Michael Swickard
When boating, it is important to make your intentions known to other boats. Likewise, ambiguity is dangerous in the laws concerning how much power individual states have to act independently from the federal government.
Can New Mexico react differently than the federal government to security threats? We on the border with Mexico are alarmed by the border violence adjacent to our effectively open border. Mexico cannot ensure the safety of their citizens. Can Washington ensure ours?
This is not fear-mongering, given thousands of lawless deaths 50 miles from my home. More than 20,000 people have died in three years. Last Friday The Los Angeles Times reported, “A 17-year-old passerby and at least seven officers are slain (in Ciudad Juárez) as two police cars are attacked. Officials say the midday assault may have been retaliation for recent arrests targeting drug gangs… All but one of the dead officers were from the U.S.-trained federal police force… dozens of people were killed across Mexico on Thursday and Friday.”
The primary purpose of our federal government is to protect its citizens. However, for political reasons our government is not closing our borders.
Three questions: Are the current border defenses adequate to protect Americans? No. Second, can the federal government close the border? Yes if there is the will in Washington. Finally, can New Mexico close its portion of the border? Perhaps, if there is the will in Santa Fe.
What allows ambiguity is the political dimension on this border. There are federal laws against coming into our nation without permission. We have passed laws that are not enforced. The majority of Americans do not want citizens of other lands to have free access to our country. The problem is politicians who tie our Border Patrol’s hands for their own political gain.
A border security bill
In Arizona the governor signed a controversial border security bill, not an immigration bill. The federal government controls immigration but Arizona wants those laws enforced because illegal aliens are attacking and killing Arizona residents. Among other provisions it requires disclosure of immigration status if there is reason to suspect the person is not in our country legally. It also makes it a crime to hire undocumented non-citizens.
Some American citizens of Hispanic origin are protesting that to ascertain legal status in the United States is actually a racial ploy to deprive these immigrants who will not go through the immigration process their American civil rights for racial reasons. I disagree.
However, they rightly point out that since their appearance resembles that of people from another country they, real Americans, could be unfairly profiled for questioning. I feel their pain since I live in Las Cruces and travel often within New Mexico. I have been asked my citizenship thousands of times. It bothers me to live in America yet be questioned as to my citizenship daily.
When my father died I closed up the house in Alamogordo though I live in Las Cruces. I went through the Border Patrol station just west of Alamogordo every day for nine months. I was asked every day, often by the same person, if I was an American citizen. Finally, I could not help saying, “I am an American citizen. I was yesterday when you asked; I will be tomorrow when you ask.”
In New Mexico we specifically prohibit the questioning of legal status, yet the federal Border Patrol does it every day. Arizona wants to do what the federal government has done to me thousands of times. Why is it right to do so in one state and not the other, either way?
Making directional intentions clear
In boating, ambiguity is avoided by making directional intentions clear. We must do the same with our security laws. We must first decide if our citizenship can be questioned by anyone without compelling reasons. We also must decide if why, when the federal government can question my immigration status every day, officials in New Mexico and Arizona should not be able do the same.
There is no protest that every day legal citizens who are just traveling in their vehicles are stopped for the purpose of asking our immigration status. Why is it acceptable for the federal government to ask my immigration status without cause but wrong for Arizona to do so with cause? I do not understand.
Now if it is like the Transportation Safety Administration making sure airplane and train travel is safe, well, I can accept that. But instead, it is when we are in our autos and just driving down the road – an American road in the interior of our country.
I guess I am not being racially profiled every time they ask my immigration status. Still, is there something wrong with an all powerful government on the one hand insisting I proclaim my citizenship daily when I have not left the country in 50 years and someone who asks immigration status based upon the appearance of someone being from another country? Which one bothers me more? I cannot say, since all I want our security forces to do is use real intelligence in being watchful of danger to Americans.
Lastly, why should I be hassled every day as to my citizenship while the same federal government allows a relatively open border? If it was not for politics, we would have security on this side of the border.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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