11/02/2006
The pre-election puffery continues unabated. With mid-term elections only days away, we are getting the full court press from every trumpet (Should I say "strumpet"??) in the Executive branch about their serious efforts to contain the immigration invasion.
In an October 31 Washington Post article by Spencer S. Hsu, we hear that paragon of happy talk, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, announcing that "Immigration Arrests Down 8% for Year".
Let’s check closely the Secretary’s latest words of comfort. The Post story says:
"Chertoff credited the drop of nearly 100,000 apprehensions largely to the Bush administration’s strategy of deporting virtually all non-Mexican border crossers as fast as they are caught, deterring them and others in what had been the fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants. After quadrupling the previous four years, apprehensions of 'other than Mexican' border crossers fell 57,144, or 35 percent, to 108,026 last year."
Since the crossings by illegal aliens are estimated by most at 3 million a year or more in recent years, this mighty effort is a three percent (3%) improvement. Imagine this man’s chutzpah! The Post notes, "Chertoff cited 'a very, very significant increase' and 'dramatic' shift in U.S. targeting of employers whose business models are based on the use of illegal labor. The United States brought 716 criminal worksite enforcement arrests and charges in 2006, up from 24 in 1999 and 25 in 2002" 'Although people will squawk about it, the answer to those squawks is to go ahead and finish the job of a comprehensive strategy.' "
Does "comprehensive strategy" mean what we know it must mean–more amnesty?
At Chertoff’s success rate we can comfortably believe that only 2.9 million illegal aliens will be crossing every year into our country. So what will add only 2.9 million a year for the next 44 years until 2050 — assuming none bring in families which of course is not true, or that their fertility is low, which is not true — will equal another 128 million added to our present 300 plus million. Mighty close to the commonly-quoted figure of 500 million living here in 2050.
Now of course we should also talk about those who come here with legal visas, many of whom, probably half, over stay those visas and disappear into America, sopping up public services aplenty, while we taxpayers watch incredulously as our government does nothing.
We citizens are running out of legal or electoral options since our government ignores enforcing existing laws and fails to pass effective new ones. Is it time for a Jeffersonian revolution? How do we do that? Anyone caught arguing about bad government policy in DC is likely to end up in the slammer. How about a summer or winter in Guantanamo!?
Of course the apprehensions now are about the same as they have been for years for years. The poor Border Patrol has been left out to swing in the wind by a Congress whose corporate paymasters seek total obeisance on the open border question: "Leave it open or we don’t pay you."
According to Spencer Hsu in the Post, "Under the old catch-and-release policy in the summer of 2005, 80 percent of non-Mexicans apprehended at the border were let go inside the United States, pending their hearings, because of a shortage of detention space. But for the past three months, all non-Mexicans have been held pending expedited deportation."
Gee, could the public’s great awakening on this issue and the impending elections have been heeded?
Don’t count on it after November 7th.
As for the fence to be built under a bill Bush ceremoniously signed last week, looking like he had sucked on a lemon, the Post tells us,
"Chertoff declined to say whether or when DHS would complete 700 miles of a double-layered fence on the U.S.-Mexico border recently approved by Congress and the president. Instead, he cited plans over the next three to six years to build a 'virtual fence' that includes physical barriers, electronic remote sensing and vehicle barriers, or other measures where fencing is impractical or ineffective."
Many experts note that the virtual fence is virtually useless. Like the government now in power.
Donald A. Collins is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.
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