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“Here's what the President said: “If we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” in other words they're holding it hostage. They don't want to secure the border unless and until it's combined with comprehensive immigration reform."
White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton has denied that these words were spoken by the president, claiming that they were untrue. Burton refused to state that Senator Jon Kyl was lying.
The senator has a reputation as a straight-talker, and the president has a reputation as someone who is careful in his language. It has been argued that there was a misunderstanding, which is possible. However, there is enough weight being brought upon Arizona in relation to its controversial immigration bill to raise temperatures. With opposition to the Bill coming from the administration, and Arizona officials expressing exasperation at what they perceive to be federal inaction on illegal immigration, misunderstandings become more likely.
The Arizona Immigration Bill – Senate Bill 1070 – was drafted by State Sen. Russell Pearce. The controversy involved its stipulation that law enforcement officers were entitled to check the residence status of those whom they suspected of being illegal immigrants. There were fears that such measures could lead to racial profiling. At a naturalization ceremony in the Rose Garden, the president had said that the law threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
On Friday April 23rd, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer had signed the bill, which will come into force on July 29. On the morning that the bill was signed, the president had called it “misguided” and “ irresponsible” and had urged figurers in his administration to “closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation.”
At the same time, Eric Holder, the 82nd Attorney General, was criticizing the law as “unfortunate” and “open to abuse” by officials, before he had read its contents. He later said: “I've just expressed concerns on the basis of what I've heard about the law.”
The law in Arizona did not emerge from a vacuum. When she signed SB 1070, Governor Brewer claimed (pdf) that it would be a tool to “solve a crisis that we did not create, and which the federal government has refused to address…. The crisis caused by Arizona’s porous border.” She continued:
“There is no higher priority than protecting the citizens of Arizona. We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life.”
On at least two occasions in her speech she mentioned that she refuses to tolerate any racial discrimination or racial profiling.
Long before his private conversation in the Oval Office, Senator Jon Kyl made a speech about why the State Legislature had passed SB 1070. He stated:
“The federal government has been ignoring a problem for too long, and that problem is an insecure border, and that’s obviously what led to this legislation….”
He spoke of how the problems with kidnappings, drug importation and human trafficking were concentrated in certain parts of the state. He mentioned that border patrol officers’ numbers had been successively doubled four times since 2000:
“In 1996 it was estimated that 40 per cent of all the homicides in the Phoenix area were the result of conflicts among Mexican narco-organizations. Now, of course, the problem is really severe south of the border. It’s been estimated that in the last three years there’s been over 20,000, some say there’s been as many as 23,000 deaths directly attributable to these conflicts.”
There seem to be few who would deny that a severe problem with border security exists, not only in Arizona, but in other states. Disputes focus around how to deal with the problem.
Arizona’s lawmakers have chosen to create legislation that deals head-on with the “illegality” of illegal immigration, whereas the administration seems to be proposing immigration law reform that may or may not involve a form of amnesty, similar to that extended under the Dream Act to some who arrived as minors.
The situation has been desperate for some time, and for Arizona and other states, it seems that federal immigration law reform will take too long to come into effect. Theproblems of illegal immigration are not just about human trafficking and drug gangs. The migrants coming over the southern border are not just impoverished Mexicans looking to better themselves. As Chet Nagle wrote here yesterday, some of those who have come across the border have been terrorists.
A report by abc15 states that in April in a Pinal county jail in Arizona, of 400 detainees who had tried to cross the Mexican border into the USA, only half were Mexican. The others hailed from countries including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the Sudan.
As Mexico has no procedures for deportations of non-domiciled foreigners from its own borders, when non-Mexicans are sent back, these individuals are let go and can attempt again to cross the border back to the USA.
Mike Cutler has worked in the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, in positions including Immigration Inspector and Criminal Investigator. He has stressed on our pages time after time the importance of ensuring that illegal migration be stopped. Legal migration has been a principle of American growth and diversity, enshrined in Emma Lazarus’ famous poem “ The New Colossus” engraved beneath the Statue of Liberty.
Mike wrote yesterday that the electronic SBInet or “Virtual Fence” has been abandoned along much of the stretch of border that it was designed to police. On November 2nd 2005, the Department of Homeland Security under then Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that it would be implementing its “Secure Border Initiative”. This promised more border patrol of officers, more ICE officials, more bed spaces at detention facilities, and electronic surveillance. The DHS press release announced at the time:
“Under SBI, our goal is to have operational control of both the northern and southern borders within five years.”
That goal has not come close to being implemented. The SBInet electronic surveillance operation, which was to be managed by Boeing, began in 2006. This was intended to use state-of-the-art surveillance techniques to monitor the southern border, but is now virtually abandoned.
Whatever motivated the disagreement between the president and Senator Jon Kyl, the problems will remain. There is little security on the southern border. It seems that the administration seems cautious to get a firm grip on theproblems by enforcing existing laws. Mexico is also at fault. It has a weak government, a lawless gang class, and an appalling economy that drives people to seek work elsewhere.
It is shocking to hear accusations of “untruths” traded between a senator and the associates of the president. The nature of the allegation is so serious that the whole affair starts to look surreal. Something needs to be done about the porous border, and it needs to be done soon - for everyone’s sake.
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