Guest Commentary: They’ve got it backward

The May 9 article, “Deal would delay immigration overhaul” informs us that our esteemed national leaders are, once again, putting the cart before the horse and planning to spend more of our tax dollars in the process.

The article states that “Republicans, led by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., are fearful of appearing to embrace an overly permissive measure” if they agree to install “a process of giving legal status to undocumented immigrants and guest worker visas to new arrivals” before spending millions (if not billions) of tax dollars to fortify the border.

I would argue that if Congress first establishes a legal path for temporary workers, they won’t need to spend so many of our dollars on fortifying the border.

There are three problems facing us at the Mexican border: illegal immigrants crossing for work, drug smugglers, and terrorists.

Of the three, I think most would agree that terrorists need to be the Border Patrol’s first priority. But the workers constitute the biggest cost and demand on Border Patrol resources due to their numbers.

No temporary worker in their right mind would cross the border through the desert if there was an inexpensive and legal path for them to enter and leave the U.S. for temporary and/or seasonal work.

This approach would allow the Border Patrol to focus only on those who continue to cross illegally...the drug smugglers, criminals and terrorists.

Narrowing the Border Patrol’s focus like this would reduce the need to create a huge new bureaucracy that many on both sides in the government seem to want.

Workers, without a legal path for entry, are the biggest group crossing the border and the Border Patrol has to spread its resources much too thin to be effective against criminals and terrorists as evidenced by the increasingly alarming violence south of Tucson.

By simply removing the workers from the equation, the Border Patrol can more effectively accomplish its primary mission.

We could then place the worker’s program under Immigration, spend some of the money on updating and improving their systems, and set up a permanent program for temporary workers, thereby reducing future costs and providing U.S. companies with a steady supply of legal workers when needed.

The article also addressed proposed policy changes that would “forbid temporary workers from bringing family if their income is below 150 percent of poverty level and they don’t have health insurance.”

Under the current system, illegal immigrants feel that they must bring their families with them when they come here for work because they cannot go back and forth across the border to spend time with their families and then return again when the need arises.

Prior to the recent “crackdown” on illegal crossers, temporary workers came to the U.S., worked until they had made enough to help their families survive, and then returned to their homes, usually not returning until the next season.

This process benefited both the workers and U.S. companies that so desperately need them. Yes, there were some families coming across the border illegally in an attempt to end-run the long and expensive process of legal immigration. But they were a small portion of crossers...nothing like the millions today.

If this Congress enacted a legal and inexpensive path for temporary workers, most would not even want to bring their families here.

They, like citizens everywhere, much prefer to continue to live in their native homelands.

This fact is evidenced by the “Just Coffee” movement in Mexico. When given an opportunity to earn a livable wage in their own community, workers in Chiapas, Mexico, overwhelmingly chose to stay home and work.

Back in the 1990s I attended a conference where Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was a speaker. He talked about how many wonderful mentors he had been privileged to have in his life.

In particular he spoke of one who gave him some very special advice when he first became a general. This mentor’s advice was that there are some basic rules everyone should follow.:

Rule #1: when given a task, do something. It doesn’t really matter so much what you do, because every time you do something you learn what doesn’t work and can make a better decision next time.

And then there’s Rule # 2: Do the right thing. General Schwarzkopf said that he took that not to mean that you had to make a perfect decision every time. But that you need to follow your moral compass and do what’s right; not just for you, but for your employees, your customers, your family, your neighbors, your constituents.

So today I ask our Congress: DO SOMETHING! And then, of course, DO THE RIGHT THING! Tackle the problem of getting temporary and seasonal workers into the U.S. legally first. Then the fortification of the border becomes a much simpler and cheaper task. If we continue to try to put fortification first and legalization second, we will fail at both and waste billions in the process.

Sherry Hull worked in the financial and software industries and moved from San Francisco to Tubac in 2003, where she works part-time in real estate development and mortgages.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily this newspaper’s.