THE BORDER REPORT

Oh come on, did anybody really think the immigration bill would pass this time? Or last time, or the time before that? According to this story, it's a Red vs. Blue issue. The conservatives don't want to give "amnesty" to the illegal immigrants, the liberals don't think the bill gives the illegal immigrants enough safeguards. I say nonsense. There's no real interest in resolving immigration. The papers run the same, "Congress wrestles with immigration," story four times a year on average. Congress loves to pretend they control the memory-holes of information. Each time they run us through their circus, they pretend it's the first time. We faced the same complaints during the last session, and frankly we've had these two same exact arguments going back to 2004 when Republicans Jim Kolbe and John McCain introduced the guestworker plan. The liberals were and are suspicious of all conservative ideas - even if it might be a good idea. The conservatives clutch at their collective chests, moaning that the guestworker plan is "amnesty" and we can't reward criminals. After the mid-term elections, the Democrats swore they'd pass an immigration bill with the help of the president. That failed too. The simple truth of the matter is this: this border isn't broken at all. It works precisely how the market needs it to work. I was reading through the CIA's Family Jewels reports last night and came across one intelligence analysis that stated 500,000 to 600,000 illegal immigrants come across the border every year. The thing was written in 1999. Eight years later, the U.S. Border Patrol's manpower nearly doubled while the federal budgets for border security top $8 billion a year. You'd think there'd be less illegal immigrants coming in and you'd be sorely mistaken. (I'll dig it up later today and post it online). According to the Homeland Security Department's own numbers, 500,000 illegal immigrants successfully cross the border every year. They gave out those numbers in 2005, seven years after the CIA. Therefore, no matter what's been spent on "border security," the same numbers keep popping up - half a million people a year. So no, Pres. Bush was wrong when he said back in 2004 that "our borders are broken." They're working just fine. Sure, a few hundred people die every year, Arizona wildlands get trashed and the Drug War has long been lost, those are irrelevancies, best not talked about. In the grand scheme, they're unimportant. Our Congress has been squabbling over an immigration bill for more than three years now; that equates to about 1.7 million more people who made it in under the radar. It doesn't matter who they are, Democrat or Republican, you can't tell me the bosses don't know these things.

-- Michael Marizco