Columnist
So President George W. Bush would deploy his 6,000 National Guard troops to reinforce a 370-mile, Senate-approved fence on the Mexican border. With the beginnings of such a Maginot Line along the border, can the pillboxes and the artillery casements be far behind?
During his trip to Yuma, Ariz., on the border Thursday, Bush ratcheted up his immigration-control plan by embracing the building of a fence in areas with heavy illegal traffic. The former Texas governor’s troop-deployment proposal is but a new wrinkle in an old blanket of immigration stopgap measures dating from the Reagan administration. This broader scheme, then as now, is designed to accommodate the exploitation of undocumented labor by management, while keeping the Democrats off-balance.
The Karl Rove-led kitchen cabinet has staked its midterm election hopes on a divisive issue. Focusing the beam on immigration keeps it away from U.S. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzpatrick, who is thumbing through Rove’s depositions in search of an indictment. It also keeps the spotlight away from Bush’s more troubling problems – Iraq, domestic spying and oil prices.
The blood of the undocumented immigrants is in the water, and the sharks are circling in.
While the better-fed Republicans favor Bush’s temporary “guest worker” plan and other maneuvers to legalize those who got here illegally, the raw conservatives oppose any scheme with the faintest scent of “amnesty.” They are ecstatic about the 6,000 troops, and the erection of a Maginot Line on the border would send them into rapture.
For those who dozed off during history classes, the French built the Maginot Line in the 1930s to protect against German invasion. The steel-and-concrete fortifications, gun posts, bunkers and tunnels stretched, with gaps, along France’s eastern border. Still, in 1940 the Germans surprised the French army by attacking with panzers through the “impassable” Ardennes Forest, and occupied Paris.
The border fortification was considered a monument to the stupidity of French military thinkers by Gen. George Patton. The WWII general, who later fought German divisions holed up in Maginot Line defenses, said all man-made obstacles can be overcome by man.
Will the border fence stop the flow of Mexicans without papers? The answer may be blowin’ in the wind. Just last week, U.S. officials discovered a narrow, makeshift tunnel near a San Ysidro parking lot on the California border. The San Diego Union Tribune reported it extended about 20 yards into U.S. territory. Other tunnels have been discovered in the San Diego area over the years. Smugglers have been known to use them to sneak drugs across the border.
In January, U.S. officials discovered a far more sophisticated tunnel network running seven-tenths of a mile from Tijuana, Mexico, to Otay Mesa, Calif. The 5-foot-high, concrete passageway was outfitted with electricity, air vents and a pump to remove water.
As TV stations recorded scenes from the tunnel, authorities said it housed some 2 tons of marijuana, mostly on the Mexican side.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than 20 secret smuggler tunnels from Mexico into Arizona and California have been found.
They already may have condemned the construction of border fences to the ash heap of countermeasures against illegal immigration.
This point seems to have been lost on at least one California politician bent on stopping illegal immigration, which reportedly accounts for some 12 million persons in the U.S. without proper papers.
Interviewed in January about the effectiveness of the long, sophisticated tunnel network uncovered in Otay Mesa, the congressman replied: “That’s why we need a fence.”
Huh?