Migration Pulse
Policing the US-Mexico border: Is Border enforcement the real solution to stop unwanted migration?
For decades narcotraffic, human smuggling and undocumented migration have been a sore spot in the U.S.-Mexico border relations. The only solution I have ever observed, read and experienced on my own is a massive increase of border enforcement from the U.S. side. But is this really a proper response to a much more complex set of issues?
Alpha Martell-Gamez is a doctoral candidate in International Migration Studies and Citizenship at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain under the supervision of Joaquin Arango Vila-Velda and Wayne Cornelius. She is currently writing a doctoral dissertation. Her research particularly analyses Mexican Immigrant Labour-Market and Transnational Social Networks in Southern California.
The U.S. government has steadily been raising its annual budget for the Mexico-US border – it leapt from about $250 million a year in the early 1990s to $1.6 billion a year in the early 2000s; yet at the same time there was a doubling of the undocumented population, from an estimated 6 million to 12 million. By 2008, the budget of the former Immigration and Naturalisation Service - INS, since 2003 part of the department of homeland security, stood at $35 billion. From 1986-2008, the number of border-patrol personnel increased from 3,700 to 18,000, and its budget from $151,000 million to $7.9 billion. And still, the gains, if any, were ambiguous.
Border control has not worked. No matter how big these states’ guns and border-control budgets, they have lost credibility – both with their citizens and with traffickers (who have, if anything, vastly increased their operations). The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that criminal syndicates made $29 billion in 2006 on human trafficking for the sex industry, evidently a sharp increase over prior years.
Border Patrol agents have swelled from 11,000 in 2004 to 20,000 today. Last year they caught 541,000 people, down from 805,000 in 2008 – patrolling one of the hottest border spots. The numbers are rising again this year—by 4%. But it seems likely that economic effects dwarf enforcement effects, since the worst the Border Patrol agents can do to those who aren't running guns or drugs is deposit them back on the Mexican side, hence they are free to try again tomorrow.
So many weapons definitely bring along adverse consequences such as the assassination of two fellow Mexicans on the U.S.-Mexico border in less than two weeks: Anastacio Hernandez, 32, who had lived since the age of fourteen in San Diego, an agent shocked him with a stun gun and died hours later while being deported to Mexico.
The second one, Sergio Adrian Hernandez, 15, who was not even a migrant, was actually shot on the Mexican side of the border.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned it as a "truly unacceptable violation" that involved "torture." "A death with that degree of violence is a truly unacceptable violation."
If it was not enough, right after the second dreadful event, the White House announced that it would send 1,200 troops to the U.S.-Mexican border after Senate Republicans told president Obama that immigration reform depended on border security.
It was informed that Obama would request $500 million in supplemental funds for “enhanced border protection” and deploy up to 1,200 National Guard troops to provide surveillance support and counter-narcotics enforcement.
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a senior leading member of the GOP conference and Obama’s 2008 rival for the presidency, told the president in no uncertain terms that immigration reform could not pass before action was taken to secure the 1,900-mile border.
Advocates have said that if Obama does not seriously engage Republicans on immigration reform in the next few weeks, the possibility of passing broad legislation this year will evaporate.
Obama is evidently under pressure by Republicans and centrist Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.) who affirmed that is necessary to secure the border before they agree to back a comprehensive reform measure.
New strategies and new technologies have significantly raised the probability of getting caught, but this stops almost no one. Migrants just try again—often in more remote border areas where the United States has fewer agents and less sophisticated defenses.
According to the Mexican Migration Field Research Program at the University of California, San Diego (MMFRP has conducted surveys for over five years in Mexican towns with high rates of undocumented migration to the United States), 700 miles of fencing already on the southern border - with a "triple fence" in some areas - does not deter people from crossing into the United States. Potential migrants were more worried by extreme temperatures, gangs and the inability to find work here than by a wall.
It was also found that 100 percent of the migrants surveyed eventually succeeded in getting into this country without documents. Therefore tougher border controls are unlikely to make a significant dent in the number of irregular migrants.
Politicians need to take into account the outcomes of such a policy before wasting more tax dollars on a measure that has not worked effectively. All these resources are being spent in order to control extremely powerless and vulnerable people who mostly only want a chance to work.
Clearly, the immigration system is broken, and enforcement alone—whether on the border or in the heartland—isn't going to fix it, that is why the proposal of a guest-worker program that would divert the illegal influx into legal channels and legalize up to almost 13 million undocumented laborers already in the country is such an important development. This should form part of a sustainable and progressive immigration policy.
There is a substantial need for the U.S. to be more honest about its reliance on low-skilled foreign (and undocumented) labour and this should be reflected more on its immigration policy.
Massive deportation, border security, war against terror, manipulated fear towards people who look and believe differently from us. There is something wrong here. Should we continue in this denial state towards immigration, let massive deportations happen, and criminalize people who just want to work in another country for a more decent salary than the one offered in their homeland communities?
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Comments
Hi Alpha,
Really interesting your post. I do agree that reinforcing the most important points or routes that migrants use to enter a country, with more human and technological equipment, has four main impacts on migration patterns and migrants’ strategies: a) migrants have to change their routes, usually crossing through more dangerous zones; b) as a consequence they need to hire smugglers who know these routes; and c) because it is more difficult even for the smugglers, sometimes they must buy technological equipment such as GPS, and thus increase their fees; d) this reinforcement break the ‘circularity’ of the migration pattern. Peter Andreas and W. Cornelius have worked on this topic. They have highlighted the more restrictive an immigration policy is the greater the number of migrants who will find ways to enter the country illegally.
AS you say, the most relevant example is what has been happening for the last three decades in the US–Mexico border; although Europe and the Gulf region can be used as good examples too. Since the 1980s the US has been reinforcing the main routes as you highlight but this not prevent irregular migrants from going to the US because they simply changed their strategies. Nowadays, nine out of every ten migrants hires a smuggler to get to the US, whereas 20 years ago only three in ten did so. Secondly, and most importantly, due to the fact that nowadays 40% of migrants cross from the Arizona Desert, the estimated number of migrants who have died in this region since 1994 is of about 5,000 people -according to the Mexican Ombudsman-. To all these we need to add the fact that the 'traditional' smuggling networks are now controlled by the drug cartels, something that makes things worst for migrants and their families.
I do agree that the US need to have a honest immigration policy, however, in order to identify where we need to allocate our efforts so they have it we need to identify that the people who are sited on the Senate and the HR respond more to the voice of the public opinion and to that of organized groups who ask for more or less migration in the US, rather than to those who claim for a more human or coherent policy. Most of them think in terms of votes, not in terms of what is the 'right thing to do'. I just saw a poll from Gallup that identified that almost 60% of the Americans are in favor of the ‘Arizona law’ and only 38% were against it. We need to start targeting the public opinion and think about lobbying if we want something to change in Washington. An immigration reform with a path to regularization and a guest-worker program will not come without new border security measures; this is what the Americans want and the political parties don’t want to lose voters, particularly for the next mid-term elections.
Finally, I do agree that a guest-worker program is key, however if an immigration reform goes through, I think that the only thing the gvt will do is expand the number of H2 visas. This is not really a guest-worker program, it is more a unilateral policy and there is proof that this program is not working for migrants and their families. For some migrants, it’s better to go to the US on an irregular basis rather than with an H2 visa, because they have to pay between 2,000 and 3,000 USD to the recruiters or legal coyotes so they put them in the employers’ lists. The good thing is that I think there is still some time to start working on these issues, and there are some organizations that are already doing so… the bad thing is that I’m not sure how many people in the Mexican government and in other governments have seen and understood that.
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