"How Do You Get to the Border?"

Last week, the debate that raged before the United States Senate voted on that legislative disaster, S. 744 (the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act) was whether the border should be secured before or after millions of illegal aliens were granted lawful status. It is inconceivable that any responsible political leader would consider supposed border security a bargaining chip in a political debate. Border security should be a given, especially as the United States faces the  threats posed by international terrorists and transnational gangs from the four corners of the earth.

America’s borders and immigration laws are supposed to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would threaten the United States’ safety and security or put American jobs at risk.

The border security debate created the false illusion that America only has one border, the border that should separate the United States from Mexico. By that reasoning, there are only four “border states:” California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

The reality is far different. Today there are at least five million illegal aliens present in the United States who did not run our borders but were admitted through ports of entry. They did not get to the U.S. Border by traveling to Mexico in the hopes of and surviving encounters with the banditos and coyotes, rattlesnakes and scorpions. They did not worry about dying in the meteorological oven that is the desert to be found along sections of the border or drowning in the Rio Grande. They didn’t devise a strategy to evade the Border Patrol.

Some simply hopped on an airline flight that brought them to one of dozens of international airports found in virtually every state and answered a couple of cursory questions posed by a beleaguered CBP Inspector who is expected to keep the line of arriving foreign visitors moving. Because of the Visa Waiver Program, the great majority of alien nonimmigrant visitors don’t even apply for a visa.Today the citizens of some 37 countries are exempt  from the visa requirement. The list of exempt countries is growing continuously growing longer.

When aliens overstay their visas, no one looks for them- this is a game of “Hide and Seek” where the illegal aliens hide but DHS don’t seek, unless, it would seem, to provide illegal aliens with employment authorization.

There are also aliens who evade the inspections process by running the border between the United States and Canada. While the extreme economic pressures that exists along the U.S./Mexican border don’t exist along the norther border, aliens do, in fact, cross from the north. Nevertheless, there are precious few Border Patrol agents assigned to securing the northern border even though it is far longer than the souther border.

Finally, aliens also enter the United States by sea. America has 95,000 miles of coastline. Illegal aliens who take a boat to Puerto Rico and acquire false ID may be able to board a flight to the U.S. mainland. Crew members of ocean going vessels including cargo ships, tanker ships and ocean liners have historically jumped ship as have those who stow away on such vessels. Yet ICE rarely seeks to identify these illegal aliens and certainly S.744 would do nothing to provide mandates or resources to track them down.