Will America have borders again?
November 30, 2005 | By The Heritage Foundation
Washington is finally listening.
After several false starts this year, it seems America may finally be making baby steps towards real immigration and border security reform.
Real reform would respect the rule of law, promote economic growth and encourage legal immigration and patriotic assimilation. Such a plan would include internal enforcement of immigration laws, international cooperation to stop illegal immigration at its source and improved border security.
This year, lawmakers have shown reluctance to take a stand in favor of border security.
- In early summer, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) proposed a flawed “reform” that would create incentives for illegal immigration
- Another bill, introduced by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Kyl (R-AZ) improved on the Kennedy-McCain bill but still would have benefited those who broke the law over those who followed it
- In October, the Senate considered a proposal to allow worker visas not used in one year to be “recaptured” by businesses and used in another year, increasing the flexibility of legal immigration programs. A version of the plan passed the Senate in early November, but failed in the House.
But the past several weeks have seen marked improvement.
- Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would put a new focus on securing America’s borders with the Secure Border Initiative. This program would beef up enforcement both at the frontier and within our borders, eliminating many loopholes that illegal aliens now exploit
- And on Monday, President Bush outlined a border security proposal that addresses many of the key problems with the current system
The President's plan
The plan President Bush announced on Monday would go a long way towards solving America’s border security problems, as Heritage’s James Carafano and Matthew Spalding explain.
The President’s program would:
- End “catch and release,” requiring that individuals arrested for being unlawfully present should never be released before a judicial hearing determines whether they should be deported
- Prohibit amnesty for lawbreakers. The President warned that he will veto any legislation that grants amnesty to individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States
- Provide legal alternatives to illegal immigration, allowing employers to efficiently, effectively and securely get the workers they need
- Ensure that any temporary work programs would be truly temporary and not evolve into permanent visas
- Enhance border security through increased enforcement of immigration law
How to secure our borders
The President’s plan, though, misses an important point.
While he is right that more enforcement is needed, it is not Border Patrol staffing that is broken but the entire border enforcement scheme.
Heritage’s James Carafano wrote on Monday that while Homeland Security is appropriately adding a new emphasis to border security, the department needs to fundamentally re-think how it secures the border.
The current system of “layered defenses” simply does not work, he explained. Each layer has too many security holes to be effective.
Instead, Heritage recommends that:
- DHS should create a “system of systems” whereby scarce resources can be directed to where they’re needed when they’re needed, allowing much-needed flexibility
- Improvements should be made first to land border security, since those are the most congested and most subject to disruption
- To make these changes, Congress and DHS must re-think their priorities and work to eliminate enforcement bottlenecks and improve flexibility
Heritage Foundation members support rule of law
This fall, The Heritage Foundation polled its 200,000 members on immigration issues.
The response was overwhelmingly in favor of the rule of law.
- 99 percent said an amnesty program would encourage more illegal immigration
- 98 percent said immigration policy should not reward law-breakers
For complete survey results, check out MyHeritage.org this Friday.
Other border security proposals
Some have proposed that the military guard the borders or that America build a fence along the length of the US-Mexico border. But while these may sound like good solutions, they would be prohibitively expensive and ultimately less effective than a more comprehensive plan.
Heritage’s James Carafano wrote earlier this year that “in practice, internal enforcement policies and programs, followed by working with point-of-origin and transit countries, probably offer a greater return on investment” than interdiction at the border.
In other news
- President Bush said today that Iraqi soldiers are increasingly taking over for American troops in the battle against the terrorists. This is just what Ambassador Evan Galbraith and Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told Heritage on Monday.
- Two days after agreeing with The Heritage Foundation about Iraq, The New York Times breaks more ground by admitting the economy is doing well: “By most measures, the economy appears to be doing just fine. No, scratch that, it appears to be booming.”
Of course, the Times uses the strong economy as a warning about how bad things could get: the economy might “only” grow at a rate of 3.2 or 3.5 percent next year. So if Washington heeds the Times’ repeated and misguided calls for tax hikes, would the paper report that the resulting economic downturn indicates how good things could be? - House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has instructed that the Capitol Holiday Tree be renamed the Capitol Christmas Tree. The 65-foot spruce has been called the Holiday Tree since the 1990s
