Israel's fence, which I wrote about Monday, is a symbol of Israeli and Bush administration political failure, but what about our own fence? Washington is attempting to give us a 14-mile triple fence along San Diego's border as its solution to the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico.

Like the rest of federal immigration policy, it will be useless. Added to the Bush plan to amnesty some 10 million immigrants already in this country illegally, most from Mexico, the triple fence is more likely to serve as a magnet than a barrier. That is, assuming it survives the confrontation between the state Coastal Commission and the federal government over environmental concerns.

The idea for illegal immigrants is to get here quickly, in time for the amnesty. If Congress follows its past pattern on immigration, it will enthusiastically endorse Bush's foolish plan.

No grandstands have ever been higher than those on which politicians do their posturing on immigration policy. The game is to pretend to oppose illegal immigration while doing everything to encourage it.

In poll after poll, Americans say they want to end illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration. Washington's game is to appease the public with symbolic legislation – like triple fences – while promising employers that nothing passes – like work identity cards – that might actually stop illegal immigration.

The triple fence is political flimflam at its most refined. A living monument to Rep. Duncan Hunter of El Cajon, the triple fence will not put a dent in illegal immigration from Mexico. Since the existing single fence has not dented it, tripling the fence will not dent it times three.

Hunter now promotes his fence as an anti-terrorist measure designed to prevent terrorists from sneaking across the border to attack U.S. military installations in San Diego.

Do Americans actually believe such hokum? This misguided idea has been cooking for a decade, long before anybody aside from Hunter was worried about unemployed Mexican fruit pickers sneaking across the border to attack Camp Pendleton.

It has nothing to do with terrorism.

Nor does it have anything to do with immigration. Since the fence began going up in the 1990s, first as a single and now in triplicate, illegal immigration has not abated.

If it had abated, we wouldn't have some 10 million illegal immigrants currently in this country awaiting Bush's amnesty, would we? Had they come here prior to the fence, they already would be citizens under the 1986 amnesty and would not need Bush's new amnesty.

The triple fence, which began with the hare-brained allocation of $4.3 million a decade ago for a single mile of it, is now becoming a 14-mile-long scar along the border costing upward of $25 million, depending on how much is needed to offset the loss of rare wildlife habitat. Opposed as waste by the Clinton administration, Hunter pushed it through as San Diego pork, though immigration experts have always doubted its value.

Its effect, they said, would be to push illegal immigrants farther east, where there is no fence.

Which is precisely what happened.

In 1994, Operation Gatekeeper, an attempt to prevent illegal immigration along the entire Southwest border, became law. Gatekeeper led to construction of the single fence between San Ysidro and Otay, a doubling of border agents, new equipment such as vehicles and border lighting, and stiffer prosecution and repatriation provisions aimed at illegal crossers.

Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UCSD, has compiled statistics on Gatekeeper based on Border Patrol apprehensions, a useful measure of illegal crossing attempts. The numbers show that in the decade between 1994 and last year, border apprehensions fell scarcely at all, from 979,101 in 1994 to 905,065 last year.

At Gatekeeper's estimated cost of between $500 million and $1 billion, border apprehensions have fallen 7 percent along the Southwest border – hardly cost-effective policy.

So how did those 10 million illegal immigrants get here?

The statistics tell us. The border fence pushed illegal immigrants from the San Diego sector eastward, into the deserts. Apprehensions in Arizona climbed from 160,000 in 1994 to 376,000 last year, even as Texas apprehensions rose slightly and California apprehensions were cut in half. During the same period, the number of Mexicans who died trying to cross the border, mostly in the deserts and mountains, rose to more than 2,400.

Assuming Congress could ever escape the moneyed clutches of the immigration lobbies, what would an effective immigration policy be?

It could follow Hunter and build a triple fence from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, 1,275 miles, complete with lighting, border towers and hundreds of guards. Based on the cost of the present fence, that would cost around $227 million, and probably force Mexicans, like Cubans and Haitians, into the seas.

Or we could introduce forge-proof identity cards, like a biometric Social Security card, at a fraction of the cost and the humiliation.

It's up to you, Congress. Serious immigration policy or more grandstanding?

© Copyright 2004 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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