Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jan 2006
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Section: Nation Digest
Copyright: 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Neal Peirce, Syndicated columnist

MANAGING OUR BORDERS

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.

Now President Bush keeps on reminding us we're in a third war -- on 
terror. The 9/11 attack means the peril is real; few question a need 
for intensive intelligence and protective measures. But does the word 
"war" mean we're supposed to favor the U.S. attack on Iraq, 
Guantanamo Bay incarceration without due process, "rendition" of 
suspects for torture in foreign countries, and now warrantless spying 
on Americans?

There are two metaphors for the America we want, says Manuel Pastor, 
professor of the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at the 
University of California-Santa Cruz: "One is the metaphor of war in 
Iraq, on terrorism, on drugs, on immigration. The other is the Statue 
of Liberty, America as the beacon of light and opportunity for all 
who play by the rules."

Today's rules, Pastor and others note, create a Catch-22 for would-be 
migrants responding to the United States' immense appetite for 
low-cost labor. Either they apply for legal entry and face years of 
bureaucratic delay, or they enter illegally, manage to get work and 
income for their often impoverished families, but face deportation if 
they're apprehended.

We do need rational immigration policy that controls the flows over 
our borders, says Pastor: There's "concern whether our labor markets 
can absorb unlimited numbers, whether we can assimilate politically 
and culturally and socially all who want to come."

What we need, he argues, is a realistic debate about such issues as 
guest-worker programs and possible amnesty for workers already here 
- -- "approaches that don't tear apart our moral character."

Too often missing, Pastor adds, are complementary steps to integrate 
new immigrants -- adequate English classes, better job training, 
helping parents get involved with their children's schools -- "steps 
that benefit everyone, lifting up our human capital and our 
productivity as a society."

The issue is "close up and personal for me," says Pastor: His own 
father came to the U.S., undocumented, in the 1930s; in World War II 
he chose the U.S. Army over deportation. "A generation later, his son 
is a full professor at the University of California."

The reminder is apt: With the exception of Native Americans, all our 
families came to these shores as immigrants, with motives no more 
exalted than those of today's low-income migrants clamoring to get 
across our southern border.

Of course it's grossly impractical for us to accept any and all 
migrants from across a poverty-scarred globe. But does that mean that 
we can employ boundless force and fear and successfully stop 
migrants? Or really believe the stiff penalties on employers who hire 
undocumented workers, incorporated in the new House bill, will ever 
be enforced?

Retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican and expert on 
immigration and border issues, has it right when he says the House 
bill will just "throw words and money at the problem."

Radically fresh thinking is critically needed. Let's just make sure 
it's not about another war.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman