Crossing the border into Mexico can sometimes be an experience akin to Alice stepping through the looking glass. Perspectives change, realities bend, problems become solutions.
The new U.S. drive to curb illegal immigration has become the latest journey into the “Wonderland” of differing politics and cultures.
When Atty. Gen. Janet Reno earlier this month announced a major strengthening of the U.S. Border Patrol to “stop the revolving door” that spins hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers into and out of the U.S. each year, officials in California and other border states hailed it as a major step forward.
That’s how it looks from the U.S. side of the border.
“Our aim is to effectively shut this (illegal border crossing) down,” said Ann Summers, spokeswoman for the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, where hundreds of new agents will be deployed, more fences erected, high-tech interdiction devices made available and more blazing floodlights set up to turn night into day.
“Finally they are doing some-thing that will show that this country belongs to us, not them,” said Arnold Parsons, a San Diego resident and a vocal proponent of stricter border policing.
But step through the mirror-in this case, the 10-foot-high black metal wall the U.S. erected two years ago along a 14-mile stretch of the border-and suddenly it seems as if the hands of the clock are turning the other way.
While U.S. officials believe the beefed-up Border Patrol will dramatically reduce the number of people entering the country illegally, Mexicans say the effort will be futile: Determined migrant workers, driven by desperation, will simply find other ways to sneak in.
These opposing assessments are rooted in widely differing perspectives on whether illegal migration is really a problem.
U.S. officials-most vocally of late California Gov. Pete Wilson-say the Mexicans take jobs away from U.S. workers, commit crimes and strain already inadequate social services by using schools, hospitals and welfare benefits without paying taxes.
But Mexicans say the workers provide a vital supply of inexpensive labor, primarily to California farmers, and accept jobs that Americans no longer want. (Some Americans support that view; and despite federal laws barring the hiring of undocumented workers, thousands of farmers and other employers still use them.)
Furthermore, Mexican experts who have studied migration say the money the illegal workers remit to their families back home helps to relieve social and political tensions caused by the extreme poverty in some rural parts of Mexico-tensions that otherwise could lead to unrest in Mexico and pose a security problem for the U.S.
Jorge Bustamante, president of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Tijuana institute that studies border affairs, said the Reno plan “won’t stop the flow.”
“We have seen this history repeated over and over again,” he said. “California is having the worst recession in its history. The politicians have to blame somebody, and it is perfectly safe to blame immigrants.
“This is a political solution to pacify U.S. public opinion, just like the barricade,” Bustamante said, referring to the border wall. “People in the States think this is a magical wall that will keep everyone out and solve all the problems, and that is enough for the politicians.
“America sees this as a law-and-order issue. That is totally backwards. This is in reality an economic issue.”
What Reno proposed on Feb. 3 was a sweeping, $540 million, two-year program to reinforce the overworked and understaffed Border Patrol.
The bulk of that money-which has yet to be approved by Congress-would go to train about 1,000 new agents; hire about 400 civilian employees to take over some of the paperwork that ties up agents and keeps them off patrol; and better equip the agents, who sometimes complain that the radios they use are inferior to those used by smugglers of illegal workers and drugs.
The money would increase the budget of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which administers the Border Patrol, from $1.6 billion in fiscal 1993 to $2.1 billion by fiscal 1995.
Nationwide, the number of agents will be increased from 3,461 to 4,471 by 1996. Some 400 new agents will be assigned to the San Diego sector, raising the number here to 1,400.
More money will also be available for new technology, including ultra-sophisticated infrared scopes that allow agents to monitor wide areas of the border in the dark.
The newest scopes, which look like small black television cameras mounted on hydraulic lifts, can pan the blackened hills and canyons along the border and transmit TV-like images to agents in jeeps or helicopters. Illegal crossers can be tracked on the screens by agents who maneuver the scopes with small joysticks. “It is kind of like playing Pac Man,” said Agent Alan Summers.
But will it have an impact?
Statistics show that deploying more agents, coupled with the wall and improved technology, pays off.
“It is a lot better that I’ve seen ever before,” said Alan Summers, husband of the patrol spokeswoman, who has worked the San Diego sector for 10 years. “They (illegal immigrants) don’t congregate like they used to.”
But many Mexicans argue that, despite the Border Patrol’s effort and the North American Free Trade Agreement, the best of their lower-skilled workers will continue to sneak into the U.S., at least for a while.
Bustamante’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte has surveyed illegal immigrants in five Mexican border cities when they return from the U.S. on weekends. Using this data, Bustamante has constructed a computer projection showing that NAFTA will have no effect on the flow of low-skilled migrants into the U.S. until after the year 2000.
The new jobs being created in the next five years will be skilled and semi-skilled, far above the capabilities of the current migrants, he said. It will not be until the second five years that jobs will be created in Mexico to absorb this labor force.
According to Bustamante’s projections, illegal immigration could fall by 15 to 25 percent during the second five years of NAFTA and by 50 percent within 15 years.
And along the border, the patrol is still playing cat-and-mouse with the illegals.
“There are a lot of agents out there tonight,” Alan Summers told a group of Mexicans at the wall one recent evening. “You’d better be careful.”
One of the Mexicans smiled and said: “Well then, I’ll just come back tomorrow.”
