Monday, January 09, 2006

Managing our borders

This opinion piece tells the Catch-22 we and immigrants are in now. The war on terror, businesses needing workers, no way to get into this country legally, the need for reform or to enforce the laws we have, people complaining about illegal immigrants. On and on and on. DP

Neal Peirce / Syndicated columnist
The Seattle Times: Hundreds of new Border Patrol and immigration agents. Gigantic, double-layer steel fences along the California and Arizona borders. Infrared and daylight cameras. Stadium lighting. A new surveillance drone. Expanded detention facilities.

Call it force and fear — America's military formula for immigration control, embodied in legislation the House of Representatives passed in December. The get-tough House Republicans who pushed the bill said they're dead-set against the balance of a guest-worker program, a measure that President Bush and most reformers now favor (and the Senate will soon be debating).

If the House's punitive, military-style response were but an exception, a quick and alarmed response to the flood of 11 million illegal entrants into the U.S., it might be condoned. But it's not; since 1990 we've quadrupled our border agents and installed big amounts of high-tech detention technology — only to see the flood of undocumented migrants increase. The House bill boils down to an ugly war on undocumented immigrants.

It's not our only war. Since the '70s, our vaunted "war on drugs" has failed to make any dent in illegal substance use, even while making trade in drugs ultra-profitable and creating incentive for inner city blocks to turn into criminal hellholes.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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