On The Border - Enforcement Works

The NY Times reports that stepped up enforcement seems to be reducing the flow of illegal immigrants into the US.

No worries - Dems will still tell us (and the Times will agree) that the fence should be defunded, because it can't work, or because it might.

Comments

[Terrye]

They will probably say that if beefed up enforcement is dealing with the problem the fence is not necessary.

[Abu Al-Poopypants]

The Breck Girl™ will probably come out and say that the fence is the greatest threat to border security.

[clarice]

Reminds me of their penchant for being repeatedly astonished that prison populations are growing as crime stats go down.

[Daddy]

I believe the meme of choice will be, "Let's do more with less."

[Davebo]

Dems will still tell us (and the Times will agree) that the fence should be defunded

Not to rain on the parade here Tom, but wouldn't the fence need to be funded in the first place before those nasty dems could defund it?

The Republicans probably should have considered that. And they probably would have, if they intended to offer anything more than lip service to the idea of the fence.

But then, they didn't.

[Gary Maxwell]

OT

KC Johnson get some well deserved pub:

http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/inprint/contentview.asp?c=190716> Interview with Prof Johnson

[clarice]

KC is a real hero.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

test

[TimesWatch]

Actually they already did, just last Sunday, in a big editorial:

"What little the last Congress did about immigration was focused on appeasing hard-line conservatives by appearing to seal the border. President Bush's new budget continues that approach, seeking 3,000 more Border Patrol officers and another $1 billion for a 700-mile fence, adding to the billions spent to militarize the border since the 1990s. That still isn't enough to build the fence and it hasn't controlled the illegal flow; you need more visas and better workplace enforcement to do that."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/opinion/18sun1.html?pagewanted

[Pagar]

When are we going to get a KC Johnson type on the jailed border guards story.

story

and more

http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_5200281

Two Border Patrol agents who testified against two co-workers convicted of shooting a drug smuggler will be fired for changing their stories about events surrounding the shooting, according to documents obtained by the Daily Bulletin.

Sources inside the Border Patrol also say Oscar Juarez, a third agent who testified against Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, resigned from the agency last month shortly before he was to be fired.

All three agents gave sworn testimony against Ramos and Compean for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which successfully prosecuted the shooting case in March. The agents were given immunity in exchange for their testimony despite changing their accounts of the incident several

[clarice]

The illegals who testified against them were given lots of benies by the prosecutors. I haven't followed it much but Patterico is going thru the trial transcripts and you might check it out.

[richard mcenroe]

Enforcing the law secures the borders.

Engaging terrorists and their enablers overseas results in no domestic attacks.

Giving suspects immunity lets them lie.

Honesty, you people are so un-nuanced...

[Scrapiron]

richard mcenroe, you is so much smarter than everyone else. Why aren't you the governor of Mexico or someplace far from the U.S.?

[sylvia]

I have another good idea, if I say so myself. We have two problems of a need for cheap labour and too many prisoners. I say, put prisons out in the fields and near chicken factories etc and allow prisoners to work, voluntarily, for a minumum wage at these places, to be collected and paid when they leave the prison. We will solve all problems at once this way.

[ed]

Hmmmm.

Really does anyone believe that the numbers are going down? Or has the Bush administration federal prosecutors hammered enough law enforcement officers that they've largely given up?

Which is it? Have the numbers really gone down or have the officers simply stopped reporting them?

...

Bush. The best President that Mexico ever had. Pity we here in the USA don't actually have a President at this time.

[Syl]

All this reminds me I saw part of something on C-SPAN with both Biden and Newt. It was on education. They both had their ideas on how to fix things. I though why don't we do ALL of it? Then I realized Newt's ideas sounded the most effective and Biden's sounded the best for getting votes.

There you have the difference between Dems and Reps in a nutshell.

[Syl]

Hey, you all. I really don't care how many decent Mexicans cross the border. I don't. I care about the bad guys along with sneaky other types.

[Terrye]

I am with Syl here. There is a big difference between a roofer and a gang banger drug runner or terrorist or whatever.

And please let us not get started on whether or not the fence has been funded. I remember when the appropriations bill was signed and Mickey Kaus {who is btw a Democrat} started yammering about how that did not mean anything because Bush had not signed the Fence Security Act and then when Bush signed the Fence Security Act we hear the same people complaining that is not enough and in the end the American voters pretty much said Oh shut up already, all you people do is bitch. And they are right.

I have no idea if this thing will end up being scuttle by the Democrats or not, but if the Republicans had been willing to come up with some kind of compromise when they had control of the Congress they might have had a lot more to say about it in the long run.

[capitano]

Then I realized Newt's ideas sounded the most effective and Biden's sounded the best for getting votes.

There you have the difference between Dems and Reps in a nutshell.

Posted by: Syl | February 21, 2007 at 09:49 PM

This was also evident during the intitial arguments over the non-binding resolution on the Iraq "Surge." The Dems were quite proud of their catchy slogans such as "this is the dog's bark; the bite will be the vote on the funding supplemental" while the Repubs were arguing the damage a loss in Iraq would cause the nation and the war on terror.

It almost always comes down to form over substance, short term vs. long term, symbolism over problem-solving... you get the picture.

Which reminds me, we haven't heard anything about the Confederate flag for some time or Hootie Johnson.

C'mon Dems, tee it up.

[Scher]

We need a gold medal from Congress Intelligence Committee!

[Feroz]

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Please Care to Reply SOON

[clarice]

Off Topic--Edward Jay Epstein has a very interesting piece in the WSJ today to the effect that the Spanish have found the 9/11 plot involved far more people and countries than the 9/11 Commission knew of. It seems the CIA info was almost exclusively derived from two of the detainees, the CIA did little independent investigation, and the Commission was not allowed to interview the detainees or the CIA interrogators.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009698>world wide plot, not a little self-contained folly

[ed in texas]

Reduced border crossing probably has more to do with residential construction tanking than an increase in security.
No job, no point in going.

[ed]

Hmmm.

1. Except for New Orleans. From all accounts New Orleans is probably going to end up the single most heavily illegal alien concentrated city in America.

2. Frankly if Republicans *had* done something substantial about illegal aliens when they had the majority in both houses of Congress and the White House, then they might still have some credibility on this issue.

But since they didn't, they don't.

3. Considering that there are plenty of reports of AQ trying to convert latinos to radical Islam and coordinate with latino criminal gangs operating in the US, then I'd say having an unsecure border is a pretty big deal.

And, as I have pointed out before, it's logically ridiculous to argue that the *Global* War on Terror is a big deal when there are such enormous efforts in not securing the borders.

So the two options are:

A. The GWOT is a bunch of overblown hyped up nonsense generated by a cynical GOP solely aimed at getting votes.

or

B. The GWOT is very real and the GOP is cynically not securing the borders because they've been bought by big business, don't give a real shit or don't think any sort of violent trouble will afflict them.

Your pick.

[steve]

There are some aspects of the migrant flow that are being overlooked:

1) The flow across the Mexican border has traditionally been substantially two-way. The lead anecdote in the NYT story was about a guy commuting once a year back and forth.

2) The level of illegal immigrants in the country at any one time is the net effect of inflow minus outflow.

3) Tightened border enforcement, to the extent it works, causes many of those already in the US to stay here rather than go home for a third or a half or two-thirds of a year.

4) Reduced catches at the border reflect BOTH those already on the Mexican side being deterred from crossing AND those now in the US who are deterred from going back to Mexico because they're afraid they won't be able to get back in.

5) If the goal is to reduce the stock of illegal immigrants and not merely the flow, tightened enforcement at the border, even if it works on its own terms, is a highly imperfect tool.

6) Reducing cross-border commuting should cause illegal immigrants in the US to put down stronger roots, as they return less frequently to their native land and culture. To the extent they assimilate, this might be a good thing. To the extent they start having more kids and using more public services, this might not be such a good thing.

7) Interior enforcement rather than border enforcement would be necessary to reduce the stock, and not just the flow, of illegal immigrants. But interior enforcement (aggressive raids on employers, mass deportations) would be unacceptable to a majority of the American public.

[ed]

Hmmmm.

@ steve

7) Interior enforcement rather than border enforcement would be necessary to reduce the stock, and not just the flow, of illegal immigrants. But interior enforcement (aggressive raids on employers, mass deportations) would be unacceptable to a majority of the American public.

Completely and utterly false.

1. verification

Make available a simple online web-based application that would allow a prospective employer to verify the legal status of a prospective worker.

-or-

Create a federal ID card that is freely available to any eligible worker that can be produced on demand by an employer who will then use the information on the card to verify the legal employment status with the federal government by using an online-application.

-or-

Use either of the two above methods but implemented using dedicated kiosks widely available in every single post office.

So if you're an employer and you find a prospective employee you'd like to hire then you ask for the federal ID card, take it and your new employee to the local post office and run the card through the card reader at the kiosk. Then the kiosk will ask the employee to press a finger onto the fingerprint reading plate and it will either verify status or present the user with a series of options.

Quick, easy. No muss, no fuss. No card, no work.

Make hiring anyone without such documentation, after suitable period of time available for it's distribution, a felony.

Modify IRS rules and the law so failing to pay FICA and/or SS by the employer a felony.

Modify IRS rules and the law so that using a fraudulent or someone else's federal ID, including the SSN, is a felony punishable by an automatic minimum 20 years in prison.

Make it easy to verify, but extremely painful to violate and the laws themselves, if properly enforced, will do the job.

...

As for raids and the like. The only reason why Americans are far more pissed off about this issue than they are now is because the federal government, along with activists, have been doing their damnedest to make sure that the American public remains unaware of the full impact of illegal aliens.

[steve]

The idea that you need to have an ID card to work is totalitarian. 99% of the people inconvenienced by this will be legal American workers and their employers. And the ability to deny someone the ability to work just by erasing them from a database is way too much power for the government to have--it's practically Soviet.

People who advocate this kind of thing always get excited by gee-whiz stuff like biometric ID. But it's all crap because the core databases used to verify someone are corrupt and easily penetrated. The original source documents--birth certificates, SSA cards, etc.--are almost naked to duplication and other forms of forgery and spoofing.

Worse, even a 0.1% false-positive rate will leave hundreds of thousands of legal workers caught in employment and legal limbo as they try to prove that they really belong here. Good luck getting that kind of misunderstanding straightened out in anything less than months, during which time it will be illegal for you to work.

Heightened enforcement--at the border or in the interior--only makes sense in conjunction with a policy that creates a lot more legal slots at the same time, in order to cut the problem down to size. The original Bracero program was implemented precisely to give the Border Patrol a fighting chance at enforcement, and it worked, although that isn't the course of action I would recommend today.

Hysteria about illegal immigration--and immigration in general--is not going to lead to better policy.