likely to stay on the U.S. side, even if means paying smugglers to bring in family members. One migrant turns into many.

There were other things Congress could have done that might actually have had an impact on the problem, such as turning off the migrant magnet by approving a new round of employer sanctions. Currently, it’s a crime to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant, and the fines range as high as $10,000 per offense. But those laws are rarely enforced, and employers are rarely prosecuted.

The reason for that is simple. It’s the same reason that there was never any chance that this latest round of haggling over immigration reform was going to result in a crackdown on employers. That’s because these employers include individuals and companies who contribute to Congressional reelection campaigns. And, were they to be hit with stiff fines, they might not make any more contributions.

Another thing Congress could have done was to find a mature and constructive way to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who are already living in the United States. President Bush wants to give these people a path to citizenship provided they’re willing to earn it and then go to the back of the line.

“Nobody in our land wants to grant automatic amnesty,” Bush told a group of people who gathered at the White House recently to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. “But everybody in our land understands these people must be treated with respect and dignity.”

How much dignity do you suppose one finds in a 700-mile fence?

Not much, according to Mexican officials who warned that the fence would hurt the relationship between the two countries and urged President Bush not to sign the bill into law.

¿Que pasa? Mexico has no room to talk. This is a country that plays favorites among its people, fails to provide enough job opportunities so that workers don’t have to leave, scoffs at notions of social justice, and allows the rich to prey upon the poor. Mexican officials should stop meddling in how we Americans go about securing our borders—just as Mexico wouldn’t tolerate meddling from Guatemala or El Salvador about how it polices its southern border.

Mexicans are a proud people. Pride wouldn’t allow Mexico to take orders from another country, and yet it’s that same sense of pride that compels it to give orders to the United States.

For Mexico, this issue is about dollars and cents. The concern is that, if it becomes more difficult to enter the United States, perhaps fewer Mexicans will try. And that could cut into the more than $16 billion that Mexicans in the United States send home annually.

Mexican officials are misguided if they are worried a wall will curb illegal immigration. They’re wrong about that ­—just as wrong as those immigration restrictionists who insist that erecting more physical barriers represents some sort of meaningful solution to the illegal immigration crisis.

They don’t. And anyone who thinks otherwise is, well, walled off from reality.