Contributors
J.F. Kelly, Jr. - Contributor

J.F. Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident of Coronado, California. [go to Kelly index]

A Continued Assault on Our Borders
The federal government must take action...
[J. F. Kelly, Jr.] 8/6/04

Despite the economic benefits of globalization and the convenience of easy access to other countries, there is still much to be said for sovereignty. Fundamental to the concept of national sovereignty is control of one’s own borders. The spread of international terrorism and the threat to the security of the United States makes this issue most urgent.

Easy access to visas, lax security at our ports of access and other failures on the part of those agencies responsible for controlling access to our country clearly facilitated the terrorist actions of 9/11. Yet in spite of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, various reorganizations and redrawing of bureaucratic boxes, little has actually been done to make our porous borders more secure.

The beleaguered Border Patrol has had its budget and manpower approximately tripled in the past decade with little to show for it except increased migrant deaths. In fact, tripled assets have yielded a three-fold increase in the number of illegal aliens estimated to be in the country since 1990. This is a poor return on taxpayer dollars.

Operation Gatekeeper, as everyone now knows, has merely shifted a problem from San Diego County to Imperial County and Arizona, greatly inconveniencing, but not dissuading, the illegal border crossers. In Canada, meanwhile, many border cross points are unmanned and it is actually possible to walk across unchallenged.

The additional funds, personnel and equipment have not produced any improvement in the bottom line, which is a continued increase in illegal immigration and a greater incentive for illegals to remain here permanently. We simply do not have control of our borders, leaving our nation open to the continued smuggling of people, drugs, weapons and dangerous materials. By any reasonable standards, this represents a massive failure of the federal government but there is, as usually, plenty of blame to spread around.

In spite of numerous polls showing an overwhelming majority of Americans favoring stronger action to prevent illegal immigration, we, as householders and employers, continue to hire illegals. Local police departments, schools and businesses continue to disdain any responsibility for helping to uphold the laws of the land by saying that it’s a federal problem, not theirs. This is a cop-out, pure and simple. Any effective enforcement of our immigration laws requires the cooperation of local law enforcement agencies unless we want federal officers to be everywhere.

Immigrant advocates, including churches looking to increase their memberships, continue their efforts to glorify this invasion by illegal aliens by aiding them and describing them in benign terms as good people trying to feed their families, who pose no security threat. One surely must sympathize with their plight but their condition does not justify breaking our laws. They have been failed by their own government, plagued by corruption and far more interested in criticizing its powerful Yankee neighbor than trying to provide jobs and opportunities for its long-suffering people. But somehow the activists manage to divert the blame for migrant deaths onto the United States rather than where it belongs: on the Mexican government, which encourages the illegals and sees something heroic in their actions.

None of this will change until Americans demand action of the federal government and insist on the cooperation of local law enforcement, schools and businesses. The tired argument, promulgated by activists, that households, the hotel and food industry and agriculture require an unrestricted supply of cheap labor performed by illegals under sometimes squalid working conditions, will no longer suffice. The notion that Americans will not work in the fields, kitchens and gardens of America is without basis in fact or history. They will work such jobs for fair wages as they have in the past. And fair wages and decent working conditions should be a given.

Citizens simply must demand that their government get tough with the greedy businesses and households that exploit this illegal labor. Until we do so and hold federal officeholders accountable at the polls, our borders will continue to be violated and we will continue to make criminals out of largely good people in search of those jobs we insist on providing them out of pure greed.

Corrective measures will require a tamper-proof national identity card and sanctions against business and individuals who hire those here illegally. Is that really so difficult? And the Mexican Government, which sees nothing illegal about its citizens violating our borders and which could do far more to control this problem if it wished to, should be told that cooperation is a condition for continued good relations.

These steps may produce an outcry from the world without borders crowd, but the alternative is a continued and serious security gap and the steady erosion of respect for our sovereignty. CRO

copyright 2004 J. F. Kelly, Jr.

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