by Tom Shuford

The illegality of Mexican immigration troubles many Americans. It does not much trouble President Bush. U. S. borders, immigration laws and the will of the American people notwithstanding, President Bush believes Mexican citizens who entered the U. S. illegally should be put on a path to American citizenship. He does make one concession to political reality: Citizenship need not be "automatic." The President will tolerate the imposition of minimal conditions: Illegal aliens must attend English classes, pay some back taxes, and pay a small fine.

But this bottom line is inescapable: President Bush has no will, beyond bare political necessity, to slow illegal immigration. Internal enforcement of immigration laws is all but nonexistent, rare exceptions (for show) notwithstanding. Recent appearances at the border are PR gestures to advance his amnesty agenda. (1)

An anecdote in a recent Wall Street Journal report provides a clue to the President's thinking:

Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) [a supporter of the Senate amnesty plan, S. 2611] . . . said Mr. Bush had read - and urged him to get - the book, "Judgement Days," by Nick Kotz which details the relationship between another Texan, Lyndon Johnson, and Martin Luther King Jr. running up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Brownback said that just as President Johnson went against Southern forces in the Democratic Party, Mr. Bush appeared prepared to tackle conservatives in his own.

"I think Bush sees [immigration] somewhat in that category . . . I think this is Bush's time as far as affecting millions of people." (April 27, 2006)

In other words, U. S. immigration laws are to President Bush what Jim Crow laws in the segregated South were to Lyndon Johnson. Just as Johnson helped dismantle Jim Crow, the president would nullify "unjust" immigration laws. (2)

Admittedly, this is informed speculation. A skeptical reader wants more evidence:

Sara A. Carter (4-min. video), an immigration reporter for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and the San Bernardino News, is among the nation's best. Carter has many rank-and-file contacts in the Border Patrol. She is a frequent guest on cable news programs. Among her nationally prominent stories: revelations of 200+ incursions by the Mexican military across the United States Border over the past decade and of the U. S. Border Patrol's practice of notifying of the Mexican government of movements of the Minutemen, the civilian border watch group which President Bush has called "vigilantes."

Carter's "Double Vision: " Bush's hopes for border defining policy," (May 28) focuses on President Bush's objectives for the border. Excerpts:

...Why, in a time of heightened concern about national security, have so many illegal immigrants been able to make their way across the border? And why has border security to this point been such a bit player in the government's national-security plans?

The apparent answer: because the government, especially the president himself, wants it that way.

"It seems as though (President Bush) truly rejects the moral legitimacy of immigration enforcement," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. "He is psychologically committed to open borders, and he can't understand why people don't think the way he does."

"The president has all along had a vision of the U.S. and Mexico that stands in contrast to the way the vast majority of the American people think about the issue," added Glynn Custred, a professor of anthropology at Cal State East Bay who specializes in Latin and South American border studies.

"That vision is that there should be a consistent flow of free labor to the north," Custred continued. "If you look at Bush's speeches (and) his proposed legislation, it seems he wants it that way because he thinks it's best for the world."

Evidence supporting these experts:

The Border Patrol continues a "catch and release" program that frees most illegal immigrants back into their home countries or into the United States after their detention with few ever facing prosecution . . .

Mexican military troops have trespassed into the United States more than 200 times since 1996. The U.S. government did not acknowledge the incidents until this year, and no punitive action has ever been taken against Mexico.

The Border Patrol . . . works closely with Mexican consulates when border crossers are detained, to the point where Mexican authorities are being tipped to the whereabouts of U.S. citizen patrols on the lookout for illegal immigrants .

Enforcement is virtually nonexistent for laws aimed at curbing illegal immigration by financially penalizing U.S. businesses that hire illegal workers . . .

A guest-worker program endorsed by the president would include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which critics argue is a form of amnesty for millions of people who have broken the law.

Add this from an Associated Press report:

The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents making the arrests, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press.

"It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted," the report says.

...Federal officials say it reflects a reality along the entire 2,000-mile border: Judges and federal attorneys are so swamped that only the most egregious smuggling cases are prosecuted. ("Lack of prosecutions demoralizing Border Patrol," May 18, 2006)

The Bush administration is not serious about stopping illegal immigration.

Carter concludes:

What seems much clearer is that until at least 2008, when the president leaves office, the Bush administration will continue to try to forge a path to citizenship for millions of people already in the country illegally and build a doorway for millions more.

[Mexican President Vicente] Fox might have accurately summarized Bush's own philosophy in a January 2001 speech:

"When we think of 2025, there is not going to be a border. There will be a free movement of people, just like the free movement of goods."

No border.

No nation. (3)

Huntington Framework

The illegality of most U. S. immigration from Mexico flows from the top in both countries, but there is powerful support from below: cheap labor lobbies (in the agriculture, construction, landscaping, and hospitality industries), ethnic pressure groups, Marxist revolutionaries (more sophisticated than you think) and the Catholic hierarchy.

How did we go from Point A - for the first 190 years of this nation's existence (1776-1966) illegal immigration was virtually impossible - to Point B, when 500,000 illegal aliens take up permanent residence annually? Samuel P. Huntington:

The 1965 immigration law, the increased availability of transportation, and the intensified forces promoting Mexican emigration drastically changed this situation.

What do the changes mean?

In 1993 President Clinton declared the organized smuggling of people into the United States a "threat to national security." Illegal immigration is a threat to America's societal security. The economic and political forces generating this threat are immense and unrelenting. Nothing comparable has occurred previously in the American experience. (p226)

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POSTSCRIPT: In WHO ARE WE? Samuel Huntington identified six features of Mexican immigration that make it different from past waves of immigration. In Part 3 in this series, we looked at the contiguity of sending and receiving countries and the sheer numbers involved. Spain's historical presence in the American Southwest was explored in Part 1. In Part 4 we have examined the illegality of Mexican immigration and traced it to a key figure: the president of the United States. Upcoming: Mexican immigration's regional concentration and persistence.

Endnotes

1) A June 7 "Executive Order: Task Force on New Americans" signed by President Bush directing Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to form a task force " to help legal immigrants embrace the common core of American civic culture, learn our common language, and fully become Americans," is another political maneuver aimed at securing passage of amnesty/path-to-citizenship legislation which was approved in the Senate (with a majority of Republicans opposed: 32-23) but is in trouble in the House of Representatives.

2) There is a theoretical basis - in economics - for merging Mexico, the United States, and Canada into a grand North American Union, rather like the European Union. It is utopian folly, but a "North American Union" has elite support at, for example, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Wall Street Journal . The degree to which this rationale - that an open market across North America in goods, services and labor (people) is beneficial - figures into the President's refusal to secure U. S. Borders is unknowable, but it could well be a substantial influence on his thinking.

3) Georgie Anne Geyer, a veteran foreign correspondent syndicated in over 100 newspapers, is best known as a commentator on PBS's Week in Review. Geyer provides a memorable prediction as to what the "comprehensive" immigration reform passed by the U. S. Senate on May 25 by a vote of 62-36, will mean for the nation - if it is not halted by the House of Representatives when the bill goes to conference this summer.

Caveat: An embarrassed Senate scaled back its planned guest worker program as a result of the report by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. Hence, the number of likely new legal immigrants as a result of the Senate bill would not be quite as large as Geyer suggests: It would be 66 million new lega l immigrants in 20 years versus 103 million. But Geyer's point is solid: What the Senate did was irresponsible.

The coverage by the mainstream media has also been irresponsible. Economist Robert Samuelson, of the Washington Post Writers Group, explains:  

...group-think is a powerful force in journalism. Immigration is considered noble. People who critically examine its value or worry about its social effects are considered small-minded, stupid or bigoted. The result is selective journalism that reflects poorly on our craft and detracts from democratic dialogue. ("Immigration Bill's Hidden Impact," Washington Post Writers' Group, May 31)

Tom Shuford [email protected] is a retired teacher living in Lenoir, North Carolina.