Posted on 06/06/2006 9:10:50 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
To promote his latest initiatives on border security and immigration reform, President George W. Bush will stop in Laredo for an hour-long visit today. It is the first time in 30 years that the president of the United States visits Laredo.
Bush is expected to make a brief statement at the Laredo Border Patrol Sector headquarters. He will also travel to Artesia, N.M.
The Laredo International Airport will be closed temporarily during the president’s arrival and departure on Air Force One, but no flights will be cancelled, said Airport Director Jose Flores.
For security reasons, spectators will not be allowed inside the airport terminal, nor will they be allowed to stand by the fence at the terminal, Flores said.
A group of greeters have been selected to welcome Bush at the airport, one of whom will be Mayor Betty Flores, according to White House officials.
Bush and immigration
Bush, who opposes deportation of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, supports a guest worker program.
According to a speech he gave last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he is pushing for bigger fines for employers who hire illegal immigrants, as well as tamper-proof identity cards for workers.
He also supports tougher border law enforcement and citizenship for illegal immigrants who have spent years in this country, so long as they pay back taxes and demonstrate English proficiency.
Bush must work with competing House and Senate immigration reform proposals to reach a compromise bill.
Two bankers who have closely followed the increasingly bitter debate expressed their concerns with recent proposals from Congress.
Local concerns
Dennis Nixon, International Bank of Commerce president & CEO, and Gary J. Jacobs, Laredo National Bank chairman of the board, said greater high-tech surveillance, the dispatching of National Guardsman to the border and building a wall will not stem the tide of illegal immigration.
Studies from the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office have shown these programs are costly and ineffective, Nixon said.
Neither Nixon nor Jacobs will be on hand during the president’s visit.
The federal government must instead drastically increase immigration quotas, and overhaul its Immigration and Naturalization Service to process people in a more efficient manner, said Nixon, who has been deeply involved in the issue the last three years.
“I’ve just grown more disappointed and demoralized at the rhetoric,” he said.
“To hear the platform of the Republican Party of Texas leaves me with personal despair,” Nixon added. “None of these people have day-to-day border involvement and none have provided any sophisticated analysis to support their agenda.”
Putting more cameras, sensors and other high tech gadgetry on the border will not “mystically solve our problems,” he stressed. “It’s frustrating to see that kind of leadership across the board.”
Most immigrants who come to the United States often take jobs in opposite extremes of the workforce sector: lower end, unskilled jobs or higher skilled jobs in science, engineering and technology fields.
Jacobs said he supports the president’s guest worker program but few of the stricter proposals.
“I believe (Bush) has compassion for poor people in Mexico who come here desperately looking for work,” Jacobs said.
“And he has a ranch in Texas, so he knows personally the stupidity of building a fence anywhere around Laredo,” he said. “It’s horrendously expensive to build and maintain and will do no good whatsoever.”
Moreover, such a fence would send a wrong message “to our friends in Mexico,” Jacobs said.
He called the sending of National Guardsmen tot he U.S. Mexico border “offensive.”
“I was in the Air Force National Guard seven years,” Jacobs explained. “We use soldiers to kill people. The Guard was not trained to look for undocumented immigrants in the monte of South Texas.”
The best way to control Mexican immigration is to allow people who come to work in the United States to come and go freely, Jacobs said.
“We’ve made it so expensive to come here” Jacobs said, citing the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill of 1986.
“Before that bill, there were no coyotes and it cost $45 for a worker to cross into the United States,’ Jacobs said. “Now, it costs between $1,500 and $3,000 to hire a coyote, so they’re not going to go home.”
(Tricia Cortez may be reached at 728-2568 or by e-mail at tricia@lmtonline.com.)
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