A Fence Alone Won't Secure the Border

I feel compelled to respond to the piece authored by Larry O’Connor on July 12, 2013, which resulted from my radio appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s show last week. Mr. O’Connor misrepresents my point that simply building a fence along the entire Southern border, by itself, doesn’t secure the border.    

There have been few in this country who have stood up against illegal immigration as I have. As mayor I passed an ordinance that said that if an employer knowingly hired an illegal immigrant, that employer’s license would be suspended. The act also said that if a landlord knowingly rented to an illegal immigrant, that license would also be suspended. Naturally, I was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union, and that case is still pending.

It is clear that there are a lot of Americans who want cut-and-dried answers to the illegal immigration problem and equate border security with a fence across the entirety of the southern border. They believe that if we build the fence, then our illegal immigration problem would be solved. I am sorry to report that it is not as simple as that. I support building a fence where it’s plausible and useful, but that only addresses part of the problem.

The truth is that the fence is not the whole solution – neither is it even half of it. We currently have built about 652 miles of fence along the southern border, 352 miles of pedestrian fences in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. About 300 miles more are for vehicle barriers in New Mexico and Arizona. I travelled to the border near San Diego this past spring and saw with my own eyes the sheer magnitude of the situation. The fence is patched in many places, which I was told is the result of illegal immigrants cutting their way through the barrier. I was also shown a tunnel, which many illegal border crossers have used. Quite literally, illegal immigrants have gone over, under and through the fence, rendering it less than fully useful.

Even so, let’s suppose that we do plan a fence across the entire southern border. Much of the Mexican border on the American side is held by private land owners, particularly in west Texas. To build a fence would require using eminent domain to seize land for the project. Do conservatives like the idea of the government taking these lands? Doubtful.

Effective enforcement of our borders involves a multi-faceted approach. Yes, it means fencing along certain part of the border, but we should also take advantage of technology. Using manned and unmanned aircraft in conjunction with cameras and sensors is also essential.

Aside from that, the belief in a fence as the lone solution is short-sighted. We know that over 40-percent of our illegal immigrants in this country are here because they have overstayed a visa. They never crossed the southern border and a fence would have had no impact on these illegal immigrants.

That’s why I have proposed legislation that will for the first time make it a criminal offense to stay in this county once your visa has expired. The “Visa Overstay Enforcement Act of 2013” addresses those who do not make a good faith effort to leave the United States by the expiration date of their visas. Upon a first offense, the bill creates a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and one year in jail. The illegal immigrant may not be legally admitted to the U.S. for five years from the date of conviction and may not apply for a visa for ten years from the date of conviction. A second offense also would be a felony, punishable by fine of $15,000 and up to 5 years in jail. The illegal immigrant would be banned from entering the United States for life.

I addition, the Act requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to submit a plan to Congress detailing a biometric exit program involving the taking of fingerprints of those leaving the country at all land, sea and air ports. The biometric exit program must be implemented at all airports within one year after enactment and at all land and sea ports within two years. If we fix our broken visa system, we can take care of nearly half of our illegal immigration concerns.

A second piece of legislation aims to learn lessons from our failed amnesty experiment in 1986. It requires the Comptroller General of the United States to submit a comprehensive report on the implementation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that includes information such as the effect on the employment and wages of legal workers, number of individuals denied employment, how visa overstays were addressed and the cost to social programs. We know that one of the bombers in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was granted amnesty under the 1986 program as an agricultural worker.  He was in reality a cab driver and we now know that the only thing he planted was a bomb.

Building a fence all the way across our southern border is not only logistically implausible, it would also fail to fix the problem. I am hopeful that my ideas, and those of other Members of the House who share my concerns, will receive a timely and appropriate hearing.