The Myth of the Insecure Border

What Newt Gingrich said in the last Republican debate regarding the need to legalize a group of undocumented immigrants in the United States is not new.

He said it to me before, last May, in an interview for Univisión. But now, with Gingrich leading in the polls, everybody — including the seven other Republican presidential candidates — is paying attention to his proposal to treat undocumented immigrants in a humane fashion.

This is welcome. It was past time for Republican candidates to face up to the immigration issue. They couldn’t keep avoiding it and giving excuses much longer.

During that interview, Gingrich greeted me in Spanish — he’s taking classes and has a website for Hispanic Americans, TheAmericano.com — and told me that a gradual immigration strategy should be adopted, step by step, because there aren’t enough votes in Congress to approve a reform offering U.S. citizenship to undocumented immigrants.

And in the last debate, Gingrich was more specific. “If you’ve been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church,” explained the ex-Congress leader, “I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.”

This is what many call the third way. It’s not the first way, favored by President Barack Obama and many Democrats, which would legalize most undocumented immigrants and give them U.S. citizenship.

Neither is it the second way, of the most radical Republicans, that proposes the expulsion from the country of all foreigners without residency documents.

What Gingrich proposes is a middle way: Some undocumented immigrants, not all, would be able to stay here, but they wouldn’t be U.S. citizens nor be able to vote. Nevertheless this, especially for immigrants that live in states like Alabama, Arizona or North Carolina, is much better than living with persecution and discrimination.

But as soon as Gingrich opened the immigration debate, the other candidates — with the notable exception of Jon Huntsman, who favors a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — were all over him, saying his proposal was equivalent to “amnesty.” Let’s not forget that this is a dirty word for many Republicans, despite the fact that a Republican whom many of them admire, Ronald Reagan, gave amnesty to three million undocumented immigrants in 1986. But all Republicans, including Gingrich, want a secure border first. What they don’t say is that the border between Mexico and the United States is now more secure than ever. They don’t need to tell me so — I was just there.

The almost 15 miles that separate Tijuana, Mexico, from San Ysidro, California have two fences, movement sensors, lighting like that of a football stadium, and hundreds of agents on patrol. It’s practically impassable. I saw it during a visit with agents of the Border Patrol.

Of course the almost 2,000 miles of border between the two countries do not have the same type of vigilance, but the numbers indicate that the crossing of undocumented immigrants to the north has dramatically reduced. In 2000, more than 1.6 million immigrants were arrested trying to enter; that number fell to no more than 300,000 in 2010.

Furthermore, deportations have increased. Barack Obama has deported more undocumented immigrants than any other president in history (more than 1.2 million) and the effects are notable. The Pew Hispanic Center concluded that the migratory flow into the United States has practically stopped due to the economic crisis and the new anti-immigration laws, and that the number of undocumented immigrants has dropped from 12 million to 11 million.

If the border were so insecure, how do we explain the fact that one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Juárez, Mexico, with 3,000 murders last year, is right next to one of the most secure in the United States, El Paso? In other words, although the Republican candidates may doubt it, it is a myth that the Mexican border is insecure. Of course, workers who find jobs that Americans don’t want to do will continue crossing over to the U.S. But this is an economic matter, not one of national security. It’s worth being clear that neither the terrorists of 9/11, nor any others entered by that border.

It’s good that Gingrich has breached the immigration issue among Republicans. The central question is, what are we going to do with 11 million undocumented immigrants that are not going to return to their countries of origin? Realistic answers are urgently needed. Meanwhile, we must accept the idea of treating immigrants in a “humane” fashion. And the first to do so was Gingrich, who has practically stopped using the term “illegals” to refer to undocumented immigrants. That is a good first step.