A border policy bordering on insanity

© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.

“The idea that the United States can’t guard its own border is silly. It’s a sign that we’re not serious about this.” – Newt Gingrich, then-speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1995

Our nation treats its borders unlike every other nation in the world. Mexico condemns us for wanting to do on our southern border exactly what it does on its southern border. In Mexico, sneak-in people have no legal status, no driver’s licenses, etc.

We have a de facto open-border policy because our politicians have been and are paralyzed by political exigencies. Perhaps six major groups cross our borders illegally:

• Terrorists who have snuck over our borders before and may again. They avoid government scrutiny to be able to strike at our country without warning.

• Drug dealers carrying out their destructive business with Americans.

• Human traffickers plying their trade of misery.

• Fugitives from justice in other lands who think that, if caught, our prisons are nicer.

• Scam artists worldwide who are drawn to America, the land of wealth.

• Hard-working, good people who come here to work a day for a day’s wages. They come illegally, some because it takes too long to come legally, and some so they can melt into the informal economy where they are paid with no taxes taken out.

Our politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties have spent 50 years sending mixed messages to potential illegal border crossers. They have done so while making political hay out of the problem they caused in the first place.

An example of stupidity: I have been stopped thousands of times at border checkpoints 60 miles inside our border. When my father passed away I was in college in Las Cruces and traveled 70 miles to Alamogordo every day for six months to close up the house.

I traveled the same time of day. The same border agent at the White Sands National Monument checkpoint asked my citizenship every time. I initially saw his name and so answered each time, “Yes, James (not his name), I am a citizen of the United States of America.”

We did this day in and day out for months. He held the line against illegal border crossing 60 miles from where millions of people illegally streamed across the border unchecked.

Connected problems

There are three connected problems: The borders are open, the legal method to come work in America is very cumbersome, and about 15 million people are already in our country illegally.

When you are in a hole and want out, the first step is to stop digging. We must close our borders to illegal entry. Importantly, we want people to cross legally; in fact, we need that exchange with our hemisphere partners. Securing our borders means that legitimate people can still cross in both directions, but those who want to use clandestine methods to sneak into our country cannot.

Next, we have to retool our legal entry method so that it is more attractive than paying lots of money to coyotes and walking through a burning desert. This should not be that hard.

Finally, like it or not, we must have an amnesty program because our government has for years said, “We do not really mind you coming over the border” to the illegal crossers. We owe those people citizenship with one caveat: They must lose the impulse to break the law.

With American citizenship, the new citizens must forego the informal economy under which taxes are not collected. They must declare themselves Americans in an unambiguous manner.

Perhaps everyone in our country illegally should get six months to come forward and declare their intent to be Americans. We must be very lenient or even forgive all past taxes. It needs to be better for them to be citizens than not.

If after six months these people ignore the offer of amnesty, out they go when we find them. Likewise, if they are criminals or are engaged in criminal behavior we will leave no stone unturned to throw them out.

We cannot tolerate political inaction

The reason for emigrants to come our country must always be, first, that their becoming Americans benefits America. It also must benefit the migrants. Immigration to our country must be win-win or no deal, as Steven Covey writes. Right now it is win-loss in many instances.

Our nation can ill afford any more ambiguity about our sovereignty as a nation. No more American flags flying upside down outside American high schools. No more dialogue about the Aztlan Mexican homeland heritage taking back Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, California, Oregon and Washington.

People should come to our shores in a systematic and legal manner to join us in this great nation. We need the emigrant vitality to continue to recharge our country.

We cannot tolerate any more political inaction. Close the borders, make legitimate entry easier and make the offer of citizenship to those here illegally. And throw out of office any politician who does not want to settle our border issues.

Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.