Janet Napolitano, the former Arizona Governor was tapped by the Obama Administration to manage the Department of Homeland Security. She, like many other Department heads, is looking for an influx of money from the stimulus package.
We will hear the President speak on a wide range of issues tonight in his Address to the Congress. Illegal Immigration is expected to be a topic.
While serving as governor of the border state for nearly two terms, she enacted laws that focused on halting illegal immigration inside Arizona by enacting very strict penalties for businesses that hire illegal aliens. Her goal now, is to nationalize this program.
In an interview with NPR last week, Janet said: "We are going to…focus on the employers and make sure that they are subject to criminal penalties for violating the law,”
She also stipulated that her organization would focus on human traffickers, the men who profit from guiding illegal aliens across the border, and in many cases people who take advantage of a desperate situation.
Napolitano referred to an array of sensors, radars and cameras balanced on poles at the border. You'll remember an older post about the company that got the contract was also a major player in the last administration. Well, to repeat myself, they had a faulty product, the government knew it but we purchased it anyway.
Janet is finding that so far, this technology, known as SBInet, has been more of a funding headache than a well performing virtual network and at the sum of $393 million for 2007 & 2008, a waste of money.
How about that fence? The Government Accountability Office (GAO), refers to the fence as “tactical infrastructure,”costing about $2 million per mile. Napolitano thinks the money would have been better spent finishing the fence.
However the best tool to fight illegal immigration is to deal with the supply side of the issue. She said: "Reducing the demand for illegal immigrants in the US will lower incentive for them to risk their lives to cross in increasingly inhospitable areas, like the Sonoran desert in Arizona".
ICE arrested some 250,000 illegal immigrants and deported some 130,000.. Even with nearly 700 miles of fence in place, immigrants continue to enter the US every day, risking their lives to do so. People from all over the world make the journey to Mexico to take advantage of the largely unprotected southern border.
Janet said: "Deportation may be a necessary component of a comprehensive illegal immigration plan, but as the numbers show, it is a zero-sum end game. So long as employers are willing to offer jobs without a background check and ID, the drive to enter the US will continue to tempt the continued crossing"
Obama's speech tonight is likely to touch on the issue of border security and what to do with the estimated 12 - 20 million people who havent bothered to check in. When the economy in the US is forcing citizens to get on line at the food pantries [many for the first time] the issue of jobs and healthcare bring the painful issue of illegal immigration back to the conversation.
I'll be paying attention.
