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Escalation on Our Own Borders |
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We escalate, they escalate:
When U.S. authorities raised a tall curtain of steel through this tiny Arizona border town to prevent people crossing illegally from Mexico, the smugglers on the south side were ready.
Using blowtorches and welding gear they burned a rectangular gate in the barrier large enough to drive a truck through, then they sealed it with a padlock to use it at their leisure, border police say.
As the U.S. government pushes ahead with an unprecedented security buildup along the porous Mexico border in this presidential election year, profit-hungry Mexican drug and human smugglers the length of the line are raising their game.
Border police are encountering ingenious and often simply brazen attempts to foil security at both the ports of entry and empty spaces along the nearly 2,000 mile (3,200-km) border by human and drug smuggling organizations.
Now let me anticipate the counterargument: this just proves why we need to fortify our borders. If Mexican criminals are willing to go to these lengths, we should be willing to go to equal lengths to stop them.
But I don’t agree. I think the escalation proves that we cannot stop immigration by force - we can only re-route it, so to speak, and make it more risky. As long as we treat the problem of immigration strictly as an issue of crime, we will miss opportunities to examine how free trade policies, our foreign policy toward Mexico, and the behavior of illegal employers in America fuel the problem. My question about the fence has always been, “Could that money be better spent?” I think the escalation indicates that yes, it could. Instead of building walls to keep people out, we could spend money to address the reasons why they come. But that might take a little more honesty than politicians - or the public - are willing to undertake right now.
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