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Border fence campaign another sign of frustration

AUSTIN, Texas — A 2,000-mile tableau from the Pacific to the Gulf, the nation's southern border spans six Mexican and four U.S. states, snaking through arid deserts, rugged mountains, urban areas and remote, dangerous terrain.

Despite an unprecedented build-up in border enforcement during the past decade, much of the battle against illegal immigration is still being lost there.

Now, a conservative group wants to fence off the border, all 2,000 miles of it, calling the idea a logical solution to an immigration problem that's out of control and threatens national security and the economy.

"I think it's an issue whose time has come," said Colin Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring, a Pennsylvania-based group that gained national prominence in 2004 by urging pastors to more actively promote conservative causes during the presidential campaign, and for distributing a video touting President Bush's religious convictions.

Last week, the group launched an Internet and national television ad campaign to build support for a border fence.

Not surprisingly, the idea is highly controversial.

"It's just offensive and it's contrary to basic American identity and values," said Michele Waslin, director of immigration policy research for the Hispanic advocacy group National Council of La Raza. Like other critics, she believes a fence won't work.

The fence campaign faces hurdles. It might cost as much as $8 billion, key politicians oppose it, and there's some doubt whether it would work if built. On top of that, nobody in Congress has actually stepped up and proposed legislation.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has informally proposed erecting a razor wire-topped border fence, but he has not yet introduced a bill. And if anyone does, galvanizing support might be formidable, given the reaction of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of the immigration, border security and citizenship subcommittee.

"I think (a border fence) is futile because I don't think you can build a wall high enough or wide enough to keep people out of the country who have no hope or opportunity where they live," Cornyn said.

Whether the fence campaign generates public and legislative support remains to be seen. But the effort demonstrates anew a growing level of exasperation about the country's porous southern border and an illegal immigrant population now estimated at 11 million people, most from Mexico.

Though the U.S. border with Canada is more than twice as long as the southern border, more than 94 percent of arrests of illegal immigrants occur on the southern border each year.

Angry that the federal government isn't doing enough, some Americans are taking action, including forming armed citizen patrols. Last month, Texas lawmakers asked Bush to free up more money to help close off the flow of undocumented immigrants. Arizona and New Mexico governors earlier declared states of emergency in border counties, citing the federal government's failure to control illegal immigration.

And last week, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, introduced a bill that would give state and local officials more authority to arrest illegal immigrants.

"I think there's frustration across the political spectrum," Waslin said.

A "state-of-the-art" border fence could be built for $4 billion to $8 billion, Hanna says, with a multilayered design similiar to what Israel is building in the West Bank.

Let Freedom Ring's vision includes 200 crossings for commerce, commuters, tourism and legal immigration. It would actually be two fences of unspecified height, topped with barbed wire, with a space in between for patrols. There would also be closed circuit cameras, sensors and other obstacles.

Building the fence would require taking some private land, Hanna said, but mostly in areas that are relatively open or barren.

"I don't think there are too many environmental concerns," Hanna said.

Both critics and proponents say that building a 2,000-mile-long fence is theoretically possible, but that is where their agreement ends.

While not commenting directly on the fence proposal, one immigration policy expert said a massive investment in manpower, hardware and technology to seal the border still wouldn't shut off illegal immigration from Mexico.

"Smugglers would run migrants up the Pacific and Gulf coasts, and maritime enforcement would become the new battleground," Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego, said in a statement.

Some immigration policy experts have long called for a mix of efforts to curtail illegal immigration, including beefed-up workplace and border enforcement along with more ways for immigrants to come and stay legally.

Immigrant rights advocacy groups such as the National Council of La Raza support legislation that would allow workers already here to apply for legal status.

Bush and some lawmakers such as Cornyn are pushing guest worker programs that would allow migrants to work legally for several years and then require them to go home.

Immigration enforcement in the workplace is almost nonexistent, and Mexicans can make more money in an hour of work in the U.S. than they could in a whole day in their country.

Without a border fence and without controlling our borders, "all this talk about a guest worker program and reforming our illegal immigration system is just so much talk," said Jan Ting, an assistant commissioner with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1990 to 1993. A fence would be an essential part of any efforts to deter terrorists from entering the country, said Ting, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

"Our border is so wide open, it's hard to imagine that people who mean us harm are not trying to come in," Ting said.

But Doris Meissner, who headed the former federal immigration agency from October 1993 to 2000 and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said terrorists "have basically used the legal migration system to their advantage."

The 9/11 Public Discourse Project launched by the former members of the 9/11 Commission reported that all the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers entered the United States with proper immigration documents, though several had committed fraudulent acts to get them.

"The arguments for better immigration enforcement and controls are perfectly legitimate, and obviously the system as it's operating is now is badly broken," Meissner said, "but by and large, anti-terrorism is a different endeavor."

Let Freedom Ring formed in 2004 and estimates its membership in the low thousands.

"We consider ourselves pro-legal immigration," Hanna said, adding that comprehensive reform probably will require raising current legal immigration limits, which Bush has also proposed.

Hanna said he embraced the fence idea after he learned that Ting had called for one.

"There are about 11,000 Border Patrol agents at present," Hanna said. "They're obviously inadequate to patrol the entire border."

Cornyn thinks more agents can do the job. The reform bill he co-sponsored with Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., calls for adding 10,000 agents in five years.

A Department of Homeland Security budget adopted Friday earmarks $9 billion for border security, including money to hire 1,000 new Border Patrol agents. Lawmakers hailed the agreement as a necessary first component of comprehensive immigration reform.

"Any plan starts with securing our nation's borders," said U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

Cornelius, the immigration policy researcher, said immigration officials have told the federal Government Accountability Office that it may take 10 years and hundreds of millions in new Border Patrol spending to gain what they call "operational control" over most of the border.

Hanna said he has begun lobbying lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, seeking to convince them that public support for a fence is more prevalent than they might think. "They seem concerned about the problem and intrigued about the solution," he said.

Though several immigration reform bills are pending in Congress, it's unlikely that lawmakers will address them until early 2006.

Cornyn said the illegal immigration issue "is gaining a new and greater sense of urgency day by day."

"This is fundamentally a national security issue because the same human smugglers who will smuggle a worker are willing for a price to smuggle a terrorist who can exploit that vulnerability to kill innocent civilians," Cornyn said.

Juan Castillo writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: jcastillo@statesman.com