The Fallacies of Border Security and Immigration Reform

Border security is a powerful argument branded by immigration critics. Even those who embrace immigration tend to make reform conditional to securing borders.

The immigration bill approved by the Senate is a perfect example. The first section is dedicated to border security and the third [section] to the internal application of the law. The project has more funds and bureaucracy for this purpose, and it makes the long transition towards permanent residency for undocumented immigrants conditional to arresting 90 percent of those that try to sneak into the country.

One of the problems with making a conditional connection between border security (a legitimate worry) and immigration, is that here “security” can refer to many different things: the principle that recently arrived [immigrants] breaking the law is unacceptable, and the threat of terrorism.

The U.S. government has started tightening border protection and the means for enforcing the law for decades. The pardon signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986 demanded such measures; reinforcing controls and compliance with the law is also a reason many temporary Mexican immigrants decided to remain in this country under the Clinton administration in the ’90s. President Obama spent $8 billion strengthening border security last year with the help of 21,000 members of the border patrol, sophisticated technology and a fence hundreds of kilometers long. An obvious reflection of changing perceptions, immigration, once a topic for the Department of Labor and the Justice Department, now finds itself in the area of Homeland Security.

This has not been enough to deter illegal immigration. The disconnect between the law and reality in general allows for [the existence of] black markets. This has been the case regarding immigration. Ironically, the market has been a better regulator than the authorities; due to economic conditions, net immigration went down to zero between 2005 and 2010. This doesn’t mean that people have stopped coming. Precisely because the efforts of various decades to strengthen controls have not been effective, in the last four years another 700,000 people have added themselves to the list of illegals. The evidence demands a system that connects supply and demand in a more realistic way.

Approximately half of those who try to sneak in are arrested. Is it realistic to think that the system will be capable of capturing 90 percent? No. A country’s obligation to respect the rule of law and fight terrorism cannot depend on its capacity to seal borders and force compliance with police state controls, which is what the security-based approach of some critics of immigration would mean if brought to its logical conclusion. Can a country accustomed to receiving an average of 60 million overwhelmingly documented visitors who abide by the law close its borders without endangering the same rule of law that it defends, [as well as] its economy and its relationship with the rest of the world?

A recurring argument posits that terrorist attacks on U.S. soil demonstrate that security is a fundamental topic in relation to immigration. This is a distracting maneuver, since the attacks implied failure of intelligence and basic law and order. Of the approximately 6 million visas issued each year by the U.S., a very small minority are potentially problematic. What’s going to stop consulates from issuing visas to terrorists, or anticipating an attack if they obtain one, is not an immigration policy but a counterterrorism policy.

Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks, had had contacts with terrorist organizations for years but [authorities] let him return to the United States in spite of having stayed longer than the time permitted by his tourist visa.

A third of the 48 members of al-Qaida that committed crimes in the U.S. between 1993 and 2001 were residents or citizens, while the remaining third held visas. They obtained them by virtue of the fact that the countries in which their travels began were not part of the nations listed as terrorist sympathizers. In a world where terrorism is a moving target, every country is a potential source. For example, how could one million border agents and a small fee that allows foreigners to travel and live in the U.S. have stopped these people from arriving or obtaining residency or citizenship?

Even converting America to a fort would not have avoided the Boston Marathon attack, since the perpetrators were raised in this country. Once again, this was a failure of intelligence, and law and order: One of the terrorists had even been interrogated by the FBI. They weren’t linked to terrorist organizations and they developed their radical beliefs in the United States. Is it reasonable to hope that immigration policy can anticipate who will develop radical anti-American beliefs decades after establishing themselves in this country? Could immigration policy prevent someone from learning to build an explosive on the Internet?

Without a doubt, a flexible and realistic immigration policy that doesn’t generate illegal entries into the country is a better way to assure that the whole world acts according to the law, and aid counterterrorism policy in separating the respectable wheat from the terrorist chaff.