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It looks like President Trump is going to go ahead with building a border wall with Mexico no matter what. The main immigration argument has been that there are 11 million illegal immigrants in America that don't belong here and until we secure the border, we cannot reform immigration laws. That may be something to consider at the moment.
Not long ago, Edward H. Kaplan and , two professors at the Yale School of Management, completed a study that found that there are, not just 11 million, but most likely 20 million unlawfully present immigrants in the United States. When I asked them why their numbers differ so greatly from the broadly accepted 11 million illegal aliens number, they said,
We have taken a very different approach to estimating the number of undocumented immigrants than the methods used to produce the previous results. The standard 11 million estimate is the difference between the presumed total foreign born, and legally-resident foreign born. The latter data come from government records, but the former are based on surveys that ask people for their country of birth. This approach has many issues that are likely to make it unreliable. Many people do not participate in these surveys, or choose not to reveal their citizenship or place of birth. It is clear that in particular, undocumented immigrants are far less likely to participate, and more likely to refuse answering these questions (or answer untruthfully)."
They added, that in the case of some of the data on border apprehensions and overstays, it was not available until recently.
While you may think the study's results would support President Trump's border wall views, actually the authors did not go there. Their argument was that the wall will not address the reasons why there are so many illegal immigrants in the U.S., such as overstays on visitors visas and immigrants from other countries than Mexico, for example. So if the wall is not going to address the problem of illegal immigration, why are we building it?
Let's start with the "facts of life" regarding the wall.
You may be surprised to learn that most Americans are not in favor of expanding the wall and in fact, a recent study shows 58 percent are in opposition. In part this may be because most illegal immigrants do not sneak across the border - two thirds of undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. legally. The wall symbolizes anti-immigrant sentiment and that clashes with the symbol of the Statue of Liberty and what it means in American folklore. While Trump argues that cities near walls with Mexico are safer, that was not the experience in El Paso. Finally, Trump has argued that drugs can be stopped with a wall but the vast majority of illegal drugs enter the country through legal ports of entry and the Drug Enforcement Agency claims the wall will do little to stop the illegal flow.
So if we were not building a wall, how would we deal with the problems at the southern border?
Among the items that are currently being used to secure the southern U.S. border there are:
Longer-range video cameras, thermal imaging cameras, and radar to provide 24/7 high altitude points of view for officers back at the Nogales Control Center where officers can see what’s going on.
Motion sensor cameras that help with the safety of the border patrol officers.
Thermal cameras that help distinguish bodies even if they are camouflaged.
Mobile surveillance trucks equipped with thermal-range finders enabling officers to determine the distance between themselves and people crossing and laser pointers that give agents in the field with night-vision goggles a heads up.
Customs and Border Protection have also started testing drones with face-recognition software and a new mobile-navigation tool that will allow them to see the live locations of other officers in the field.
The Democratic argument goes that the wall is not needed because America can rely on these kinds of options to secure the southern border. Republicans insist the wall is needed and nothing else will do.
Be that as it may, the deal that was struck to avert a shutdown of the federal government at the end of this week by including funding for the wall is done. The deal will fund some 55 miles of wall and provide President Trump with $ 1.5 billion dollars for that purpose. In addition to this deal, the president has declared a national emergency to obtain a total of $ 8 billion for the wall. There is little doubt the declaration of a national emergency will precipitate a constitutional crisis and end up in court.
As for President Trump's declaration, Senator Dianne Feinstein tweeted recently, "There’s no national emergency at the border. Unauthorized border crossings are at their lowest levels in decades, about one-third of their peak levels two decades ago. If there were an emergency, the president wouldn’t have waited two years to make this political decision."
Whatever way you view things, according to Donathan Brown, a professor who focuses on race and public policy in the Department of Communications at Ithaca College, there is a need for refinement in the discussion,
How we discuss, define and ultimately label those seeking entry into the United States from along the southern border continues to be a point of contention. Blanket statements that affix labels such as “terrorist,” “drug dealer,” and “rapist,” for example, only contribute to the ignorance proliferated by some elected officials, in an attempt to disassociate us from them."
He goes on to say that the problem is not something that can be fixed easily and that there are racial dimensions to it. But the starting point is language.
Assuming we can turn the tide on language, still, the border wall issue has eclipsed many other immigration issues that have been left behind. Among them are: border enforcement, family unity, catch and release, immigration judges, the diversity lottery, sanctioning cities, Kate's law regarding re-entry after deportation, chain migration, a path to citizenship, DACA and DAPA, H1B visa reform, EB5 integrity reform, quicker processing of all cases, more green cards, refugee law reform, improving the law to make it more desirable to apply legally, and helping Latin America to reduce the number of migrants who are coming to the U.S. border. All of these issues contribute to the immigration problem and no one solution, such as a border wall by itself, will solve it. As Professor Brown argues, comprehensive immigration reform is needed and that requires refinement of language and good will on all sides. So far, there is little good will to be found.
