WASHINGTON — The Republican governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, calls her state “the gateway to America for drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and crime.” She blames the federal government for failing to secure the border with Mexico.
Her Democratic predecessor as Arizona’s chief executive, Janet Napolitano, now the country’s Homeland Security secretary, counters that the Southwestern border “is as secure now as it has ever been.”
The dispute over just how much border security is enough looms as the biggest impediment to any attempt by the Obama administration and Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws.
Republicans say they can’t support an immigration bill until the border is under control. The Obama administration points out that crime in U.S. border cities is down, as are illegal border crossings. Both views have a basis in fact.
For instance, the four largest American cities with the lowest rates of violent crime are in border states, according to a new FBI report: San Diego, Phoenix and the Texas cities of El Paso and Austin.
“The aggregate crime statistics for cities along the border are pretty stable,” said a senior Senate aide who works on border issues and was not authorized to speak on the record. “But I think that there’s a lot of crime that isn’t being reported — the official statistics aren’t telling the whole story. Violence among drug traffickers doesn’t always get reported to police.”
That should point to the possibility of a grand compromise. One side would get more resources for border enforcement. The other would get a program allowing Mexicans to cross the border to work and a path to legalization for the 11 million illegal immigrants now residing in the U.S.
But so far, Washington is not even close.
Last month, President Barack Obama nodded toward such an arrangement by agreeing to dispatch 1,200 National Guard troops to the border and to seek half a billion dollars in additional funds for border enforcement.
That came after 18 months in which the Obama administration has outdone its predecessor both on border enforcement spending and on deportations of illegal immigrants, all in an effort to build support for comprehensive immigration reform.
None of it, however, has been enough for Republicans in Congress, including those who had once supported immigration reform, such as Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona.
McCain, facing a primary challenge, said Obama’s plan was insufficient, and he tried unsuccessfully to pass an amendment in the Senate requiring 6,000 troops and $2 billion in spending.
“The Southern border is not only not secure; there’s a war in Mexico that’s bleeding over to America,” Graham lectured Napolitano at one recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
It’s unclear whether border enforcement can have much impact. Experience has shown that fences, technology and patrols have slowed illegal crossings in some areas only to steer traffic to other, more remote stretches. Most immigrants from Mexico used to enter around San Diego, until a fence and other enforcement measures forced the flow into the Arizona desert.
The projected cost of border fencing is about $5 million a mile, the Senate aide said. That would be a price tag of nearly $9 billion for the 1,700 miles of border that isn’t already covered by a fence.
And fences don’t stop crossers; they just slow them so that the Border Patrol is better able to catch them, the aide said.
