It’s time to finish building the Mexican border fence
Examiner Editorial
January 4, 2009
Advocates of unrestricted immigration, environmentalists, some border state officials and even a few congressmen are pushing President-elect Barack Obama to halt construction of the 670-mile fence going up along the Mexican border — or even tear it down completely. Their urgings come despite Obama’s 2006 vote for the Secure Fence Act and the congressional immigration debate drama of 2008 that made it clear the public expects the fence to be built without delay. The anti-fence forces are encouraged because Obama’s pick for secretary of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, is one of them and may try to halt or further delay construction of the $2 billion barrier.
That would not be a good idea. Even though the souring economy has reduced illegal immigration to its lowest level in 30 years, some 2,000 people still enter the U.S. illegally every day through our still-open southern border.
The new administration should also use this temporary lull to crack down on the 45 percent of legal immigrants who overstay their visas. There’s plenty of unemployed Americans seeking work to fill the jobs left behind by those with expired visas.
The fence was supposed to be completed yesterday, but is still not done more than two years after Congress authorized its construction. The fence is nobody’s idea of a perfect solution to our uncontrolled immigration problem. In fact, the partially completed barrier stands as an ugly testament to government failure on a truly massive scale, all the way from the White House down to local officials in places like San Francisco who set up enforcement-free “sanctuary cities.”
The list includes the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as well as other immigration officials who look the other way as our laws are repeatedly violated. It also includes members of Congress who failed to perform their oversight responsibilities, and federal judges who award the full panoply of taxpayer-funded government benefits to illegal immigrants.
There’s no way a sovereign nation can remain so for long if it cannot control its borders. Yet government officials insist on rewarding illegal immigrants despite recent studies, including one by the Heritage Foundation, that demonstrated that the net cost to taxpayers exceeds their contributions to the national economy. In a deep and prolonged recession, America can no longer afford the luxury of self-imported labor.
