March 30, 2006

A Leaky Border
By Jack McNamara

After nine hours of negotiating, arguing and voting, the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate concluded late Monday. A room full of observers burst spontaneously into prolonged applause. The entire proceedings were broadcast on C-Span.

Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican recovering from cancer, beamed. Along with their staffs, the 18 members of the committee had worked non-stop to get something — almost anything — ready for debate by the full Senate this week.

Getting something ready was tactically required to oppose other bills, including one by the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Outside the Senate chambers hundreds of thousands of protestors marched over the weekend in protest of the more draconian proposals before the Senate. These include criminalization of a large number of people such as the estimated 11 million, mostly Hispanic, now illegally resident here in the U.S. and even the Good Samaritans who aid them. Several hundred religious leaders assembled on the Capitol grounds and chanted, “Let them stay” as the committee deliberated.

Within minutes the major news media reported the Senate action. “Mexico Optimistic for Immigrant Program” — ABC News. “Senate Committee differs from House on immigration package” — San Jose Mercury News.” “US Immigration bill advances as protests spread” — Reuters.

Most of the news media reported that the Senate bill included a provision for “guest workers” or used the term more politically charged, “amnesty.”

The current controversy began last year with the appearance of small groups of Americans on the border observing the illegal entry into the U.S. by numerous individuals and groups. The media began by calling the watchers “vigilantes” but evolved other terminology so that the most common one now used is “minutemen,” a term which originally applied to those Americans from 1775 colonial towns who took up arms against the British government.

Hispanic spokespersons now duel with Minutemen spokesmen daily on the cable news shows.

Last December, just before the Christmas recess, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a harsh bill written by the House Judiciary Committee whose chairman is a dour fellow from Wisconsin, James Sensenbrenner.

Republicans have enough votes to pass any bill they want to. But Republicans are split into several factions on this issue. Some want to accommodate increased levels of immigration of any sort because the immigrants are essential to several industries — agriculture, construction, and restaurants. But others see the flood of illegal immigrants as a threat to U.S. national security.

And over all of the current work on a new immigration law there is the unacknowledged fact that the previous law, passed only 20 years ago in the Ronald Reagan Administration, is a miserable failure.

Funding for the Border Patrol has increased 1000% in those 20 years while the number of illegal immigrants living here has quadrupled. We are about to double that Border Patrol increase to 23,000 and yesterday one of the proposals which was adopted in the Senate Judiciary Committee was that 10,000 new “detention” beds be added. The amendment was proposed by Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who is a former U.S. Attorney. Senator Sessions provided an example of what he means as regards increasing border security when he said that in World War I the U.S. Army increased from 130,000 to 2 million in 18 months.

President George W. Bush deserves some credit because his contribution has been to implore those involved to maintain a civil tone in their rhetoric. Throughout his presidency he has proposed some form of guest worker program. This is about all he can do because the political forces unleashed in the Republican Party are paying no attention to him otherwise. In yesterday’s committee vote, only Chairman Specter and three other Republicans followed the President’s proposal for a guest worker program. All the committee Democrats voted for the Senate Judiciary bill.

Standing ovations and protestors aside, this debate is not over. The U.S. legislators are desperate to get a bill signed before the November election but the countervailing pressures on this matter are very difficult. How do you incarcerate 11 million illegal immigrants? How do you catch them if many of their fellows who are here legally don’t want them caught by the jack booted thugs?

How do you even count them if they don’t want to be counted?

In case you haven’t noticed, this has become a principal occupation here in the Big Bend. Since 1986 there has been nothing but increase in the number of law enforcement agents, lawyers, judges and the other supporting professions of an expanding criminal justice system.

During the past 20 years we expanded county jails in both Brewster and Presidio counties. The citizens of Jeff Davis County have decided they can get along very well without a jail or even a “detention facility.”  But the incarceration entrepreneurs are on the roam again.
Somewhere between Brownsville and San Diego they are looking for another 10,000 cells.

They are not doing the looking in open session on C-Span. In coffee shops and smoke filled back rooms and oak-paneled offices the plight of unfortunate human beings is translated into profit projections.

The free-form debate of these 18 senators over nine hours was a very reassuring sight. They presented their arguments forcefully and articulately. None were demonstrably ignorant or abusive. Senator Specter brilliantly moved the debate along and justly earned the applause of the spectators. Any local official would do well to watch and listen to a replay of those nine hours. It was a credit to representative democracy.

“All borders leak, all the time. Not even the fiercest police state is able to completely seal its national borders …” — Jonathan Watts, “Frozen Frontier Where Illicit Trade With China Offers Lifeline for Isolated North Koreans,” The Guardian (U.K.) January 9, 2004, describing smuggling on the Yalu River. •