Fence isn’t cure-all for porous US border

Politicians’ ads often fail to note its shortcomings

May 30, 2010|Jacques Billeaud, Associated Press

NOGALES, Ariz. — The fence rises from the rock and hardscrabble of the desert floor, a formidable 15-foot-high curtain of corrugated metal that stretches into the mirage of heat and distance. Newer sections feature 20-foot-high steel columns, deeply planted, narrowly spaced, so no human slips between.

The start-and-stop span — 646 miles long — has become a fierce polemic, a bumper sticker, a popular backdrop for campaign commercials during an election year with another sulfurous immigration debate.

The best-known TV spot features Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican, kicking along a dusty road in this hilly border city, fuming to his companion, the Pinal County sheriff, about drugs and immigrant smugglers and kidnappings. Wearing his Navy baseball cap and squinting into the sun, McCain could be rounding the corner to the gunfight at the OK Corral.

“Complete the danged fence,’’ he spits, his jaw drawing into a knot.

The government has spent $2.4 billion since 2005 to build the fence as it presently stands. And the prevailing political sentiment would appear to be, build it faster and higher.

But what McCain and other politicians often fail to point out is there’s no shortage of ways to get past the fence. Immigrants scale it with ladders. Smugglers use blowtorches and hacksaws to penetrate it. They use trucks with retractable vehicle ramps to roll pickups full of marijuana over the fence. They knock down vehicle barriers and erect lookalikes that are made out of cardboard and easy to move.

When backed up by border agents and surveillance technology, the fence can help reduce immigrant traffic or redirect it to other locales. But even some advocates for tougher enforcement say it’s unclear whether the fence cuts the number of illegal crossings.

“The whole point of the fence is to work in concert with other things, but, by itself, you can’t expect it to be the end-all and be-all,’’ said Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict immigration laws.

An estimated 45 percent of America’s 12 million illegal immigrants came here legally on visas or border crossing cards and remained after their legal stays expired. The fence couldn’t have stopped that. And the fence doesn’t directly confront employers who fuel illicit crossings by hiring illegal immigrants.

Even so, at least one candidate in nearly all of Arizona’s top political races, including McCain’s, touts the fence as essential, or uses images of the barrier in campaign materials.