There are drugs coming across the southern border as we speak, I'm sure.
Here's a note I sent to Senator Dr. Frist:
I would like to thank members of the Senate for their vote against the immigration compromise bill that failed to garner enough Senate support for passage. The bill as it was would not have resulted in an actual compromise, but an outright surrender.
I would like to credit our Lawmakers with enough foresight to realize we must first secure our borders from unchecked illegal entries before revising our immigration code. Maybe I'm too much the optimist.
While there are many who claim we simply can't afford a "continuous linear border barrier", let me bring to mind a few points of which I'm sure you are already aware.
It is estimated Mexico and Central/South America account for as much as 70% of the illegal drugs coming into these United States.
In 1999 alone, it was also estimated Americans spent some $69 billion on illegal drugs. With 70% of that flowing in from our southern border, even should a barrier prove 50% effective, it may be extrapolated that should the US invest as much in a barrier for the remainder of the 2000 mile stretch as we invest in a four-lane highway (approx $13 million/mile), our costs to taxpayers would still only amount to about half of our southern neighbor's contributions to the annual trade in illegal drugs - roughly $20 billion. The effectiveness of such a barrier could also be enhanced by alternating Border Patrol shifts and relocating personnel so contacts of corruption are difficult to maintain, resulting in an approximated 70% effectiveness.
That $20 billion expenditure is an investment with exponentially compounded savings to be realized each year as well from the aid to enforcement of our immigration code. To cut 70% of 70% of a $69 billion annual illegal drug trade (roughly $34 billion annually) is not something to quickly dismiss. What do we currently pay South/Central American administrations annually in illegal drug interdiction? and what do we have to show for it?
Not only can we find the way to deter criminal border entries, but deterring illegal aliens and interrupting the flow of "undocumented pharmaceuticals" has benefits by far outweighing any negative implications surfacing thus far.
As far as a guest worker program is concerned, why can't we get a proposal where employers apply for their workers through DHS and the US Labor departments, swearing out an affidavit of support for each such as sponsors of legal immigrants are required now, and one that would prohibit the judiciary from dismissing the financial responsibilities imposed by those affidavits? It would help prevent guest workers from becoming a public burden and make the employers who claim to need workers responsible for paying a fair wage that will support that worker.
As far as making illegal aliens felons, anyone who has used forged or stolen documents or ID ought be charged as felons. Period. The same penalty ought apply for legal residents as well.