What’s New at Borders?

The debate rages. One side sees undocumented immigration (aka illegal immigration) as a job-destroying, social-cost-sucking, false-new-citizens-being-born-here, crime-spreading malevolent blight on our nation. Another side sees cheap labor for jobs Americans – even in a recession – don’t want, including crop pickers and stooped labor, worker in slaughterhouses, housekeepers, ditch-digging construction workers, low-end factory assembly line labor, garment workers, dishwashers, etc. Yet another side sees folks struggling to survive, to find cash to pay for relatives back home where jobs are scarce, some escaping bullet-riddled towns dominated by drug cartels thriving off the demand for narcotics generated by Americans and armed with top-of-the-line weapons purchased legally in the U.S. and smuggled illegally the other way.

For those arguing amnesty, they point to a way to generate more tax dollars to balance any social costs that might be in the way and the fact that most of us, within a generation or three, are the children of immigrants as well. Others say that granting amnesty rewards illicit behavior and encourages more of what we cannot support anyway. To the 11 or more million undocumented aliens in the United States, this is a battle they have seen before. The level of new legal barriers erected against them – from the highly charged new statutes in Arizona that require folks to carry their “papers” at all times in case they are stopped for some other “legitimate” reason (the fate of this law resides currently in federal court) to controversial “fence” that stretches for hundreds of miles along the Mexican border – is, however, unprecedented. But the biggest barrier – the job-killing economy itself – is clearly taking an even bigger toll.

Is the porous border a highway for terrorists with explosives – maybe even a dirty bomb – ready to take out thousands with a single blast? It that porous border on the northern or southern side of the United States? Are we “terrified” – an indication that the terrorist have met their objective? Are we looking over our shoulders, wondering… knowing that sooner or later “it” will happen?

President Obama has stepped up enforcement at the Mexican border, sending about 1,200 National Guard troops to reinforce the Customs and Border Protection agents who are already there. He has requested an additional $500 million to recruit new border agents; the troops are simply a stopgap, temporary measure. He has also stepped up enforcement within the United States by targeting employers who routinely and significantly employ undocumented workers.

Whether it’s the economy, these new enforcement efforts or, most likely, a combination of the two, the number of undocumented aliens in the United States – which reached an all-time high of about 12 million in 2007 – is significantly down. 10.8 million if you believe Homeland Security numbers, 11.1 million if you prefer a recent Pew Hispanic Center survey (California has the largest contingent – 2.6 million). Either way, the numbers suggest a drop of approximately 8%, which places the total number of such undocumented at about 4% of the entire U.S. population: “About 300,000 illegal immigrants entered the U.S. each year from 2007 to 2009, down from the roughly 850,000 that entered annually fro m 2000 to 2005, according to the Pew report… The U.S. government has also stepped up removal of illegal immigrants, with 387,790 deported in fiscal 2009, compared with 291,060 in 2007.” Los Angeles Times (Sept. 1^st).

But in any economic slump, where jobs and economic survival are the predominant issues, political forces always focus on “groups” that need to be targeted, to shoulder some of the blame and vent some of the frustration from economic discontent. History is replete with examples, and reactions can be extreme, from the Holocaust, or not… like simply stricter border enforcement. Undocumented workers and Latino gang wars make good photogenic examples of what we “need to get rid of.” As a conservative, anti-incumbent tide is sweeping the nation, with profound political change all but inevitable in the November election, it does appear as if life in these lowest reaches of society won’t be getting better anytime soon. In the longer term, however, given the rather significant growth in legal U.S. citizens of Hispanic extraction, will this group of voters “remember” who raised the banner against the mostly Hispanic flood of the undocumented? We probably won’t know the results of this sentiment in the next election, but will it surface in the near term? Watch the candidates’ lips move as the voters begin to react!

I’m Peter Dekom, and undocumented workers aren’t the only folks being displaced by this economic tsunami.