April 7, 2006

Wall First, Questions Later

Krauthammer

    Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

    Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the last 50 years.

    Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don't tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that's an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one.

    Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn't have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle. Once we can do that, everything becomes possible -- most especially, humanizing the situation of our 11 million existing illegals.

Immigration Internecine Posted by AlexC at April 7, 2006 2:57 PM

Except for his perpetuation of the "11 million" myth (some estimate 20 million or more) this is a great column. Krauthammer advocates for the same thing JK has for weeks now: "Radical legalization of those already here." Except, like me, he insists on concrete (pardon the pun) measures to end illigal immigration. But as neither JK nor I has done, Charles observes that resistance to the former will nearly vanish if the latter is effectively achieved first. He proposes a year or two interval between the two.

This is a compromise solution that works - both sides get the result they want. Presuming, of course, that Krauthammer's prediction on the part of security advocates holds and that legalization advocates really are willing to allow illegal immigration to be stopped.

Posted by: johngalt at April 7, 2006 3:22 PM

Further, kudos to Charles for elevating the idea of serious and deliberate border security from "Tancredo quackery" to mainstream (media, at least) legitimacy.

Posted by: johngalt at April 7, 2006 3:33 PM

Speaking of inside baseball, I watched an hour of the Senate floor debate this morning. Some speeches were very good (Sen. Craig, R-ID!) but it was about a cloture motion for the Martinez-Hagel amendment, Minority Leader Reid calling the Republican's obstructionist, I was agreeing with Sens. Feinstein and Kennedy, Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama will play the part of Tom Tancredo today...

I'm surprisingly calm. Things are happening according to plan. I will get what I want in the end and publish an indecent I told you so to my GOP Immigration Win piece.

The Senate will pass a bill that is very light on enforcement, but includes a guest-worker provision. The House passes a tough enforcement bill (I'll take a little more wall, but am not up for a Krauthammer/Israel wall if we can avoid it).

Conference will hammer out a "comprehensive" bill that will be a little tough for the Wall Street Journal and too lenient for Rep Tancredo, but we'll all move along.

Looking for that seed of disagreement, it occurs to me that I do not see illegal immigrants as the security threat that others on this page do. It concerns me that N million people are here illegally but that terrorist threats are more serious from domestic sources or other countries.

Posted by: jk at April 7, 2006 6:05 PM

Small security threat? Tell that to the wife of Boulder County motorcyclist Dale Englerth who was run over by an illegal who, instead of being prosecuted, was deported to Mexico by Boulder police because of a "scheduling snafu." Or the wife of Denver cop Donnie Young, who was shot in the back of the head by an illegal who worked at one of Denver mayor Hickenlooper's restaurants. These are individual examples meant to show the horror of the problem, not the magnitude.

How about the Mexican drug gang MS-13? 11,000 organized Mexican illegals conducting business with impunity in 33 US states. Or Mexican army patrols crossing miles into US territory and firing upon US border officers. One editorialist I read claims "a full 30% of illegals fill our prisons." I'm not sure of this stat, or what this is a percentage OF, but it's clearly troubling.

But the greatest threat from the current state of immigration policy is the near complete ignorance of our current laws. When some laws go unenforced, other laws are soon ignored. Particularly by those with little or nothing to lose and everything to gain. The current debate is not about changing the law, but about whether we'll try to enforce it or, through abandonment, effectively repeal it. I say we MUST enforce this law. We need to be brave if we want to be free.

Posted by: johngalt at April 8, 2006 11:22 AM

Tragic examples of crime. When I say small security threat, I suggest a small threat of terrorism.

People want to tie the global war on terrorism onto their favorite projects, be it midnight basketball, multicultural education, whatever. I hear the protectionists and the close-the-border crowd using this and I think it is equally risible.

Illegal immigration, as you point out, has many of its own problems. But I reject the call to include it as national security.

Posted by: jk at April 8, 2006 12:57 PM

Don't close the border - control it. (This is my new broken record track.) New York congressman Pete King said yesterday that intelligence reports of terrorism activity at the southern border are troubling, and that waiting for a tragedy to occur before doing something about it is irresponsible. Seems to me you'll have a hard time convincing voters that idea is some kind of extremism.

Posted by: johngalt at April 10, 2006 3:07 PM | What do you think? [6]