State of the Union: President's Immigration Policy Disappoints Americans (Mildly put.)

Two years ago, Border Patrol agents began to voice what many believed were legitimate concerns about "armed incursions" into the United States from Mexico-based assailants. Now these invasions occur routinely putting federal agents' and law enforcement officers' lives in jeopardy.

They reported that heavily armed Mexican army units and federal police, called federales, had infiltrated US territory and fired upon them, in some cases because –- federal agents would later discover –- Mexican drug lords had put prices on the heads of American law-enforcement agents strung out along the border. Where was the outrage by our political leaders and the mainstream media over this blatant violation of our national sovereignty?

Many of our political leaders and most in the news media ignore these violent attacks on our national sovereignty while more and more Americans are saying, "This has got to stop!"

While tens of millions of Americans watched and listened to President George Bush's much anticipated State of the Union speech, many were disappointed at the lack of emphasis on the biggest threat to national security today: unmitigated illegal immigration and porous US borders.

President Bush continues to maintain a contradictory and perilous position regarding illegal immigration, claiming his plan does not amount to amnesty. Standard American language usage contravenes the President’s specious explanation in that his plan clearly overlooks the offense of illegal aliens who entered this country in violation of law and would not seek prosecution; a full amnesty within contextual and explicit meaning.

The current position of the Administration on illegal immigration is demonstrative of a flawed public and enforcement policy which undermines national security by encouraging future mass illegal immigration. Additionally, the intention of the President sends contradictory signals to agencies tasked with securing our borders as well as police commanders across the nation.

In a recent Washington Times article in which the President attempted to justify his position on illegal immigration, the President stated the current immigration situation is a “bureaucratic nightmare” and the Border Patrol is “overstressed” due to “people [illegal immigrants] streaming across [the border].”

Further evidence of the Administration’s contradictory position on illegal immigration are statements made by political appointees charged with protecting the public. In September of 2004, in an effort to build support for the Administration’s Amnesty proposal, Asa Hutchinson, former Homeland Security Undersecretary, publicly stated it is “not realistic” to arrest or deport illegal aliens already in the country.

More recently, budget problems within the Department of Homeland Security further called into question the priorities of the Administration as agents are forced to release illegal aliens and curtail operations due to ongoing financial constraints. These circumstances all contribute to a “bureaucratic nightmare” and “overstressed” Border Patrol.

The position of the Administration on illegal immigration has had a profound and negative effect not only on law enforcement operations, but also border patrol agent morale. The impact on agent morale was measured in a survey conducted by independent Hart Research Associates during the summer of 2004.

The survey found a majority of agents were demoralized and were not getting the full support needed to protect the country, clearly indicating a conflict between the view of professional field agents and the Administration in regard to national domestic security. The Administration’s current immigration plans will exacerbate, not alleviate, that problem.

For those tuning in to hear President Bush address the problems faced as a result of rampant illegal immigration and Mexican military incursions, the speech was a major disappointment.

Alright, I won't "just" say to build a fence. But building a good fence like the one the Israelis have will go a long way towards getting this problem under control. Nor would it come close to breaking the budget. And we need to completely unleash state and local governments in acting against illegals. The New Hampshire authorities recently tried to prosecute some illegals for trespassing when they were caught traveling along the state's highways, and a court struck down the attempt on the grounds that New Hampshire was allegedly interfering with Congress's authority. Congress could remedy that instantly by passing a law making it explicitly clear that states may act against illegals in whatever way they see fit, limited only by the Constitution itself.

And above all, our government needs to speak with a united voice (or as close to it as possible) that there is absolutely no possible way that illegal aliens will be able to benefit from a guest-worker program or any other kind of legal status unless they first go back to their home countries and wait in line the right way. Holding out that possibility for them, as Bush keeps trying to do, only encourages more illegal entry.

What good would a fence do? We've just recently found tunnels. (Actually, the Israelis have had to deal with tunnels, too. ) And if we blocked the land borders, with either fences or tunnel blocks, we'd still have to deal with the coasts. "Securing our borders" is a slogan that is meaningless. And I haven't even mentioned access by air.

We do need guest workers. It's a real shame that we got rid of regulated guest worker programs and wound up with unregulated illegal immigrants. There are many legitimate arguments about how we get back to a regulated guest worker program, but pretending that we don't need one is folly.

What good would a fence do? We've just recently found tunnels. (Actually, the Israelis have had to deal with tunnels, too. )

You just answered your own question. The Israelis have had to deal with tunnels, and yet their fence has proven enormously successful at reducing terrorist attacks. Conclusion: Tunnelling is not nearly as effective a means of entry as being able to walk across unfenced or poorly fenced surface.

What I'd really have to ask of you at this point is if you're looking for something that's guaranteed to reduce illegal entry to zero, or something that will reduce it to far below its current level. Because in the former case, you're simply not going to find it. If the latter, then we can continue with the discussion.

We do need guest workers.

We don't need to be making guest workers out of illegals here in the country. No way Jose.

Fences don't eliminate the problem, except when they're new. It takes time to dig a tunnel, and as soon as the fence goes up, digging will start. (I'm not sure, but I think the latest tunnel we found does go under a fence).

Of course there isn't any way to reduce illegal immigration to zero. We've had that forever, and we always will. What we need to do is to get it to manageable levels. The best place to start is with a guest worker program. We had one in the past, and it worked very well. The only reason we stopped the program is because our "bleeding hearts" thought the workers were being treated poorly. Some probably were, but eliminating the program was a short-sighted solution.

If we had a legal way for the workers we need to come here, I'd be as harsh on illegals as you are. But we don't. And we do need them.

Fences don't eliminate the problem, except when they're new. It takes time to dig a tunnel, and as soon as the fence goes up, digging will start.

The latest one we found took six months to dig. Israel's fence has been effective for a longer period than that. Plus, we have equipment for detecting underground discontinuities. It's true that so far, there've been quite a few false positives because of naturally occuring underground features, but once those are all mapped along the border, then anything new would pretty much have to be a tunnel.

On top of which, there's just no way that the same levels of illegal entry can be maintained through tunnel traffic. Any house that serves as the terminus for a tunnel would immediately draw attention to itself if that level of traffic were to pass through it.

The best place to start is with a guest worker program.

I notice you keep avoiding the point about letting illegals become guest workers. That's the biggest point of controversy with the President's plans. You began this exchange by denying that there would be a conservative backlash resulting from this, saying that the issue is "complicated". But there's nothing at all complicated about recognizing that rewarding illegals with legal status, or even holding out the hope of doing so, makes the border much less manageable. There's no excuse for him doing that.

I notice you keep avoiding the point about letting illegals become guest workers. That's the biggest point of controversy with the President's plans.

OK, I'll get right to that point. We now have at least 10M (no one knows the exact number) Mexican and South American workers in this country. They're all over, not just in border states. They're doing jobs that American born citizens won't do. Please don't try to tell me that in areas where the unemployment rate is <4%, Americans are lined up to take jobs as busboys, hotel or office cleaners, or lawn care workers. Our economy depends on workers like those.

We can't replace them all overnight with 10M who have gone through a legal guest worker program. That would just give them, and their employers, more incentive to hide.

I don't see that we have any choice but to make it possible for these people to get some sort of legal status.
Our previous guest worker program limited the time they could stay here, made them leave dependents behind, and linked their stay to the job (they came for one job, and if they left it, or the job ended, they went back). Even more importantly, it made the employers responsible for the guest workers. Having employers keep track of guest workers is far more efficient than setting up a huge gov't bureaucracy.

So, to summarize, I do think illegals should have a chance to become guest workers with employer sponsorship, and with the same rules (limited stay, no dependents, and no path to full citizenship) as ones who would come here under a program.
Our economy and sheer practicality both make it the only reasonable way to proceed.

We can't replace them all overnight with 10M who have gone through a legal guest worker program.

No one's saying we should have to replace them overnight. But if the program is made available only to people in their home countries, then the illegals will be replaced over time. The problem of those already here is less pressing than the problem on the border. If we get the border taken care of, then we can take our time weeding out the illegals here in the country without feeling like we're having to empty out the basement with a coffee cup in the middle of a monsoon. But we're not going to get the border under control if we keep holding out the possibility of rewards for people who cross it illegally.

But we're not going to get the border under control if we keep holding out the possibility of rewards for people who cross it illegally.

We don't disagree on that. We're probably talking about a chicken vs. egg problem, but I think that if these people have a choice between a legal and an illegal way to get here, the vast majority will choose legal.
The real way I think we can get the problem under control is to make the employers responsible. They also need to have a choice between legal and illegal employees, not a choice between illegal ones or none at all.

And it will be easier to control the borders if we're trying to stop a trickle, not a flood.

[But we're not going to get the border under control if we keep holding out the possibility of rewards for people who cross it illegally.]

We disagree where you said at #69 that we have no choice but to offer some form of legal status to illegals. We do indeed have a choice not to, and it's the right choice. If guest-worker status is made available only to people who apply in their home countries, that would greatly reduce the incentive to come here illegally. As you said, they'd have a choice between coming here legally and illegally, and coming here illegally would be the made the less palatable choice.

We disagree where you said at #69 that we have no choice but to offer some form of legal status to illegals. We do indeed have a choice not to, and it's the right choice.

I don't believe that we do have a choice when it comes to the people who are already here illegally. The vast majority of them are working at jobs where they are needed, and they can't be replaced overnight.
The only way we can find out who they are and where they are is to make the employers report them. Employers won't do that if they risk their businesses by doing so.
I don't think there's any way even a giant bureaucracy can find many of them unless the employers cooperate.

I can see options like giving currently illegal workers a limit of something like 3 years, then making them go back to their home country to reapply. That would give both the workers and the employers time to plan for a change.
I think the goal should be to make sure that everyone who is here has some legal status, so we know who they are and where they are. Driving the illegals farther underground is a terrible option.

And like I said, I'm not arguing for replacing them overnight. If we have a guest-worker program available only to aliens applying in their countries, it won't make the situation any worse than it is now. Illegals will probably continue to work at their jobs, as before. And if we're able to stem the tide of illegal entry, then we can work on slowly deporting the ones already here. Once the illegals here see the handwriting on the wall, they'd most likely consider it advantageous to go back and apply the right way, rather than risk getting caught sooner or later and being deported permanently.

Above all, there's no reason for insisting, as Bush and many Congressmen do, on making sure this type of program is included as part of a general border-security bill. We can pass a bill beefing up the Border Patrol, or fencing off areas of the border, without a guest-worker plan attached to the same bill, and that would still at least improve the situation. My accusation of the politicians there is that they're trying instead to use the unsecured border as blackmail to get this program enacted over the objections of the people. That's why, left to their own devices, they would never accept any plan to split this into two separate pieces of legislation - which is how they properly belong, because they're really two separate approaches that can work independently of each other.

I think I see where we differ. You seem to want to start by targeting the illegal immigrants. I don't see how we can, because we don't know who they are, or where they are. I want to start by targeting the employers. We know who they are and where they are. I don't, however, want to ruin their businesses.

Don't you think that employers who hire illegals are a major part of the problem? After all, if illegals couldn't get jobs here, they would be less likely to try to get here.

My general view as regards employers is that they should in most cases have the right to assume that those whom they hire are here legally. Cracking down too hard on them I think will start to make them look sideways at any Hispanic applicant, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing. But that's not what our main disagreement is about. Regardless of whether or not we engage in employer sanctions, we still should not be encouraging aliens to enter illegally, and that's exactly what happens every time a proposal is floated to give them any kind of legal status.

And bills for border security should be passed without being forced to have guest-worker provisions attached in the same bill.

My general view as regards employers is that they should in most cases have the right to assume that those whom they hire are here legally.

Why? We already make employers responsible for knowing about criminal history and drug use. And they have to know SSNs and report to the IRS. If they were doing that correctly, they'd know who was legal (and I suspect most do know)

Regardless of whether or not we engage in employer sanctions, we still should not be encouraging aliens to enter illegally,

We agree on that.

and that's exactly what happens every time a proposal is floated to give them any kind of legal status.

We disagree on that. I think we encourage them to come illegally as long as there is no legal way to do so.

We could build a fence along the entire Mexican border, and it would do no good. Boats can land on any of our coasts. And people could come here with tourist or student visas, and just never go home (a lot of people from other countries do just that. The 9/11 terrorists did.)
We are cracking down on the student visa violators, but we're doing that by making the schools track students. So why not make employers at least that responsible?

[and that's exactly what happens every time a proposal is floated to give them any kind of legal status.]

We disagree on that. I think we encourage them to come illegally as long as there is no legal way to do so.

That's an argument for a guest-worker program that people in other countries can take advantage of. It's not an argument for making the program available to illegals here. That does nothing to stem the tide of illegal entry, and the mere proposing of it does plenty to encourage it.

It's a question of numbers. If we closed off the entire land border to unauthorized crossing, the number of illegal entrants would go way down. There's just nothing that can compete with a long, unsecured border when it comes to entering a country illegally.

If you really think that securing the land border would be ineffective at doing anything about the problem, does this mean you'd favor eliminating the Border Patrol altogether?

Having a way for people to come here legally does do a lot to stop illegal entry. How could you possibly argue otherwise?
And isn't it important to find out who the current illegals are, and to do something about them? How do you propose we do that?

If you really think that securing the land border would be ineffective at doing anything about the problem, does this mean you'd favor eliminating the Border Patrol altogether?

That's silly. Just as it is silly to think that our only border problem is the land border between the US and Mexico. We have the Canadian border, all of our coasts, and the problem of people overstaying their visas.
I wonder if you're only concerned about Mexicans, who mostly come here to work, instead of illegal immigrants who come here to either do harm to us, or to take advantage of our welfare system.

Having a way for people to come here legally does do a lot to stop illegal entry. How could you possibly argue otherwise?

I didn't argue otherwise. What I argued was that making the program available to illegals here does nothing to stop illegal entry, and proposing it encourages it.

[If you really think that securing the land border would be ineffective at doing anything about the problem, does this mean you'd favor eliminating the Border Patrol altogether?]

That's silly.

So can I take that as a no?

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