lllegal immigration and broken borders
Forget the weapons of mass destruction and the mess in Iraq, Bush's domestic spying program, Bush administration incompetence and the coming the hurricane season, former spy Valerie Plame and Bush administration dirty tricks or even the mountains of debt the country has accumulated during the Bush administration. America's hot button issues right now are the twin problems of illegal immigration and broken borders and what to do about them.
Last March 30, the Senate began to debate the issues. It's about time. The US has an illegal immigrant population that could be as high as 12 million, a number that, if correct, would give the US an immigrant population the size of the state of Ohio. The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates that 500,000 immigrants cross into the US illegally every year and that about 78,000 of them come from countries of special concern in the War on Terrorism.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The big question is how many of them are terrorists of the al Qaeda mold? Nobody knows, making the US control of its border a joke that can have serious consequences.
Several sources noted that the terrorists have many ways to enter the US, such as getting across the equally porous US-Canada border and even speed boating to shore off the US coast, as Colombian drug traffickers liked to do in Florida in the 1980s. But they acknowledged no smuggling route has as many human trafficking possibilities with an Islamic terrorist potential as does the US-Mexico border. "It's a hopeless situation," one DOJ official admitted candidly. It's like trying to keep people out of your backyard without putting a fence around it."
A DEA official agreed. "We hear a lot about Mexican nationals dying in the desert trying to get into the US," he explained. "But in some places you can actually walk across the US-Mexican border. Every day I see truckloads of illegals being transported back to the Mexican side, and all we hearing from our politicians in Washington is a lot of tough talk."
Are any of the illegals who manage to evade capture and deportation Islamic terrorists? Law enforcement officials admit that they have no clue.
Most the people who sneak across the US border illegally are not bad people with bad intentions. Most do so because of economic reasons. They want to use the "land of opportunity" to create better life for themselves and their families. Still, many foreigners don't want to break the law and are willing to play by the rules and patiently wait in line to enter the country legally, even though the line has gotten slower and longer since 9-11.
An American would have to be a total recluse not to encounter illegal immigrants in his daily life. They are the ones that take many of the jobs that Americans find don't pay enough or are beneath them. I know several illegals, including one who has been in the US for eight years, and has a nice family and a good job managing a restaurant.
The supporters of illegal immigrants say that, in addition to meeting the labour needs of the US economy, they pay billions in taxes and support the economy as consumers. But there is a downside, too. Illegals also drain the country's resources, especially in the areas of education and health care. Also, when an illegal commits a crime, it's often impossible to finds them, let alone punish them.
Even with the sound and the fury on Capital Hill, no real consensus exists about how to reform the immigration and broken border issues. Options proposed include a guest worker program, amnesty for those illegal immigrants already her and building a wall along the US-Mexican border, for starters. A house bill passed last December would even make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant. It's a stupid measure. Thanks, to our equally stupid and draconian drug laws, we already have the world's highest prison population.
Not much is being said or proposed about punishing Big Business, which uses and often exploits illegal immigration, and, which by doing so, is helping to drive down the wages of working class Americans. Big business's powerful lobby is hard at work on Capital Hill to get the immigration law "reformed" so it can use the changes for their economic gain.
George Bush, Jr. supports a foreign guest worker programme that would put millions of illegal immigrants on track towards permanent residency and US citizenship. The problem is that congressional guest worker plans differ radically on such issues as who should they cover, whether the workers must return to their home countries and when and whether they should be put on a path towards US citizenship. Moreover, some proposed guest worker plans are incompatible, and a lot of politicking will be necessary to get a satisfactory compromise passed in Congress.
But, in reality, a guess worker plan would do little, if anything, to fix the country's broken borders. It will not include everyone, so people will not suddenly stop entering the country illegally. Border security will remain a joke, although we America won't be laughing.