May
25, 2006
Our National Border
Debate
By
Jack D. McNamara
The U.S. Senate
is
debating at great length their ideas of a 2006 “comprehensive”
immigration bill. Last week President George W. Bush threw himself
enthusiastically into the debate. We know this because the President
flew to Arizona for four hours and rode before the cameras in a dune
buggy.
Even his supporters say the President’s gyrations are somewhat
desperate, the flailing of a politician on the low end of public
opinion polls. Maybe so. But a president has a lot of power even if he
also has a lot of disapproval.
President Bush has exercised that power to direct that 6,000 National
Guardsmen be deployed somehow to the border for something. Monday the
U.S. Senate endorsed the idea.
The numbers and the mission of the proposed deployment do not work, as
critics are pointing out.
But it might work. It did once before, in another time of national
crisis. That was the time of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and the crisis
with Mexico coincided with America’s first European war. We mobilized
millions of men and sent them to dangerous places.
The history of the U.S. Mexico border is a violent one and too often
neglected. Major military deployments have occurred here. At the same
time, however, our history tells us that our border has been open more
than it has been conflicted. The crucial conflict up until now was the
period known as the “troubles” of 1910 to 1920.
General Porfirio Diaz was Mexican dictator from 1870-1910. It was
indeed a period of quiet and repression along the border. In 1910 he
was overthrown by revolution and the U.S. Army mobilized on the border
for the first time since 1848.
An excellent new book about this historical period is The Regulars —
The American Army 1898-1941 (Harvard 2004) by Professor Edward “Mac”
Coffman.
In 1911 the U.S. Army mobilized a Division at Fort Sam Houston. In 1913
the Army formed a Division at Galveston and Texas City. When the U.S.
Navy occupied Vera Cruz in 1914, 4,000 soldiers and 3,000 Marines
served there for seven months, while another 20,000 patrolled the
border.
Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916. The U.S.
retaliated with six regiments of cavalry and infantry advancing to
Parral. By the end of August 1916 48,000 regulars and more than 111,000
National Guardsmen were “scattered along the border.” This was most of
the Texas, New Mexico and Arizona Guard and 67% of the regular Army.
The crisis in Mexico attenuated in early 1917. The U.S. declared war on
Germany in April. The Secretary of War, Newton Baker, “emphasized the
importance of demonstrating the national determination to defend its
border and the value of the training received by both regulars and
Guardsmen.” according to Professor Coffman.
Another excellent (and short) book is Bosque Bonito — Violent Times
Along the Border During the Mexican Revolution by Robert Keil. The book
is the journal of a U.S. cavalryman, and is recently published in 2002
by Sul Ross’s Center for Big Bend Studies and edited by Elizabeth
McBride of Alpine.
The concept of “Open Borders,” a term heard often during the border
debate is not a left wing plot. The idea that Mexican laborers should
migrate easily from Mexico to the U.S. was a centerpiece of the Partido
Action Nacional (PAN) platform in the 2000 election. Vicente Fox
thought he had a deal with his amigo George W. Bush, both elected in
2000.
An editorial, “Open Nafta Borders? Why Not?” by Robert Bartley, editor
of the Wall Street Journal, appeared in that newspaper July 2, 2001 —
two months before the Al Qaeda terrorists attacked.
Bartley celebrated America’s history of immigration and praised the
endurance of the Mexicans who cross the desert in searing heat. “North
of the border, the solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to
make it legal, or at least normalize the movement of people…. Another
amnesty for undocumented aliens is already in the air.”
"And after all, we did have a long history of unlimited quotas for
Western Hemisphere immigrants, ending only in 1965," said Bartley.
This is true. It was not until 1891 that the Federal Government even
tried to control immigration. The Supreme Court told us in 1875 that it
is a federal responsibility but the vast numbers of people pouring into
the U.S. over thousands of miles of border is a complex problem.
Naturalization was done by the states, and in 1905 there were still
more than 5,000 naturalization courts, according to the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) official history.
Most of our history is written about Europeans coming through Ellis
Island in New York harbor. You can visit there today and imagine the
press of desperate humanity. But Ellis Island was only established in
1892 and it has little to do with the U.S.-Mexican border.
In 1893 ONE U.S. Immigrant Inspector, Leonidas B. Giles, served on the
Mexican border, at El Paso. By 1899, there were four, at Nogales,
Arizona, El Paso, Laredo and Piedras Negras.
Over the next decade the border bureaucracy expanded slowly. But
"citizens and bona fide residents of Mexico" were subject to little
regulation.
The practical reasons for this are obvious to those of us who live on
the border. Our economics are intertwined all along the fragile
boundary that is the Rio Grande, Labor and goods formerly moved freely.
It would be absurd to expect that anyone with border commerce in mind
would travel hundreds of miles to an official crossing to trade.
For those who follow military affairs in detail, a curious coincidence
of numbers lies in the Guard-to-the-border deal. Our 1910-1920
deployment employed about 158,000 troops. Currently we have deployed
about 140,000 to Iraq. The similarity of those numbers is matched by
the similarity of the desert terrain. With 140,000 troops we secured
the border once. The memories of those days are unpleasant but we
mention it because U.S. Senators continue to make comparisons,
suggesting a period of national mobilization may be required.
Our history informs us that neither “militarization” nor “open borders”
are alien ideas. None of the 9/11 terrorists came across the southern
border and none were Hispanic. But a majority of Americans are deeply
worried about the character of our nation.
Their worries must be respected.
(Also published by
the Big Bend
Sentinel of Marfa, Texas May 25, 2006.)
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