NDN Blog

President Obama, spoke on immigration for longer then anyone would have thought last night, below is the text of his statement on moving forward on the DREAM Act and Immigration Reform:

One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.

Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. I know that debate will be difficult and take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who can staff our research labs, start new businesses, and further enrich this nation.

While a legislative path forward on any of this is hazy at best, it was good that the President acknowledged the importance of the DREAM Act in terms of competitiveness for the country.  The White House framed the message in another way sending out a fact sheet on the speech which contained the following:

Reforming immigration laws to stop expelling talent: The President asked Congress to work with him to reform our immigration system in a comprehensive manner so that we stop expelling talented and responsible young people, whether they were brought here by their parents as children, or come from other countries to pursue college and advanced degrees. As we work to rebuild the economy, our ability to thrive depends, in part, on restoring responsibility and accountability to our immigration system.

It is of note that the Obama administration has begun to discuss both immigration and the Dream Act in terms of competitiveness and being a net positive overall for the economy. Let's hope framing the issue in this way becomes a part of the Democratic messaging around immigration in the future.

"It is nearly impossible to enter or leave the Yuma sector without running into a border patrol agent in one way or another" - Alan L. Kreiger, Mayor of Yuma.

If toning down the rhetoric on Border Violence is the top line message of this inaugural U.S. Mexico Border Mayor Conference, then the underlying fact is that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Services (CPB) strategy for making the border region safer is working.

Starting in 1992 to the present day: apprehensions are down in every border sector. What this means is that the tactics that the CPB are utilizing are producing results; less apprehensions means there is less violence. Rather as Border Patrol presence has increased from 1992 to now crime has decreased.

Looking over the long haul:

The graph above shows in every border city sector a precipitous drop in apprehensions. In 2000, the record high water mark apprehensions total was 1,643,679, flash forward to 2010 and the total number of apprehensions is down to 447,731. That is a 73% reduction in apprehensions.

That is not all, according to CPB: Since 2004, the number of “boots on the ground” along the Southwest border has increased by nearly 85% to 17,600 Border Patrol Agents today. Arizona currently has a record number of “boots on the ground,” with more than 4,900 Border Patrol Agents, 900 Customs and Border Protection Officers, and 130 Air and Marine Agents.

This has yielded results: In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, CBP seized more than $104 million in southbound
illegal currency – an increase of more than $28 million compared to 2007- 2008. In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, southbound seizures in Arizona were approximately $10.7 million.

In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, CBP and ICE seized more than $282 million in illegal currency, more than 7 million pounds of drugs, and more than 6,800 weapons along the southwest border – increases of more than $73 million, more than 1 million pounds of drugs and more than 1,500 weapons compared to 2007-2008.

What all of this means is that while the Border is not secure, it is safe. Which is a much more realistic goal for the Department of Homeland Security to strive for. It is certainly what the Mayors living in Border towns are asking for. The facilitation in the growth of commerce and an increase in efficiency on the movement of goods and people across the border is far more valuable to those living along the border than a militarization which closes the ports of entry down.

Innovation and leadership from both the United States and Mexico is a positive step. And while CPB and DHS continue to do their part in this, more than anything else what needs to change is the temperament of politicians and the media in how they cover the border region. This is a dynamic space that can be both a place of commerce and a safe region that will be mutually beneficial to Mexico and the United States. Wouldn't that be something if people talked about that for a change?

One of the more interesting aspects of being at the U.S. Mexico Border conference was being able to listen to conversations about aspects of the current immigration debate which are not often discussed in Congress or the national media. Chief among those issues was the pressing need for more infrastructure growth along the border.

While the national conversation on immigration seems to be stuck on securing the border and limiting the flow of people across our southern border; mayors who actually govern in states along the border say that securing the border does not preclude the opening of more ports of entry, and that more must be done to  find ways to make the current ports more efficient.

Border cities have received enormous amounts of support from the Department of Homeland Security. Mayors overwhelmingly pointed to drops in violence along the border,  but what they need more than anything else is to find ways to increase commerce, trade and the movement of people and goods across their border.

In speech after speech, mayors from California, Texas, and Arizona all noted that the ports of entry that their cities housed were meant to process roughly half of the current flow that they take on a daily basis.

The current ports of entry they utilize are old and slow the process of moving families from Mexico into their cities. Families from Mexico spend a lot of money on goods on the American side of the border. Mayors are concerned because wait times on the border can be 2-3 hours long, which ultimately lowers the total number of people who can move into their cities.

The other problem with old ports of entry is that the movement of goods is also slowed. The Mayors at the conference often mentioned that what would also make things better along the border are more ways to efficiently move trucking firms that move goods into and out of the country.

According to the Mayor's more infrastructure along the borders must be built. This is a time consuming  process as it requires Mayors from both the United States and Mexico to work in conjunction to find land that they both agree upon, then there is the actual building which can take some time.

Yet while all of this is pressing for the cities along the border, the national debate continues to be around security. Border Mayor after mayor say, that while they have received more than enough help on that front, it is time to move to the next phase of the plan, infrastructure.

Tucson-  The inaugural U.S. - Mexico Border Mayors Conference has come to an end, and a lot was covered, too much for one post.  The immigration blog will do two more posts on some of the Border Security statistics shared as well as one on infrastructure and capacity issues surrounding the Border.  This post will focus on what was far and away the most talked about issue at the conference: the need for both politicians and the national media to tone down the rhetoric on border violence.

Mayors from Nogales and Yuma Arizona, El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville Texas, and Calexico, California repeatedly stressed that their cities are safe, and that the impression that their cities are raging out of control hurts the overall economic livelihood of their cities.

In speech after speech the Mayors of these cities repeated the refrain that while they support securing the border, they insisted that the depiction of their cities as out of control war zones is simply not true. Further security along the border while welcome is not what they need the most. What they wanted more then anything was the ability to continue to facilitate the movement of people, trade and business from Mexico in and out of their cities in an efficient manner.

The most pernicious problem faced by the Mayors at the conference was not out of control violence on the American side of the border (though they did note that the violence in Mexico is bad, but it rarely spills over, more on this in a later post) but rather it is the rhetoric surrounding border violence that scares both industries and tourists from doing business in their states.  In an economic downturn the loss of this type of business is devastating to their cities.

When all was said and done the theme in these meetings was not security, though it was discussed quite a bit, but rather that the Administration's border plan was starting to show some dividends. While security should continue to be stressed these mayors seemed eager to find ways to continue to harness and improve upon the flow of goods to and from the border.

Commerce, Tourism and the flow of people as forms of human capitol are now the most pressing issues facing these mayors.  What they wanted more than anything was a better way to continue to harness the economic dividends from their neighbors to the south. Tourist spending, from Mexicans legally crossing the border to spend money, then leave is big business for many of these border cities and bad publicity hurts their bottom line.

This is not a Pollyannaish vision of the border, nor is this the opinion of NDN, it is what was conveyed by the mayors at the conference. Ultimately in these times of economic uncertainty, mayors repeated that what they needed more then anything is revenue.  They did not convey a need for open borders, nor did they talk about military lockdown on the border, what was stressed over and over was how best to work in conjunction with their sister cities across the border for the economic benefit of both American and Mexican interests.

Lastly and perhaps most fittingly they wished that the national media and Governors who demonize the border, would just stop, or at the very least visit their cities.

More on the conference shortly…

The Wall Street Journal has a story up today on the White House's announcement that they will begin to aggressively audit businesses I-9 forms to see if they are hiring undocumented immigrants. If they are found to be in violation of these laws, they will be fined and the immigrants found will be deported.

Miriam Jordan has the full story here, John Morton Chief of the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement announced that the Department of Homeland Security will be creating a center which will administer these audits.:

In an interview, John Morton, chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, said the Employment Compliance Inspection Center would "address a need to conduct audits even of the largest employers with a very large number of employees." The office would be announced Thursday, he said.

This is significant in a couple of ways, first this type of audit is the exact opposite of the type of splashy raids conducted by the Bush Administration. In a way it is far more effective. The Bush Administration would conduct raids which would inevitably end up on television and would give the impression that they were tough on enforcement issues.  The reality is those types of raids were not very efficient, the sheer man power of raiding work site, by work site is huge, and time consuming.  Not to mention they were not humane in any sense of the word... By contrast, a centralized office, designed to do nothing else but audit people could cover far more businesses. Audits under the Obama administration have sky rocketed:

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010, ICE conducted audits of more than 2,740 companies, nearly twice as many as the previous year. The agency levied a record $7 million in civil fines on businesses that employed illegal workers.

Contrast this with the Bush Administration and the difference is apparent:

Enforcement activity during the Bush administration focused on high-profile raids in which thousands of illegal immigrants were arrested and placed in deportation proceedings. Relatively few companies and their executives were prosecuted.  In contrast, the Obama administration has made employers the center of its immigration policy with "silent raids." Critics say the policy has penalized small employers while failing to target larger employers

In the new Congress, often you will hear Republican members of the House Judiciary Sub Committee on Immigration complain that the Obama administrtation is not tough enough on enforcement. The data clearly shows that not only are they tough on enforcement but that they are effecient. Which is not something that can be said about the last President in office. Nor can it be said about the enforcement policies of the GOP controlled Congress for the six years when they controlled both chambers. This is not  partisan sniping it is more to point out that for all the politicized complaining about security, over the last three years of the current admnistration there has been a healthy emphasis on security and enforcement laws. At this point if the GOP was serious about solving the problems associated with immigration they would stop pointing fingers and start legislating on a more comprehensive solution.

The Immigration blog is currently out in Tucson, AZ for the U.S.-Mexican Mayors Association Conference and will be sitting in on some of the working group meetings and presentations.

The U.S.-Mexican Mayors Association was formed in conjunction with the United States and Mexico government to help formulate policies that affect the border communities of our mutual countries.

Given what has been made available to conference attendees there will be a heavy emphasis on border security, but also in refreshing twist discussions on trade, sustainable incomes and both a healthy and secure environment on the border. 

According to documents released earlier today The U.S. Mexico Border Mayors Association Works To:

• Provide a better and secure quality of life of the residents of Mexico and the United States border region by providing economic development opportunities and sustainable incomes in a healthy and secure environment

• To assist and help develop sound policies to secure the Mexican and The United States Border

• Make the flow of goods between the Mexico and the United States as efficient as possible by advocating for the necessary funding from the state and federal government

• Be an advocate for federal and states investments and incentives in areas considered vital to the fulfillment of the mission of Border Mayors Association

The Immigration blog will bring you more as it develops.

A new poll released yesterday by the bi-partisan Mayors Against Illegal Guns shows that there is widespread support for giving the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives  (ATF) emergency powers to require gun dealers in border states such as Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California to flag anyone who purchases more then three long guns.

The full poll can be seen here, and the proposed new regulations can be seen here, below is the polling data on tracking guns used by Mexican Drug Dealers:

Question: Do you favor or oppose tracking bulk purchases of assault rifles, which have become the weapon of choice of Mexican drug cartels?

What is significant about this particular poll is that the total population, and the gun owner population both give 80 percent support to tracking the bulk purchases of assault rifles. This is about as close to consensus on an issue as you are going to get.

According to the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Obama administration is set to give the ATF the necessary powers to better regulate the flow of American guns into the United States.

More on this as it develops.

The Republican Party currently faces a crucible over how to deal with immigration in the coming Congress and for the foreseeable future. They are pulled in two, by a Tea Party that at best, has shown an almost militaristic disdain of undocumented immigrants and Moderates and the old guard of the Republican party who see no reason to further antagonize an important voting bloc in 2012.

While NDN, has often reported on some of the more outrageous GOP legislative proposals, no one here is under any delusion that the Hispanic community is only strengthened by having both political parties vie for their vote. Which is why the current internal debate within the GOP is so important. No party should ever feel like they have ownership of any constituencies vote.

Having said that, the GOP have a ways to go in healing their caustic stance on some of the most important issues facing Hispanic's.

The dichotomy of the GOP's current stance has never been more on display then over the events of last week.  While former Governor Jeb Bush held  a conference in Florida, to plan a way for the GOP to move forward with outreach to the Hispanic community,  Congressional Republicans planned to wage war with the White House over their opposition to Arizona's anti immigration law SB1070.

Albert R. Blunt of Bloomberg has the full story here:

Thus the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, plans to assail Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. over his opposition to Arizona’s anti-immigration measure and push to enact more punitive laws....  Over the weekend, former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and former Senator Norm Coleman  of Minnesota held a conference to plan more effective Republican outreach to Latino voters. This coincides with plans by new Republican majorities in more than a dozen state capitals for Arizona-type legislation to crack down on undocumented workers.

It certainly seems like one step forward and two steps back for the GOP and Hispanics. The Democratic party is only too happy to point out that while the GOP is taking some perfunctory steps towards healing their relationship with Hispanic's they have a long way to go. Congressman Xavier Becerra for one was not buying it, putting out a press release which listed all of the ways in which Republican's have gone out of their way to alienated the Hispanic community, the full release is here:

• They destroyed the dreams of educated young Latinos ready to serve in the military or attend college when they blocked the DREAM Act in the Senate.

• Their political operatives told Latinos “Don’t Vote” in the last election, claiming that was in their best interest.

• They authored and pushed SB 1070 in Arizona that required racial profiling of Latinos.

•  They are proposing a law to eliminate birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the children of Latino immigrants, chaining them to permanent second-class status.

• Despite President Obama’s and Democrats’ overtures for a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform, they blocked and rejected these efforts to fix our broken immigration system.

• In the first month of Barack Obama’s presidency, they firmly opposed the extension of health care for millions of legal immigrant children through the SCHIP program.

Last week the Obama Administration put an end to a high tech border fence covering only 53 miles of a projected 2,000 miles between the United States and Mexico that was costing American tax payers nearly a billion dollars.

Suzanne Gamboa of The Associated Press has the full story here:

The Obama administration on Friday ended a high-tech border fence project that cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion but did little to improve security. Congress ordered the high-tech fence along the border with Mexico in 2006 amid a clamor over the porous border, but it yielded only 53 miles of protection.

Putting an end to the funding of such a high tech border fence highlights the difficulty of finding a cost effective and successful way of limiting the entrance of undocumented immigrants into the country:

Although it has been well known that the virtual fence project would be dumped, Napolitano officially informed key members of Congress Friday that an "independent, quantitative, science-based review made clear" the fence, known as SBInet, "cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated border security technology solution."

While the high tech nature of the fence was initially a selling point, after tests revealed that at 15 million dollars a mile, the fence was too expensive to implement fully:

The fence, initiated in 2005, was to be a network of cameras, ground sensors and radars that would be used to spot incursions or problems and decide where to deploy Border Patrol agents. It was supposed to be keeping watch over most of this nation's southern border with Mexico by this year.  Instead, taxpayers ended up with about 53 miles of operational "virtual fence" in Arizona for a cost of at least $15 million a mile, according to testimony in previous congressional hearings.

All of this speaks to the problem that legislators run into when working towards the nebulous concept of securing the border, without moving forward on dealing with businesses that hire undocumented immigrants and the current number of immigrants who live in the United States, or working together on a federally passed overhaul of our immigration system then the result will continue to be the continued flow of undocumented labor into the country. 

It is somewhat ironic that the state that has the stretch of operational virtual border fence is Arizona. Arizona, more so then any other state in America has gone out of its way to pass more punitive anti immigration enforcement laws than any other state, and now has a stretch of the most highly advanced border technology in the world, and to hear the Republican controlled state legislator tell it Arizona is still considered a "porous" border.

At what point, at what amount of money do legislators need to spend on enforcement only before they realize that all the technology, all of the draconian enforcement laws passed in the world will not stop people from coming over, without moving on a federal overhaul of immigration laws.

In a surprise move GOP House Leadership announced this week that immigration hard liner Representative Steve King of Iowa would not be the new Chairman of the subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement but had appointed Representative Elton Gallegly of California to the committee post.

While Gallegly is not as well known on immigration issues, he is of a similar disposition as King, just not as outspoken. The American Immigration Lawyers Association has released a helpful face sheet on him here:

Some highlights are below:

Legislative History

In 1995 he chaired the Congressional Task Force on Immigration Reform which set the groundwork for IIRIRA in 1996. Additionally, he sponsored an amendment to IIRIRA that would have allowed states to bar illegal immigrants from attending public schools Gallegly recommended the Basic Pilot Program, which has evolved into E-Verify.

• In 2006, Gallegly was recognized as one of the Top Ten Illegal Immigration Hawks in Congress by Human Events Magazine and inducted into the U.S. Border Control Hall of Fame.
• During the opening weeks of the 112th Congress, Gallegly has cosponsored legislation to: Require the creation and use of electronically readable Social Security cards and an employment eligibility database within the next two years (H.R. 98).

Legislative Interests:

• Repeal Birthright Citizenship
• Mandate the use of E-Verify
• Limit legal immigration by eliminating visas for unskilled workers, two family preferences categories, and the Diversity Visa program.
• Require proof of citizenship to receive public benefits such as SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan 
• Make English the official language of the United States

It is safe to say that while he is not as vocal as King, they share similar views on undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Stay tuned, for what is sure to be an interesting upcoming Congressional session.