Citizen Journal Article Archive

I'm against vigilantes in the United States of America. I'm for enforcing the law in a rational way. —George W. Bush

Power is raunchy when the cops are watching. —Beck

Robert C. Bonner, border czar, believes this year’s increase of 210 Border Patrol agents is a fine substitute for the 2,000 demanded by Congress (Jerry Seper, “Border Patrol Hiring Ripped,” The Washington Times, March 3, 2005).
“Yes,” he enthused. “Given the right combination of agents and technology, if we work smarter and do a better job." The key to the Bush administration’s fight against illegal immigration is, indeed, electronic surveillance. Why ought Bonner risk the thirst and boredom of agents in the field when an IT closet will do?

The administration’s comprehensive plan, saving us thousands in Border Patrol salaries, is the $84 million America's Shield Initiative (ASI), featuring monitors, sensors, and synergistic technologies. Commissioner Bonner assures us it is, indeed, “state-of-the-art.”

ASI may be “state-of-the-art,” but that is where the hyphenate buzzwords end. A catchphrase like “of-the-moment,” for example, belongs to that other border control initiative—the Minuteman project.

This is not the occasion to anthologize the mountain of media coverage that rivals the death of the Pope as spring’s most covered event. We know the sexy headline—Bush Defies Own Seething Rednecks. Hill Democrats and “even some Republicans” have taken the President to task for scrimping on reinforcements, and no one seems excited about investing millions on what sound like third-rate robots to deter and deport the millions of people that the government of Mexico is investing in us.

Strange news, indeed, with military e-reconnaissance such a smashing success.

The skies over Iraq are clogged with drones. 750-800 unmanned aircraft patrol Iraq’s airspace at altitudes ranging from 300 to 60,000 feet. There are so many, they sometimes run into each other. Predators fitted with Hellfire missiles hit Al-Qaeda in Yemen and blasted scores of targets, or other objects, during the Battle of Falluja. They are relatively cheap. They are hardworking, and do not require pilots on speed to keep them aloft. They do not disappoint. And, like them or not as zero-risk weapons, the use of armed drones is not the issue in border security. Right now, on a daily basis, Predators costing $5 million a pop are beaming “24-hour-a-day,” “seven-day-a-week” reconnaissance reports back to a rotating crew of air-conditioned servicemen able to control their flying familiars from a compound in—Las Vegas.

That is correct. While the United States operates, from a stone’s throw from the Strip, an airborne flotilla of unmanned surveillance craft halfway around the world, America’s southern border waits in arid frustration for a half-planned and unbuilt contraption of webcams and infrared beams priced roughly at the same level as seventeen Predator drones. These drones can be fielded immediately. They will not get sand stuck in their gears at 20,000 feet (where there is no sand); like obedient dogs, they will come home to their own maintenance crews. They will not fall prey to coyotes.

Why has President Bush not ordered the deployment of even one unmanned aircraft over the Mexican border? Why has he not established stripped-down command centers in Barstow, Nogales, and Galveston, and wired them to the same eternal eyes in the sky that are good enough for the Vegas Air Force?

Because Bush likes illegals. He now believes two things, both the product of a certain roving and ubiquitous government creature of a very different kind: first, pro-immigrant Latinos need to go Republican to keep the GOP on top in American politics; second, the tide of illegals is an unstoppable force, more a function of Hegelian world economics than domestic law or policy.

Both postulates are as posh as they are preposterous. Latino America does not default, morally or practically, toward support for illegal immigration. Those with legal jobs threatened by an influx of cheaper labor do not support the status quo. Moreover, despite sub-hype turnout, the Minutemen held a full-press court. The media has made their existence known—and not just on this side of the border. They brush off the idea that Mexican cop/army patrols are the real deterrent. Their nervous detractors cling to it. In fact, Mexico is responding to what’s happening in America. The initiative can be re-seized from a Mexican government whose feigned powerlessness in preventing the mass exodus of its own people amounts to criminal negligence. The more Mexico does to stop illegal immigration before it starts, the more wind is sucked from the sails of the Minutemen and their supporters.

Vicente Fox does not, however, want to be the one to suck wind. He wants to print pamphlets that save the lives of those who he couldn’t help at home. For the Mexican government—or so it seems—the desperation of the average illegal does not exist until he touches American soil.

This crisis took years to create and it will take years, not a minute, to undo. Bush still has time, before the under-40 set takes over Minuteman, to get his house in order. But his cheapskate collusion with globalization’s pimps, with the Border Patrol made to watch, is in the interim the raunchiest sort of disgrace.

Replies: 9 Comments

Posted by: casino On Monday, October 10th

You may find it interesting to visit the sites in the field of bet bet http://www.vplaymate.com/ http://www.vplaymate.com/ ... Thanks!!!

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Thursday, April 7th

I think it's true that the "jobs Americans won't take" line is bogus. Some American would take just about any job for enough money. It's true that workers competing with immigrants get lower wages. That's why I think that instead of restricting immigration, we should tax it, and pay the revenues out as dividends to the American-born, to help them weather the transition.
Unemployment is at 5.2%. That's historically pretty low. Of course, life is always going to be a struggle for someone. But this is evidence against the claim that immigrants are taking American jobs. Or rather, it shows that when immigrants take American jobs, the economy can easily generate new jobs. We're not going to run out of jobs as long as we have a flexible labor market.
Cheap labor benefits anyone who buys services. If you go to a restaurant or a car wash, you pay a bit less if the wages of the guy working there are lower. We benefit in other ways too. If you buy a house for $50,000 and sell it five years later for $80,000 because immigrant homebuyers are buoying up the market, you benefit.

Posted by: Selinda Arguso On Thursday, April 7th

One more time:
"But most people are kept out of the US only because they are suspected of 'taking American jobs." That's what you said.
What the hell are you talking about? Do you happen to have the resumes of these people illegally crossing the border or something? Are you asserting that you KNOW somehow that they have skills that are valuable to us? Or your idea of charity is giving a fruit picker $100 a week instead of $20?
By the way, $20 lasts longer in most third-world countries than it does here. And most of the "jobs" you think should be available to illegals are often already available in their home country, thanks to NAFTA and multinational corporations. People in America, particularly in the manufacturing sector, are most certainly fighting for the jobs they already have.
And American unions are in trouble, too.
The jobs I imagine you think the illegal "hard-working" immigrants are qualified for are being sought after by Americans. Why do you think cheap labor will improve anyone's life but the people at the very top?
By the way, the U.S. recruits thousands of talented scientists, writers, researchers, engineers, etc. from other countries. We invite those people because they provide value to our system, our industry.

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Thursday, April 7th

scooter:
Re: "Ethnic cleansing."
To me, driving people who live in the US out of the US, on a mass scale, amounts to ethnic cleansing. If it were happening in Africa, that's what I'd call it.
But maybe this post is just about enforcing the borders, which I guess is different. Sorry, my bad. It's just that the vision of unmanned aircraft patrolling US skies gives me the creeps. I don't want to find out where that road would take us.
And shutting out terrorists and shutting out workers must be rigorously distinguished. Where there's even the faintest pretext that a person is being excluded from the country as a suspected terrorist, I'm willing to give the case a second hearing. But most people are kept out of the US only because they are suspected of "taking American jobs."

Posted by: Selinda Arguso On Thursday, April 7th

Nathan:
I understand your perspective as a matter of the heart issue. For example, if I was unfortunate enough to be born in a country where violence and corruption were dominant and economic mobility an impossibility, I, too, might look for ways to improve my situation. I think it is a fair argument that global citizens, as a matter of humanity, should have that benefit. Do I want my tax dollars, my American tax dollars to fund that initiative? Absolutely not. Do I think it's America's job to police the world? No. Do I think we have enough citizens in the United States that have problems we must deal with? Yes.
When I said welfare-sucking, I did mean the children of illegal immigrants. And if you've lived in the communities of Echo Park or Silverlake in Los Angeles, you would see that the clinics are always full of pregnant women. I'm not just saying this for any other reason than that I lived it. I saw the manipulation of the system.
I don't see Europe or Canada opening its borders to Mexicans, for example. Do you?
Do you think foreigners should be able to run for President, too?
So we give illegals the right to vote in addition to drive? Give them Social Security Numbers?
Oh yes, Nathan, THAT would make Mr. Bin Laden a very happy man. I can see the planes of happy immigrants landing right NOW.

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Thursday, April 7th

Re: "Tolerating the notion of unlicensed, unaccounted for, nontaxpaying, public education and welfare sucking illegal immigrants as a matter of preventing us from some backlash of the left is the poorest argument I've heard for open borders yet."
Unlicensed? Well, license them.
Unaccounted for? Again, let them get registered. Give them Social Security numbers.
Nontaxpaying? Again, give them documentation and they'll start paying taxes.
Public-education- and welfare-sucking? Well, immigrants are generally disqualified from getting welfare. That's just a myth. I admit it's a bit tricky how to deal with the children of illegal immigrants.
The upside of immigration is huge. Better hospitality would do more than anything else to improve America's image in the world, as well as honor our own traditions and principles, but that's not the only benefit. It helps to control inflation in services. Immigrants' tax dollars buoy up the Social Security system. Many new homebuyers are immigrants, so immigrants help keep housing prices up. All homeowners benefit from that. I could go on and on...
I'm all for stopping crime among illegal immigrants. But illegal immigrants who are not knife-wielding and drug-dealing (and your anecdotal evidence hardly dissuades me from my belief that most illegals just want to work for a living) should not be punished for the sins of those who are.

Posted by: scooter On Thursday, April 7th

Nathan, who exactly are you referring to as "racist" or fanatic? or fantastist?(!)
And "ethnic cleansing"? Hyperbole is one thing; this is a lie.

Posted by: temp@yahoo.com">Selinda Arguso On Thursday, April 7th

In response to Nathan:
"Against peaceful workers" is the problem with your argument. If you've ever lived in a community of illegal immigrants, as I did for 8 years in LA, you would understand that there are many more knife-wielding, drug-dealing, job-stealing gangsters among them, than righteous upstanding people. The social services are sucked dry. The State of Ca., in this example, can't afford to educate them, they are NOT contributing to the resources they, as a group, are sucking, whereby dragging the left, right, and center down with them. You see, this isn't a matter of liberalism, it's a matter of whether you BELIEVE that our American version of capitalism works or not. Do you? America doesn't currently have an open-border policy, nor should they, in my opinion. I applaud the Minutemen for doing a better job at patrolling the borders than the government. As for you, sir, calling the notion of military border patrol a racist fantasy is a gross mistake.
Most people just want a better life. Tolerating the notion of unlicensed, unaccounted for, nontaxpaying, public education and welfare sucking illegal immigrants as a matter of preventing us from some backlash of the left is the poorest argument I've heard for open borders yet.
Got any others?

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Thursday, April 7th

Are you seriously suggesting that we deploy the latest military technology on our own border, not against terrorists but against peaceful workers?
Do you have any idea how the left would crucify us for this all over the world? Do you have any idea how right they would be to do so? Do you have any idea what a propaganda victory we'd be handing to bin Laden?
I support the military fighting terrorists and tyrants, not carrying out ethnic cleansing operations for the benefit of racist fantasists back home, thank you very much.

Feature Articles