America Inches toward Questionable Immigration Reform

The US Senate is close to an agreement to vastly increase fencing, patrols and high-tech monitoring along the US-Mexico border. The detailed amendment formally unveiled in the Senate makes it likely that a sweeping immigration bill, with the inclusion of the amendment, is headed for passage next week with substantial bipartisan support. President Obama also supports the bill. The new amendment adds thousands of patrol agents, hundreds of miles of fencing, and a budget of billions of dollars to be spent on everything from helicopters to drones to watchtowers. Republican Senators John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee were instrumental in drafting the amendment and getting GOP support lined up. "We really are trying to secure the border in a way that we hope can get bipartisan support and that Americans want," Senator Hoeven told the AP in a phone interview Friday. "We're hopeful to have a good bipartisan majority." Arizona Republican Senator John McCain said that "if there's anyone who still will argue that the border is not secure after this, then border security is not their reason for opposing a path to citizenship for the people who are in this country illegally." Hoeven developed the amendment along with Republican Senator Corker, in consultation with McCain, Senators Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer, and other members of the so-called Gang of Eight senators who wrote the immigration bill. It prevents immigrants now here illegally from attaining permanent resident status until a series of steps has been taken to secure the border. In addition to the border guards, the new amendment calls for unmanned surveillance drones, 350 miles of new pedestrian fencing to add to 350 miles already in place and an array of fixed and mobile devices to maintain vigilance, including high-tech tools such as infrared ground sensors and airborne radar. The timetable for implementation is 10 years, which matches the 10-year path to a permanent resident green card that the bill sets out for immigrants here illegally. During that time, the immigrants could live and work legally in a provisional status. Senator Hoeven said the 10-year cost of the border security amendment included $25 billion for the additional Border Patrol agents, $3 billion for fencing and $3.2 billion for other measures. Senators who had been uncommitted on the immigration bill are now prepared to support it, assuming the amendment is adopted. Senators Dean Heller and Mark Kirk announced their support for the deal Thursday. Republicans have insisted that green cards be made conditional on catching or turning back 90% of would-be border crossers. Schumer, other Democrats and Obama himself rejected this trigger, which they feared could delay the path to citizenship for years. The Democrat-Republican cooperation was made possible by a Congressional Budget Office report Tuesday concluding that the bill would cut billions of dollars from the deficit. Schumer's top immigration aide, Leon Fresco, had the idea of devoting some of those billions to a dramatic border buildup. With the budget office finding in place, Fresco met with Schumer and Corker and said, "OK, let's go big." The idea immediately appealed to the left and the right. For Republicans, it provided concrete assurances of seriously heightened border security. For Democrats, it offered achievable and measurable goals. ~~~~~ But, dear readers, there is no light at the end of the immigration tunnel just yet. Leading Republican opponents of the bill held a news conference to denounce the deal as little more than an empty promise. And the US House of Representatives, Republican-controlled and more conservative than the Senate, still has to pass its own immigration reform bill. When both the Senate and House bills have been passed, a joint House-Senate committee will try ro reconcile them. The one positive sign in all this is that everyone agrees that "something" has to be done. The choices range from a general 'amnesty' granting green card status to all illegal immigrants to forcng all illegals to go back to their country of origin and apply for admission under the current US visa program. The worrisome aspect of the Senate's beefed up border control program is that it has not worked to date and simply building a few hundred additional miles of fence and adding more border patrol capability looks to me like a game of mirrors and whistles to cover over the insurmountable problem of sealing a 2,000-mile land border when thousands of Mexicans and other Latin Americans are determined to get to America, whatever it takes.