Old thinking on border security was on grand display today during a House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee hearing titled “Securing our Borders – Operational Control and the Path Forward.” Congress’ seemingly insatiable appetite for border enforcement does not seem to be assuaged by the reality at the border. Despite the record number of resources added to border enforcement over the past decade, the number of undocumented immigrants has risen to record levels. It has also created an unintended but real boon for the criminal cartels that now have a steady flow of migrants to smuggle into the U.S. But there are substantive and realistic efforts Congress can make to help secure the border.

The starkest example of old thinking at the hearing today came from Congressman Mike Rodgers of Alabama who asked Border Patrol Chief Michael J. Fisher the least thoughtful questions of the hearing. “What do you need to secure the border? What do you need to provide that rock solid prevention of illegal immigration?” Rodgers was clearly talking about money—how much money would CBP need. But the answer isn’t in monetary form. Congress has appropriated record amounts of money to personnel and technology at the border and the number of deportations has increased dramatically. But the only way to truly secure the border is to address the root causes of unauthorized immigration and other negative activity at the border.

In a publication today by researchers at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, Eric Olson and David Shirk discuss how record levels of spending on border security have, in fact, made our border less secure:

Concentrated enforcement at the border has not increased the net effectiveness of counter-drug or immigration-control efforts. Indeed, no matter where you stand on the debate on drugs or unauthorized immigration, nearly everyone agrees on one thing: no specific policy decision to beef up border security in the last 20 to 30 years has significantly reduced the flow of illicit drugs and people into the United States. The accumulation of 11 million undocumented immigrants—often at a rate of over 400,000 annually—has provided a testament to this failure.

Olson and Shirk disentangle the multiple missions at the border—drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and illegal immigration among them. They find that Congress appears most interested in immigration. In order to truly address border security, they recommend strategic deployment of personnel, improved intelligence sharing and law enforcement in cooperation with Mexican law enforcement, and comprehensive immigration reform that includes a legalization program that would bring otherwise law-abiding immigrants out of the shadows and onto the grid so workers can be deciphered from dangerous criminals. They write:

Rather than focus all our efforts on patrolling the border, security might be enhanced by redeploying U.S. resources and personnel on intelligence-based law-enforcement efforts. For example, rather than increasing outbound inspections to disrupt the trafficking of bulk cash, the U.S. should focus law-enforcement efforts on hub cities where traffickers gather and package cash to bring back to Mexico. Likewise, collaborative law-enforcement efforts that focus on illegal gun sales in high traffic areas near the border have resulted in more cases being referred for prosecution, and are more effective than costly and disruptive attempts to monitor border crossings.

Congress may persist with the unrealistic notion that we can build enough fences, erect enough technology and deploy enough officers, but we still won’t prevent or bring an end to illegal immigration with enforcement alone. Now that there are thoughtful alternatives being offered, it’s about time Congress took a realistic look at the border and begin work on sensible approaches to solving the problems at our southern border.

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Today, the newly re-named Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement held its first hearing on worksite enforcement, which, as expected, did not delve into important policy questions surrounding worksite enforcement. The Republican members of the subcommittee called on the usual suspects to minimize the Obama administration’s enforcement efforts, even though Deputy Director of ICE, Kumar Kibble, stated quite clearly that ICE has achieved record numbers of investigations, audits, fines, and deportations. One can’t help but wonder if subcommittee hardliners would be satisfied had the Administration’s enforcement numbers been doubled or even tripled. For that matter, after listening to the majority members, one wonders whether any amount of enforcement would be sufficient to meet their expectations.

Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the full Judiciary Committee who sat in the hearing ex officio, wasted no time in positioning worksite enforcement as a way to create jobs for Americans, even though there is ample evidence that deporting more immigrants will not open up those jobs to U.S. unemployed workers. Once again, Rep. Smith and the other members of the Immigration Reform Caucus posed as champions of the American worker even though their voting records clearly suggest otherwise.

While everyone is clearly concerned about the nation’s high unemployment level, Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) made the important point that “stepping on the gas” of increased immigration enforcement without comprehensively addressing the immigration system will destroy, not create, new jobs. This point was echoed by the minority witness, Dan Griswold of the CATO Institute.

“The real world economy doesn’t work that way,” he stated. “Low-skilled immigrants, whether legal or illegal, do not compete directly with the large majority of American workers. […] We cannot enforce our way out of unemployment. There is no casual relationship between inflows of immigration and higher overall unemployment in the U.S. economy.”

Unfortunately, other policy points and important voices were not raised at today’s hearing. Rather than argue about how many people are being deported, the time could have been used more constructively to discuss the need for effective, targeted worksite enforcement that focuses on employers who violate labor and employment laws and exploit immigrant workers, which hurt U.S. workers and law-abiding employers in the process.

Javier Morillo of SEIU stated the problem well:

“ICE is not targeting egregious, criminal employers. In fact, their actions are turning the federal government into an employment agency for the worst employers in the country. In the wake of audits, immigrant workers are pushed into the underground economy, exploited and paid under the table.”

Most importantly, worksite enforcement can only be truly effective if done in conjunction with comprehensive immigration reform—something President Obama alluded to in the State of the Union Address last night and Rep. Zoe Lofgren addressed in today’s hearing:

All the stats are up—number of people deported, spending more money on the border today than in the history of U.S., we have more men on the border than in the history of U.S.—but we have failed, as a Congress, to come to grips to reform the system so that it actually works for Americans. […] You can’t repeal the law of supply and demand. We have a situation that is chaotic when we need order.

Hopefully, future subcommittee hearings will focus on constructive debate—debate that moves the ball forward on larger policy solutions for our entire immigration system, not just the same enforcement-only approach over and over again.

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While some candidates continue to make political fodder out of immigration and border security on the campaign trail, administration officials are pushing Congress to get real about overhauling our broken immigration system. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner, Alan Bersin, recently commented that Congress needs to ‘get serious about a post-election immigration overhaul if the nation is to deal with the duality of enforcing border security while facilitating trade.’ In the wake of the nation’s SB1070-inspired border frenzy, some may be surprised to learn that there’s more to immigration than targeting undocumented immigrants and securing the border. A big part of Bersin’s job also involves regulating the flow of trade and commerce across the border, as well as expediting travel—priorities that tend to get lost in empty debate over who’s the toughest on undocumented immigration.

Last week at the Migration Policy Institute, border czar Alan Bersin commented that we need to expand the immigration debate beyond enforcement rhetoric to address other policy areas:

In truth, neither mass amnesty nor mass deportations will solve a problem that’s rooted in labor markets, which is why President Obama has shown a “fierce determination to stop kicking the can down the road” and supported a bipartisan proposal presented by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., last spring, as well as legislation (S 3932) Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced shortly before the pre-election recess.

These legislative proposals would take immigration to a place it failed to go after the 1986 overhaul (PL 99-603), which provided a path to citizenship but failed to confront illegal immigration, Bersin said. Since then, the immigration debate has centered on control and enforcement — a focus that magnified exponentially after Sept. 11, Bersin said. But, he added, enforcement and normalization cannot succeed without appropriate coordination with other policy.

Bersin’s comments echo what many immigration experts have been saying for months—that enforcement-first, border-only approach to immigration is not a winning strategy…that we need to overhaul our entire immigration system. Back in June, Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made similar statements regarding reform, border security, and trade:

The plain fact of the matter is the border is as secure now as it’s ever been… the notion that you’re going to somehow seal the border and only at that point will you discuss immigration reform, that is not an answer to the problem … recognizing also that there’s a lot of trade and commerce we want going back and forth.

Former DHS Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Policy, Stewart Verdery, also pointed out that securing the border is an elusive goal, and that without comprehensive immigration reform, we will never achieve the real objectives needed to end illegal immigration.

So what will the immigration narrative be like after mid-term elections? More of the same go-nowhere enforcement-only rhetoric which completely ignores other policy areas like commerce and trade? Or perhaps we can expect a more nuanced approach—one that looks at economic, labor-driven and administrative realities of our immigration system? If the last few months are any indicator, however, I’m not going to hold my breath.

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It was a week of broken dreams and empty promises for immigration reform. The failure of the Senate to take up the DREAM Act illustrated once again that good policy isn’t enough to make legislation work. And over on the House side, GOP members unveiled their “Pledge to America,” a pledge that promises, among other things, more of the same deportation-driven strategies for resolving our immigration crisis. Although the public appears to have an insatiable appetite for talking tough on illegal immigration, if cable shows and Tea Party candidates are your measure of the public taste, catering to the worst of the public’s instincts is not a strategy for the long run.

The immigration components of the pledge promise:

• Establish Operational Control of the Border: We must take action to secure our borders, and that action starts with enforcing our laws. We will ensure that the Border Patrol has the tools and authorities to establish operational control at the border and prohibit the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from interfering with Border Patrol enforcement activities on federal lands.

• Work with State and Local Officials to Enforce Our Immigration Laws: The problem of illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels engaged in an increasingly violent conflict means we need all hands on deck to address this challenge. We will reaffirm the authority of state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of all federal immigration laws.

• Strengthen Visa Security: To stop terrorists like Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, we will require the Department of Homeland Security to review all visa applications at high-risk consular posts and prevent aliens from attempting to avoid deportation after having their visas revoked.

The topline messages—secure operational control of the border, work with state and local officials to enforce the law, and strengthen visa security emphasize security, enforcement, and strength. The accompanying descriptions suggest that the Border Patrol doesn’t get the money to do its job, that undocumented immigrants and drug cartels are engaged in a bloody conflict that requires all “hands on deck”, and that the State Department isn’t doing enough to screen terrorists.

In other words, the pledge recycles and updates the same talking points that have driven an immigration enforcement agenda for a decade. The immigration pledge promises to maintain the status quo, which is not just disappointing, but shortsighted.

First of all, it’s not what the public wants on immigration. People want solutions that go beyond tough talk. Nor does it reflect the reality of our broken immigration system or the priorities currently in place. What exactly is “operational control” of the border? What exactly would that cost? Doesn’t the $600 million border package Congress passed just before it left for August recess suggest that the one thing Congress knows how to do is throw money at the border? The federal government has spent billions of dollars on border and interior enforcement over the last several years ($3.0 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 alone—a nine-fold increase since FY 1992). While the number of undocumented border crossings is currently down (due, in large part, to the economic recession), research indicates that the number is likely to increase as the economy recovers—which begs the question, when will the border ever be secure enough to enact comprehensive immigration reform?

All hands on deck? Unless this suggests that the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are going to be pressed into service, it’s hard to imagine how many more ways the federal and state/local systems can become more intertwined. States and localities already work with the federal government to enforce our immigrations laws through programs like
Secure Communities, 287(g) agreements, Criminal Alien Program, Fugitive Operations Teams, and E-Verify.

But by mentioning “Mexican drug cartels” and illegal immigrants in the same breath, it’s clear that the “Pledge to America” has something else in mind. Support for new state and local enforcement laws, like Arizona’s controversial SB1070, seems to be the real innovation here. (Never mind that such laws undermine federal enforcement priorities, place a strain on scant state resources, and are increasingly found to be unconstitutional.)

Our immigration system is far more complex than most people realize and yet most people also understand that enforcement alone is not enough. A systematic overhaul of our immigration system—one that includes legalization for the roughly 11 million people already here, a reduction in immigration backlogs that keep families apart, a flexible and fair system for bringing in new workers, and reasonable enforcement—would create a solid base on which to build an immigration system that helps the country succeed in the 21st century. While parading enforcement-only around as a solution may stir the conservative base, it does nothing to solve the multi-faceted problems within the immigration system.

In a week that began with Senate Republicans complaining that the Democrats were playing politics with the military in order to pass the DREAM Act, House Republicans showed that they were equally capable of playing politics with immigration. As usual, this meant relying on tired rhetoric and a pledge to increase enforcement, without any concern for the consequences.

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The Republican Party primaries in Arizona may be over, but the anti-immigrant demagoguery upon which the winning candidates built their campaigns is unlikely to fade away anytime soon. Governor Jan Brewer and Senator John McCain both managed to reverse their declining political fortunes in large part by raising the phantom specter of immigrant violence—a cynical tactic they are likely to repeat in the midterm elections. For instance, both trumpeted the discredited claim that Phoenix is the number two kidnapping capital of the world after Mexico City, and portrayed their various and sundry proposals to “get tough” on unauthorized immigrants as sincere efforts to save Arizonans from kidnappers and other violent criminals.

What Brewer and McCain neglected to mention in their campaign rhetoric, however, is that unauthorized immigrants are the primary victims of the kidnappings that do occur. As Terry Greene Sterling describes in her book Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone, most of the kidnapping victims in Phoenix are unauthorized immigrants held for ransom by the smugglers (coyotes) they hire to bring them to the United States. These are “drop house” kidnappings in which “incoming migrants at the border are baited with low smuggling fares. Those low fares are ramped up by thousands of dollars once the migrants are held at gunpoint in a drop house.” Such “drop house” kidnappings are distinct from “home invasion” kidnappings, “in which kidnappers abduct rich individuals, like drug dealers or human smugglers, or their family members.”

Brewer and McCain are also apparently unaware of the fact that rates for both property crime and violent crime (including murder, assault, and rape) have fallen in Arizona in recent years, including in the state’s three largest cities: Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa. Moreover, crime rates in Arizona border towns have remained flat for the past decade despite the surge in unauthorized immigration. And a 2008 report from the conservative Americas Majority Foundation found that crime rates in general are lowest in states with the highest immigration growth rates, including Arizona.

The truth which Brewer and McCain seem so determined to ignore is that unauthorized immigrants have been driven into the waiting arms of both smugglers and kidnappers by more than a decade and a half of failed border-enforcement initiatives which have been implemented in the absence of immigration reform. Were Congress and the White House to actually reform our immigration system to match reality, unauthorized immigration would slow to a trickle, the market for people smugglers would dry up, and kidnappers would no longer have a large pool of vulnerable immigrants to hold for ransom.

Of course, were that to happen, politicians such as Brewer and McCain could no longer score political points by crowing about kidnapping without mentioning who is actually being kidnapped—or why. Given their successful use of such fear-mongering in the primaries, however, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

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