The leaking southern border.

The act of leaving one's home and moving to another country to begin again under new circumstances involves a good deal of self-selection that, on average, infuses the recipient country with people with high levels of courage, imagination, optimism, and ambition. I believe this is true whether the immigrants are from Germany or Ireland, China or Guatemala, Haiti or India. It is undeniable that the character of the United States has been shaped by these and other traits of the immigrants who have been the fuel of our social and economic engine - to our great benefit.

As a separate matter I am concerned about the widening gap between what is in our immigration laws and 'official' practices and what actually occurs. Unenforced laws and the too often contradictory practices of immigration authorities, voter registration systems, personal identification systems, tax and social welfare systems - all tend to corrupt these and related stystems. I believe that is the central issue here, not the immigration itself.

We need to simplify and rationalize our law, procedures and practices in this matter. It is possible to do this in a way that preserves our generally welcoming approach to immigration, and which appropriately filters out serious health, security or other like problems, while preserving the integrity of the processes by which we register voters, collect taxes, and operate social welfare programs.

georgeob is absolutely right; our government is too inconsistent in how they handle illegal immigration. On the one hand, they continue to assure us that the primary responsibility of the government is to secure our borders to ensure our safety, and on the other, they do absolutely nothing to enforce existing laws on illegal immigration. Even state and local government are inconsistent; some states are considering giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses to drive on our roads - which also happens to be used for identificaiton purposes. Screwy heh?

U.S. radar could track border crossers



Phoenix, AZ, Mar. 16 (UPI) -- A radar system that can track people on foot could some day be deployed to detect illegal immigrants along the border between the United States and Mexico.

The Arizona Republic said Wednesday Arizona's congressional delegation and the Department of Homeland Security have been lobbying for funds to give the military radar system to the Border Patrol.

The radar has been tested at the Goldwater bombing range in Arizona as a means of keeping trespassers, most of them illegal immigrants, out of harm's way.

The system can pick up an individual 3 miles away or a vehicle 10 miles out, track them and relay the information to a camera system that can zoom in on the target.

Members of Congress told the Republic possible terrorist infiltration make it more urgent to beef up surveillance of the border and want the radar included in the $53 million America's Shield program that will fund an overall upgrade of border surveillance capabilities.

An aside, because I just read about that:

In the later 19th/early 20th century, especially Jewish immigrants didn't find a friendly wellcome: they were thought to be working against union regulated wages and to take away jobs from other workers, were used as strikebreakers etc
Thus, union leaders and other worker representatives started campaigns to stop immigration - and Jewish workers suddenly were in the same boat with the industrial magnates, who even wanted more immigration, especially of (cheap) unorganised workers Jewish (source:Tichenor, Daniel J.: Dividing Lines - The Politics of Immigration Control in America, Princeton 2002 - quoted in: Hofmeester, Karin: Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement. A Comparative Study of Amsterdam, London and Paris, 1870-1914, Ashgate, 2004)

Walter
No large scale migration to the US has ever been welcomed with open arms. Not the Irish, or Italians or eastern European Jews.

Flow of Illegal Immigrants to U.S. Unabated



Mexicans Make Up Largest Group; D.C. Area Numbers Up 70 Percent Since 2000

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 22, 2005; Page A02



Despite tighter border enforcement and a post-Sept. 11, 2001, economic slump, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has continued to grow steadily, with many moving into states that traditionally have small foreign-born populations, according to a new report released yesterday.

Based on Census Bureau and other government data, the Pew Hispanic Center, a private research group in Washington, estimated the number of undocumented immigrants at 10.3 million as of last March, an increase of 23 percent from the 8.4 million estimate in 2000. More than 50 percent of that growth was attributable to Mexican nationals living illegally in the United States, the report said.
Most of the overall growth has been in states that previously had small foreign-born populations, including Arizona and North Carolina, as well as the Washington metropolitan area.

The combined population of illegal immigrants in Maryland, Virginia and the District increased almost 70 percent from an estimated 300,000 in 2000 to about 500,000 in 2004, said demographer Jeffrey S. Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center.

The reason, he said, is simple. "What drives the growth in immigrant populations in general is employment opportunities," Passel said, especially in fields that do not require formal education. Specifically, Passel cited the booming construction industry in Virginia, Maryland and the District; the service industry in Washington; and poultry processing plants on the Eastern Shore.

The report comes on the eve of a mini-summit in Texas tomorrow during which President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin are scheduled to discuss immigration, among other topics.

Pew Hispanic Center Director Roberto Suro said that the number of illegal immigrants continues to grow at the same rate as in the 1990s -- approximately 485,000 a year -- "despite significant efforts by the government to try to restrain the flow . . . at the border."

Mexicans remain the largest group of illegal migrants, at 5.9 million or about 57 percent of the March 2004 estimate, the report said. An additional 24 percent or 2.5 million undocumented immigrants are from other Latin American countries. Assuming the flow into the country has not changed since a year ago, the population of undocumented immigrants could number nearly 11 million today, the report said.

Of particular note, said Suro and Passel, was the growth of large undocumented populations in states other than those with traditionally large foreign-born populations, such as California, Texas, Florida and New York. Joining those states in 2002 were Arizona, with an estimated 500,000 illegal migrants, and North Carolina, with 300,000. There are now six states that each have an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 undocumented immigrants, including Maryland and Virginia, Suro said.

The size, age and national origins of the undocumented population were derived by subtracting the estimated legal immigrant population from the total foreign-born population.

Undocumented immigrants are defined as those who are in the United States illegally or who have remained in the country on expired visas, as well as a small percentage of those who only have legal authorization to be in the United States, such as those with temporary protected status and those seeking asylum.

The numbers in the Pew report came as no surprise to immigration advocacy groups, some of whom have issued similar estimates in the past four months.

"It's clear that America's lost control of its border," said Steven Camarota, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter immigration controls. "The problem is that once we all agree we have this enormous problem, then what to do about it is something we can't agree on. When you can't agree on the benefits and costs of a program, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to formulate any kind of a policy."

Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, which favors a plan to legalize illegal immigrants, said the continued growth of that population simply shows that current immigration policy "is broken."

"It's dysfunctional. How we go about fixing it is the big question," she said.


Do people still believe the myth that these people are only taking jobs that Americans will not?

I certainly don't. But I also believe that's not the point, given that immigrants (legal or not) are not net destroyers of American jobs. To a good approximation, each income earned by a Mexican in the United States destroys one American job, and each income spent by a Mexican in the United States creates an American job. Everything considered, immigration is a wash in terms of the number of jobs available to Americans. (For the small complication created by Mexicans who send their money home, see our discussion from a few pages back.)

In this morning's San Jose Mercury News, there's an article about illegal immigration, and most now reside in California.

The notorious crime syndicate Mara Salvatrucha is threatening Arizona's Project Minuteman and reportedly plans to teach it "a lesson" once the Minutemen begin fanning out along Arizona's border regions this weekend. This probably was not the bedfellow that President Bush, the U.S. Border Patrol and the American Civil Liberties Union were counting on when they began criticizing the civilian border-surveillance group in recent weeks. But the president, law enforcement officers and activist groups have unintentionally ended up on the same side of the issue as a violent criminal gang targeted by coordinated raids just two weeks ago.
 It is not hard to see why Mara Salvatrucha prefers the border status quo. The gang stems from a town in El Salvador named La Mara and salvatruchas means guerrillas. The gang grew from Salvadoran refugees in California in the 1980s into one of the largest criminal syndicates in North America, with as many as 20,000 members in the United States and branches throughout Mexico, Central America and Canada. Mara Salvatrucha is among the most successful smugglers of drugs, weapons and people across the U.S.-Mexico border.
    It's ruthless, too: When federal authorities arrested more than 100 gang members two weeks ago in Operation Community Shield -- spanning New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Baltimore Miami, Dallas and elsewhere -- more than half of the suspects had prior arrests or convictions for murder, assault, arson, weapons offenses or charges of drug possession. Mara Salvatrucha has reportedly issued "green lights" to kill police officers in Virginia and Maryland. Such a criminal enterprise -- which, we point out, is the largest criminal syndicate in the Washington area -- benefits greatly from lax border security and under-funding of the U.S. Border Patrol.
    Thus, it is clear that Project Minuteman threatens to complicate things for its smuggling and law-breaking operations. Project Minuteman's 1,000 or more observers will likely be able to spot the gangsters as they attempt to cross into Arizona. They will be able to report on suspected criminal activity involving illegal border-crossings and point the Border Patrol toward the worst offenses. Some of the Minutemen with valid licenses will be armed. The Minutemen have been instructed to holster their weapons and not to confront any suspected lawbreakers. Their only purpose is to spot offenders and report them to the Border Patrol.
    But Mara Salvatrucha may well do its best to force them to react otherwise, given the stakes for a criminal enterprise like Mara Salvatrucha and its violent record inside the United States.
    Two key lessons here are that criminal enterprises benefit from lax enforcement and that ordinary citizens protest when the federal government fails them.
    That hasn't been the refrain thus far. In fact, critics of the Minutemen have mostly avoided talking about groups like Mara Salvatrucha and have instead distorted the facts to accuse Project Minuteman of breaking the law. Mr. Bush was wrong last week to call the Minutemen "vigilantes." The Minutemen are not a lynch mob.
    Mexican President Vicente Fox has played the xenophobia card by referring to the Minutemen as "migrant-hunting groups." The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona erroneously stated the Minutemen will "attempt to enforce federal immigration law." In fact, the Minutemen have repeatedly stated they are neither hunters nor law enforcers, and that duly constituted government authorities are the only rightful enforcers of the law.
    Project Minuteman still has both public opinion and the law firmly on its side. Public-opinion data on illegal immigration regularly shows strong support for tougher laws on, and tougher enforcement of, illegal immigration. If only Mr. Bush and Congress would address that agenda.

The Congress just passed legislation on illegal immigrants who are taking jobs away from the poor in the US who would fill those jobs. It's supposed to take effect on January 1, 2006.

Au defended the Arizona Minutemen.

I'm speechless.

I heard someone say the other day that they aren't illegal lawmen, but that they were undocumented border agents!

-fbaezer wrote


Was there ever any doubt? Someone should defend our borders. It is evident that the Govt does not care to.

Right, under the command of a certain Captain Lynch.

Why don't these people just keep their dayjob and donate to the professional borderguards?

Einherjar wrote


Their taxes already do that however, it does not buy them diddly squat. The government needs that money to protect, interfere with and support the rest of the world.

I just think an accountant would get border guarded by accounting, and then boosting the budget of the official borderguards than he would by arming himself and go hiking. Guess it would be less scenic though.

Anyway, contributions to government programmes ought to be tax deductable.

Einherjar
Am I expected to solve the riddle you posted?

You didn't see the humor? People tell me I'm funny all the time, sorry you guys here don't get to see it that often.

Baldimo

Don't quit your day job. :wink: