The “Border Security” Canard

By John Richards

When discussing comprehensive immigration reform, which most people, whether on the left or the right, agree is desperately needed, anti-immigrant politicians and pundits often say that no action can be taken on reforming our mess of an immigration system until the border is secured, and existing immigration laws are enforced to their satisfaction.

They rarely bother to define what security and enforcement measures they would find satisfactory. They have, however, become more vocal in their ultimatum: improve border security and immigration enforcement, or forget about getting any type of immigration reform through Congress.

If the statistics from the last few years are any indication, however, one has to wonder how sincere this ultimatum is. It seems that 2010 was a banner year for the “more enforcement” crowd: deportations of undocumented immigrants and company audits were near an all-time high, President Obama sent over 1,000 National Guard troops to the border with Mexico, and Arizona (a state that has placed itself at the forefront of the immigration fight) saw record numbers of immigrants located in that state deported from the U.S.

Despite all this, (mostly) Republican lawmakers are able, without much effort, to perpetuate the meme that Obama is “soft” on immigration. Every new enforcement effort is met with the same criticism: “this is just a token effort from an administration that isn’t serious about the problem of illegal immigration, and won’t be nearly enough to win our support for moving forward on comprehensive [or even incremental] immigration reform.” And they can even get significant public support for draconian anti-immigrant measures, such as Arizona’s new immigration law, and even proposals to repeal the 14th Amendment.

It’s almost as if some Republicans are opposed to immigration as such, and therefore don’t really mind that our current system is such a bureaucratic mess that it can take decades for a person to come to this country legally, and have no incentive to expend any political capital on a reform effort which, even in the best of times, would have a lot of interests pulling at it from every direction, and is likely to be extremely controversial. This tactic has the added bonus of demonizing the opposing party, and giving the person using it an easy out when they’re accused of inaction on this important issue.

Furthermore, the fact that it’s impossible for many people to come to the U.S. legally within a reasonable period of time means that many will opt to come here illegally (people from all over the world do still want to come to this country to make better lives for themselves, a fact that should make us proud, not scare us). While the negative economic impact of illegal immigration is extremely overblown by immigration opponents (and the net economic impact of undocumented workers is likely positive), they’re largely an invisible, voiceless group. That makes it very easy for immigration opponents to turn them into bogeymen.

This, in turn, creates a perpetual political issue that can be used to stir up the political base of a candidate or party. Given the wave of paranoia and nativism that seems to have swept this country in the last few years (people are, without irony, calling for a repeal of the 14th Amendment), this tactic seems to be working. Obviously, the simple solution to this is a more educated and informed electorate, but that’s far easier said than done. “Simple” is not the same as “easy,” after all.

However, a better-informed electorate would, at least in theory, see through these cheap political tactics, and support comprehensive immigration reform. Now, I personally think immigration reform should be undertaken, first and foremost, with the goal of making it easier to come to the U.S. legally for ordinary people.

This would make it cheaper and easier to keep out people who should be kept out (people with a history of violent crime, connections to terrorism, etc.), while allowing honest, hardworking people who (like 95.5% of the people in the world) didn’t have the fortune of being born in the United States to try and make a better life for themselves here, without having to spend 20 years navigating a bureaucratic nightmare, or being treated like a criminal.

John Richards is a writer for the LegalMatch.com Law Blog and LegalMatch.com.