1. How do you rate Obama administration polices toward U.S.-Mexico border and immigration policy over the past year?
Border policy: politically opportunistic, financially wasteful, and predictably ineffective.
Immigration policy: marginal improvements over some crude Bush enforcement practices, overall institutionalization and increased funding of immigrant crackdown and imprisonment, no effective commitment (and no leadership or vision) for reform, no apparent concern about huge costs of crackdown that comes only with high social costs and few, if any, economic benefits.
Border security programs at DHS and DOJ are largely comprised of pork-barrel projects for local law enforcement, Border Patrol, and other federal law enforcement that continue failed drug war, crime war, anti-immigrant war campaigns.
Immigration policy agenda is particularly reprehensible because instilling false hopes for reform while detaining, imprisoning, and deporting more immigrants (legal and illegal) through programs that could easily be constrained and refocused through administrative decree.
2. What do you expect to see from the administration in 2010?
* More hard-line rhetoric, funding initiatives, and programs for border security, responding to political demands from region and its own effort to bolster its security credentials.
* No real leadership to effect immigration reform.
* Continue to condescendingly dismiss constructive proposals for drug decriminalization and end to drug war overseas.
3. What policy changes are needed in your area/region for 2010?
* Administration should call end to “enforcement-first” immigration policy, noting policy’s multibillion dollar price tag, its tragic impact on
* Obama officially ends “war on drugs” and invigorates national and international debate by leading collective call for an end to drug prohibition policies and a commitment to treat regular use of harmful drugs with medical programs and education.
* Call a halt to exorbitantly expensive, unproven, mismanaged SBInet (virtual fence), and tear down border fence outside of border cities.
* Refocus Homeland Security away from ideologically driven immigration enforcement and border security to targeted intelligence gathering on prospective threats.
4. What stories from your area/region do you think could potentially capture the headlines in 2010?
* The scandalous waste of billions in economic recovery funds for wasteful border infrastructure (ports of entry, Border Patrol stations, etc) and border criminal justice programs that ply local law enforcement with politically motivated funding.
* Homeland Security as a haven for private contractors like Boeing, CACI, Lockheed Martin that manage themselves and provide no effective goods or services, like virtual fence and information systems.
* The administration’s unconvincing song-and-dance about its support for immigration reform without any real leadership or political muscle to advance reform. Bush immigration stance anew.
* The unsustainable price of the immigrant crackdown, immigrant imprisonment, and border security. It’s breaking the budget without any effective focus on security.
Photo: Obama the candidate promising what Latinos wanted to hear at National Council of La Raza convention.Commitment, energy, experience over three decades are all still there . But I need to count on base of sustainers who will also help stay the course of independent, penetrating analysis and investigative research. Plan is to attract five-hundred $100 sustainers of TransBorder Project of the Americas Project at the Center for International Policy in 2010. Already have received sustainer contributions of $4100. Please consider becoming an annual sustainer. Go to CIP donations page if you believe this work is worth sustaining, and note Tom Barry or TransBorder in comment section of donation page. Mil gracias, y adelante!
So sad, but so true.
ReplyDeleteObama has been a complete failure on the issue of immigration reform.
There is absolutely no need to scrap the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform law (Pub.L. 99-603, 100 Stat. 3359, signed into law by Ronald Reagan. Just enforce the laws already on the books and add new amendments to the Simpson/Mazzoli bill. The law criminalized the act of--KNOWINGLY--hiring an illegal worker and established fines and other penalties for those employing illegal labor. This was approved under the theory that low prospects for employment using restrictions would reduce illegal immigration. But as we have acknowledged for decades, the laws were never intended to halt cheap labor. Never mind the severe consequences to the average working American, who if not skilled must contend in competing with a cut-price foreigner for a job. Even now with 15 million US Americans unemployed, the administrations want to force through an AMNESTY for people who have scorned our laws, disguised as Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
ReplyDeleteWashington in 1986 introduced the I-9-form. to ensure that all employees presented documentary proof of their legal eligibility to accept employment in the United States. But just like most immigration forms, they don't achieve the enforcement needed? The USCIS Form I-94 or I-95 that a individual gives to an Agent when arriving in the United States at a land border port-of-entry or from an airline or ship is a document that is easily compromised. Even though the arrival has been approved by an USCIS inspector to prove that you arrived in the country legally, their is no efficient way to know that person has left the country. It's just like E-Verify currently that has been introduced, it doesn't go far enough. An amendment should be introduced that makes the law MANDATORY, with no business entity slipping through the cracks. Since then the whole system has been corrupted by our own politicians in collusion with certain parasite leaders in the business world. The whole system of legal immigration has become unstable, with far reaching effects on American men and women and those who entered the country legally.