Danger on the Border—Is Tougher Security the Answer to Undocumented Immigration?

One of the many variations of a well-known story in social justice circles is about the people of the town of Facadia, called Facadians, who, one day, began to discover children floating down the Obscurious River. A good and generous people, the Facadians pulled the children out of the river, cleaned them up, fed them, and adopted them. As the years passed, the Obscurious River continued to deliver children to Facadia, and the Facadians continued to extract the children from the river on a regular basis.

Over time, however, the number of children found floating in the Obscurious River grew. It was not uncommon to find dozens and dozens of children floating down the river at once. The good-hearted Facadians continued to pull them out, care for them, and adopt them, but some people in the town began to grumble about the plethora of children who had become a burden to the town. “They soak up our resources and overpopulate our towns and they are a nuisance,” these bitter persons said. Then one discontented Facadian had an idea: “Let’s build a dam so that the water and children will no longer burden us.” The discontented Facadian’s lobbied hard to do so and with some extra funding from special interests, the city council passed a resolution to build the dam and the Facadians were sure that everyone would live happily ever after—that is, except for the floating children who piled up upstream.

Any rational person who hears this story will point immediately to the absurdity of the Facadians’ actions: most obviously, they never once looked into the root cause of why the children were floating downstream. They also chose an expensive, short-term solution which would probably not solve anything in the end, since the pile of dammed children would eventually grow taller than the wall or alternatively, the children might decide to get out of the water and walk to Facadia instead. Also, the solution was cruel and showed no respect at all for the children’s dignity and rights.

Although the analogy admittedly has its limitations, those who promote immigration policy that is focused entirely on security are very similar to the Facadians. There are three major flaws with security-only immigration policy, which are strikingly reminiscent of what has been discussed above:

• Security-only immigration policy is highly impractical and, based on the history of previous immigration control efforts, is likely to be completely ineffective.
• Security-only immigration policy denies the human dignity and personhood of immigrants, rejects long-time American values, and is unacceptable for humanitarian reasons.
• Security-only immigration policy fails to address any of the root causes of increased immigration.

On September 29, the Congress passed a security-only immigration bill, the “Secure Fence Act of 2006,” which authorized the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border, which is expected to cost $6 billion. The main focus of the bill is on building the fence and it fails to include any of the social, economic, or humanitarian concerns brought up in previously considered legislation, such as The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act and to a certain extent, The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (CIRA).

Although it is tempting to go into the specifics of the legislation, here I will focus only on the problems with security-only immigration policy in relation to the three flaws mentioned above.

The impractical, ineffective nature of security-only policies

Immigration policies that focus only on security disregard other important issues such as the future of 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants who are already in the U.S.; the issue of long-term separation between immigrants and their families; and the needs of U.S. businesses for workers.

Economically, drastically reducing the number of low-cost workers available to producers is bad news to U.S. businesses for obvious reasons. Several important studies have shown that immigrants are a boon to the economy and the U.S. Labor Department itself has concluded that immigrants keep U.S. industries competitive, increase employment through higher rates of self-employment and increase wages and mobility opportunities for many groups of U.S. workers.

In addition to the impracticality of greatly reducing immigration, security-only efforts have not worked in the past. Despite the fact that a main component of U.S. immigration policy since the mid-1990s has been to strengthen border security, with the number of border agents tripling since 1993 and millions of dollars spent on increased fencing, the numbers of persons illegally crossing the border has substantially increased, not decreased. In fact, “getting tough” on security has not helped at all—it has simply driven immigrants to more dangerous ways to cross.

Humanitarian concerns associated with security-only policies

Some of these more dangerous methods to which immigrant have turned include the following: Paid smuggling networks and “coyotes” are increasingly being used; younger children (who are less likely to be detected and are less suspicious looking) are traveling alone, leaving them vulnerable to sexual assault and other abuses; and immigrants trek through long stretches of desert in 100+ heat to bypass fences or squeeze into trunks of cars.

In the past five years, over 2,000 migrants have died while trying to cross the border, a higher number than ever before and from October 2004 to September 2005, a record number—460 people—died in a one year period while trying to cross the border between the United States and Mexico.

Such methods are an affront to immigrants’ dignity as human persons. As Archbishop Wilton Gregory stated in August, there is a compelling moral reason as to why immigration reform must go beyond a security-only approach. “Families are separated; migrant workers are abused and exploited by human smugglers; and, tragically, human beings die in the desert,” he wrote. “We must reform the system and restore to it respect for basic human rights and human life.”

The failure of security-only policies to address root causes

The fact is that no matter how many billions of dollars the U.S. spends on security on the border, immigrants will continue to seek out better lives in the U.S. so long as the quality of life is getting worse in their own country. Some compelling facts:

• There are 60 countries in today’s world that are poorer than they were thirty years ago.
• For every dollar that rich countries give to poor countries in aid, $1.30 has been found to flow back to lenders in debt interest.
• The trading system remains inherently unjust, with the poorest countries of the world accounting for only 0.4 percent of international trade, yet they lose an estimated $700 billion a year due to unfair trade rules.
• The gap between the rich and the poor has increased under free trade, with the median income of the richest 10 percent 122 times higher than the poorest 10 percent.
• Despite growing recognition that the “Washington Consensus” policies of the 1980s and 1990s did not work, many of these policies are still being promoted today.

In addition, a fifth of the world’s population (1.2 billion people) lives on less than $1 per day and almost half the world’s population, or 2.8 billion people, live on less than $2 a day. Every second, a child dies of malnutrition. Economic injustice still plagues most of the world, providing a strong impetus for immigration. An ideal immigration policy would identify these root causes for immigration and not just build a dam or a wall, but go “upstream” to address the source of the problem.

Unfortunately, none of the recent immigration proposals have truly been able to accomplish this last goal of addressing the root causes of immigration. Perhaps the root causes are too big an issue to take on and must be addressed with broader policy changes as well. One thing is clear: choosing the Secure Fence Act of 2006 over several other promising proposals has identified our country more with Facadia than with the United States of America which, since its founding, has prided itself on welcoming the stranger and protecting the rights of all people. 

Posted by Jill Rauh, Senior Project Associate for the Education for Justice Project at the Center of Concern.

Comments

[JE]

I am sure that at least 50.4% of the U.S. public do not see the upstream problems as ours to solve. The problems you describe so well are overwhelming.

Fortunately the Bush Administration has been forced by the tragic and destructive debacle it has created in Iraq to see the value of working through the UN instead of always denouncing it and acting unilaterally. Solutions need to be sought through the UN and multilateral cooperation.

We also need to look at how we as international actors in faith-based networks can highlight what can be done to address the upstream problems and how people can get involved in helping them succeed.

[Patrice Gazire]

I think that immigration policy is tough question to deal with and this is why it was on the agenda of the recent iaos conference in Toronto.Most of time the US Policy makers would take informed decisions but there are matters where it's hard to steer the middle course.