No Ringers at the Border

Earlier this week the nation witnessed what is probably the most inconsequential presidential use of the Oval Office in the history of that office. The president took that high-profile stage and staged an inversely proportional low-profile event by announcing the use of 6,000 National Guard troops to help support the protection of the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico. A collective yawn was heard from sea to shining sea as most of the country saw the speech as high on symbolism and low on substance.

An Oval Office speech is supposed to be a big deal. Historically, it has been used to go before the country, and the world, to address only the most important topics. In Washington, DC, the crisis or emergency being addressed has to match the significance of the stage being used. This president, in keeping with that tradition, has previously used that stage only for major speeches about Afghanistan and Iraq. The problem we have with illegal migrant farm workers and undocumented hotel housekeeping staff crossing the Mexican border hardly rises to the level of an Oval Occasion.

I know the phrase “national security” gets invoked these days for an amazingly wide array of “threats”, but I don’t perceive a significant threat to national security coming from the men, women and children we see running through the Arizona desert or fording the Rio Grande. This speech was an act of political necessity that was primarily intended to shore up the national security of the Republican Party.

I support the strengthening of border security. Our borders are too porous and we clearly should do more to secure them. Every nation has the right to secure its borders, and it has the obligation to do so if there are genuine threats to its national security. But, when the discussion comes around to genuine threats to national security, we’re shooting at the wrong target by aiming our efforts at Mexican immigrants. It’s popular, and fair, to invoke 9/11 in the border security discussion, but closing the gaps in the Mexican border in that context should be lower on our list of priorities.

September 11 and its spin-off threats have taught us that the Canadian border is a much greater risk in terms of terrorist crossings. On top of that are the obvious gaps in the overseas visa-granting process that allows terrorists to enter the U.S. in plain sight through immigration control at our airports and docks, not to mention our failure to keep tabs on these “legal” visitors once they get here. We may not be able to prevent them from buying box cutters, but we can make sure, for example, that there’s no pilot training given to anyone who doesn’t at least have a green card. If we can monitor the phone calls of millions of American citizens, we should be able to better monitor the public activities of our temporary visitors.

The use of troops on the border in the manner proposed has a long list of problems. It will take more than 150,000 of them to provide the supply of 6,000 Guard troops who will be rotating through this job during their annual two-week training cycle. Given two days of travel and two days of onsite mobilization and demobilization, we’ll get about 10 days of work out of each cycle. These troops aren’t trained for this duty and on-the-job training is rarely a good idea when your job involves carrying and using an M-16. These troops won’t be getting the other training that they’re supposed to receive during their annual training period in order to prepare them for the other jobs we’re asking them to do – like fight in Iraq and rescue people in natural disasters or other national emergencies. Having more than 150,000 men and women tied up in a border rotation is likely to be more than problematic for the already strained logistics supporting these other missions.

Illegal immigration from Mexico is a serious problem, but it does not rise to the level of national emergency that requires the immediate deployment of precious military resources. Illegal immigration has obvious economic and social impacts and the U.S. has the right and the obligation to address those impacts to ensure that we accept only those impacts that we collectively choose to accept. In short, we should appropriate the money necessary to hire and train the border patrol agents and to buy the surveillance equipment that we need to do the job the right way.

Of course none of these factors particularly matter in the political decision making process, especially when an unhealthy dose of partisan panic is in the system (i.e., check out the abysmal approval ratings for the president and his party). The president’s speech was an attempt to throw a sop to the conservative Rebs in the House in the hope that this “tough” and “decisive” action will cause enough of them to support the immigration reform package that he’s likely to get through the Senate. Most of those House conservatives have already sent him their response: “Nice try, sir; but this isn’t even close enough to the stake in the ground to count in a game of horseshoes.”

But, this isn’t a game of horseshoes. This is a real problem that requires real leadership. Unfortunately, we have more gaps in our political leadership than we do in our borders. The Rebs are a house divided, as people running in panic are wont to be. On the other side of the aisle, the Dims are either sitting motionless on the imaginary border fence or they’re walking in tight circles mumbling, “Dear lord, don’t let us screw this up,” to themselves.

Meanwhile, the game goes on and there are no ringers in sight.