By Jim Geraghty
Monday, January 29, 2024
Let us first dispense with the absurd accusation that the
United States of America is a xenophobic country or that it does not welcome
immigrants. Every year since the millennium, between 703,000 and 1.2
million immigrants have been granted legal permanent residence, a process also
known as getting a green card. Green-card holders are permitted to live and
work in the country indefinitely, to join the armed forces, and to apply for
U.S. citizenship after five years — three years, if married to a U.S. citizen.
No other country comes close to welcoming this many legal
immigrants per year. The U.S. now has roughly 50 million immigrants, or
foreign-born residents. The next-highest is Germany at about 15 million. In other words, we have
welcomed 35 million more people from other countries than any other country on
Earth. (Keep this in mind the next time you hear the accusation that U.S. does not accept enough refugees.)
Each year, surveys indicate that the U.S. tops the list
of the most-desired immigration destinations, and in 2021, a Gallup survey estimated that 18 percent of potential migrants —
around 160 million adults — named the U.S. as their desired future residence.
For perspective, the entire current U.S population is about 335 million
people.
There are good people who want to come into this country.
There are bad people who want to come into this country. The government must be
able to determine the good ones from the bad ones. If you have an insecure
border where anyone can walk in, eventually, bad people will get in, and you
will have problems — and eventually someone who comes in will want to infringe
upon your liberties.
Many of the people who want to enter the country may well
be wonderful human beings. Future valedictorians. Good Samaritans. Hard
workers. But we must, at minimum, sort out those who have an existing criminal
record or present some sort of threat to public safety and bar them from entry.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, since the beginning of
the 2021 fiscal year (October 1, 2020), CBP has arrested 31,542 individuals who
have been convicted of one or more crimes, whether in the United States or
abroad, before their run-in with CBP. Out of that total, 3,834 had convictions
for assault, battery, or domestic violence; 2,755 had convictions for burglary,
robbery, larceny, theft, or fraud; 6,424 had convictions from driving under the
influence; 1,191 were convicted of “sexual offenses” including rape; and 161
were convicted of homicide or manslaughter.
Of course, CBP can only measure the criminal histories of
those it catches; since the beginning of the Biden administration, CBP sources
have confirmed more than 1.7 million known “gotaways” at the
southwest border — cases where a person illegally entering the country
was spotted but not apprehended. In public testimony in March 2023, chief of
the U.S. Border Patrol Raul Ortiz conceded that the actual number could be 10 to 20 percent higher than the official figures.
We are not only under no obligation to let these people
into our country, it is the responsibility of the federal government to keep
these people out. If you stop them from entering the country, you reduce the
chances they will commit a violent crime on American soil with an American
victim. Protecting American lives and liberties is the core duty of the federal
government.
At U.S. land-border ports of entry, since October 1,
2020, 1,195 individuals stopped and detained by CBP were in the
terrorist-screening data set, colloquially known as the terrorism
watch list. Between ports of entry, since October 1, 2020, 336 individuals
stopped and detained by CBP were on the terrorist watch list. If you want to
argue that people on the terrorism watch list make up an exceptionally small
percentage of those caught at the southern border, that is indeed correct. But
then again, it only took 19 guys with boxcutters to inflict a hell of a lot of
harm on Americans. If we can’t get that number to be zero, we would like that
number to be as close to zero as possible.
You don’t need to build the equivalent of the Great Wall
of China from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. That isn’t a feasible,
cost-effective, or timely option. But you can expand existing fencing at
relatively modest cost to make border-security enforcement much more effective.
Back in June of 2017, Brandon Judd, president of the
National Border Patrol Council — the labor union that represents U.S. Border
Patrol — testified before Congress, and I wish everyone in America would watch and read his testimony. His arguments are well-informed
from personal experience, succinct, and clear . . . and his notion of the best
practical solution probably would not completely satisfy everyone. Among his
comments:
I want to emphasize first off, I
will not advocate for 2,000 miles’ worth of border [wall]. That is just not
necessary. But what I will advocate for is a border wall in strategic
locations, which helps us secure the border. . . .
As an agent who worked in two of
the busiest sectors in the history of the Border Patrol, I can personally tell
you how effective border barriers are. When I got to the Tucson sector, we had
next to nothing by way of infrastructure, and I can confidently say that for
every illegal border crosser that I apprehended, three got away. The building
of barriers and large fences, a bipartisan effort, allowed agents in part to
dictate where illegal crossings took place and doubled how effective I was able
to be in apprehending illegal border crossers.
As an agent who has extensive
experience working with and without border barriers and as the person elected
to represent rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, I can personally attest to how
effective a wall, in strategic locations, will be. . . .
With a barrier, it’s estimated
that all we need is one agent per three, four linear miles. Without a barrier,
I need one agent per linear mile. So, the cost effectiveness of a barrier in
manpower is — it’s extremely successful. . . .
In addition to the 353 miles of
primary fencing that we already have, we believe that we need an additional 300
miles of primary fencing. This fencing should be strategically placed in areas
such as Del Rio and Laredo Texas and the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation in
Arizona.
Back in 2017, the United States Government Accountability
Office and the CBP estimated that average cost per mile for primary pedestrian
fencing was $6.5 million, and $1.8 million per mile for vehicular fencing. In
today’s dollars, that comes out to $8.21 and $2.27 million per mile.
For $2.4 billion, you could complete 300 additional miles
of the primary fencing that Judd says the country needs and that would make
CBP’s job much easier.
For perspective, the federal government spent $3.3 billion on office furniture during the pandemic.
In the last three years, the U.S. government provided $3 billion in subsidies to one company to
provide internet service to low-income households. This December, Nancy Pelosi
boasted that she had secured $3.07 billion in federal funding to support
construction of “a two-track electrified high-speed passenger rail line
connecting the cities of Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield.”
It’s not that we don’t have the money to build additional
border fencing; it’s that Congress and the federal government choose to spend
that money on other things they deem more important.
Judd testified that significant amounts of non-wall funding
were also needed:
Every day we deploy Agents with
equipment that is inadequate. Let me give you two simple examples. Forty
percent of our vehicles are past their service life. Patrolling off road for 10
hours a shift takes a toll and some of these vehicles are literally falling
apart. The cost of replacing older vehicles would be $250 million. In many
areas of the border, the agents have no communications. Forget
interoperability, we do not even have operability, and this is a real threat to
agent safety. We estimate that we could dramatically increase border
interoperability for $125 million.
Judd’s proposal for additional vehicle and equipment
funding comes out to $375 million in 2017 dollars, which would cost $473
million today. For perspective, back in 2016, the U.S. government gave San
Diego a bit more than $1 billion to extend its trolley line.
By the way, lest you think that the National Border
Patrol Council is some deeply pro-Trump partisan outfit, this union endorsed
Democrats Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, and Heidi
Heitkamp of North Dakota in the 2018 cycle, greatly irking the Trump
administration.
As Andy McCarthy laid out Saturday, what we’re hearing
about the immigration and border-security proposal emerging from the Senate so
far suggests the legislation is flawed, to say the least. But if House
Republicans reject that proposal, believing that they will have the opportunity
to pass a better one a year from now under the newly reelected President Trump,
they should be clear-eyed about the risks:
·
There is no guarantee that Donald Trump or any
other Republican will win the 2024 presidential election.
·
It is extremely likely that Senate Democrats
will have at least 40 votes, and thus have the filibuster, in the next Senate.
Senate Democrats willing to work with the Trump administration on immigration
legislation will be few and far between, or nonexistent — particularly if House
Republicans torpedo this deal.
·
There is no guarantee that Republicans will have
a majority in the House of Representatives after the 2024 election. Republicans
currently have 219 seats.
Also, if you have (accurately) spent the past
two-and-a-half to three years arguing that the situation at the border is a
national emergency, you cannot credibly argue that the situation can wait with
no further action for another year.
No comments:
Post a Comment