Testimony
of
Daniel T. Griswold
Associate Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies
The Cato Institute
before the
Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship
Washington, DC
Securing Our Borders Under a Temporary Guest Worker Program
April 1, 2004
First, let me thank Chairman Chambliss and members of the subcommittee
for allowing the Cato Institute to testify at today's hearing
on the important subject of border security and immigration policy.
No constitutional duty of the federal government is more fundamental
than protecting the American people from attack from enemies abroad.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress and
the administration have struggled to balance the need to secure
our borders with the need to remain a free economy open to the
world. The challenge confronting members of this subcommittee
today is how to keep out dangerous goods and people and the money
that supports them without sacrificing the benefits of international
trade, investment, travel and immigration.
Long-time opponents of immigration seized on September 11 to argue
against legalization of Mexican migration, and in favor of drastic
cuts in existing levels of legal immigration. But any connection
between the September 11 attacks and illegal immigration from
Mexico is non-existent. None of the 19 hijackers entered the country
illegally or as immigrants. They all arrived in the United States
with valid temporary nonimmigrant tourist or student visas. None
of them arrived via Mexico. None of them were Mexican. Sealing
the Mexican border with a three-tiered, 2,000-mile replica of
the Berlin Wall patrolled by a division of U.S. troops would not
have kept a single one of those terrorists out of the United States.
The problem is not too many immigrants. Immigrants who come to
the United States to work and eventually settle are but a small
subset of the tens of millions of foreign-born people who enter
the United States every year. In fact, on a typical day, more
than 1 million people enter the United States legally by land,
air, and sea through more than 300 ports of entry. In a typical
year, more than 30 million individual foreign nationals enter
the United States as tourists, business travelers, students, diplomats,
and other temporary, nonimmigrant visa holders.[1] Of those, perhaps 1.3 million
will eventually settle here as permanent immigrant residents.
In other words, less than 5 percent of the foreigners who enter
the United States each year intend to immigrate in any sense of
the word. The rest plan to stay here only a short time.
Yet up until September 11, 2001, the overriding focus of our border
security policy was to keep people out who might stay beyond their
visa or enter illegally in search of employment. If you recall,
some of the September 11 hijackers were granted a visa without
even being interviewed by our consulate personnel. Why? Because
they were deemed to be low risk for staying in the United States
to seek employment.
Our focus, one might say our obsession, with keeping Mexicans
from crossing our Southwester border illegally has not served
our national security interests. It has diverted resources and
attention away from efforts to identify and keep out people who
truly intend to do us harm.
The Southwest border is not a frontline on the war on terrorism.
First, Mexicans themselves are not a national security threat.
No Mexican national to my knowledge has been connected with Al
Qaeda or any other international terrorist network. Mexicans almost
universally come here to work. Second, international terrorists
have not viewed the Southwestern border as a preferred means of
entry. The Canadian border is more attractive. It's twice as long,
with far fewer border patrol personnel per mile. Middle Eastern
nationals tend to stand out more in Mexican society than in Canadian
society or at a typical international airport. Recall that it
was at a port of entry at the Washington state/British Columbia
border in 1999 that U.S agents apprehended Ahmed Ressam, one of
the so-called millennium bombers.
Why would potential terrorists incur the risks of sneaking across
our Southwest border when other doors are more attractive? A special
investigation by the Associated Press last November found that
not a single terrorist suspect had been arrested trying to enter
the United States across the Mexican border since the September
11 terrorist attacks. As border patrol agent Matt Roggow told
the AP, "The people who are coming across [the Mexican] border
are people who can only pay $1,500 to a smuggler. A terrorist
can pay $30,000 or $40,000 and go to the northern border where
we don't have the resources to stop them."[2]
While we were guarding the back door in 2001 to make sure no Mexican
immigrants entered our country illegally, we were neglecting the
far larger barn door of temporary non-immigrant visas through
which all the September 11 hijackers entered.
Most members of Congress understand that willing workers from
Mexico are not a threat to America's national security. In May
2002, Congress overwhelmingly approved and President Bush signed
the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002.
We don't say this very often at the Cato Institute, but that was
a good piece of legislation. The bill was aimed at the right target—keeping
terrorists out of the United States. Among its major provisions,
the law:
Requires federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies
to share data on suspected terrorists in a timely manner with
the INS and the State Department;
Establishes a uniform database that can be accessed by consulate
officials and border agents;
Requires that all travel and entry documents issued to aliens
be machine-readable and tamper-resistant and include biometric
identifiers;
Requires the advance forwarding of passenger manifests for all
incoming commercial vessels and aircraft;
Bars issuance of nonimmigrant visas to aliens from countries
that sponsor terrorism, unless approved by the Secretary of
State; and
Requires U.S. colleges and universities to report the arrival,
enrollment, and departure of foreign students.[3]
All these are common-sense provisions that, in hindsight, should
have been in place long before 9-11. Notably absent from the bill
were any provisions rolling back levels of legal immigration or
bolstering efforts to curb undocumented migration from Mexico.
Members of Congress rightly understood, when crafting the legislation,
that Mexican migration is not a threat to national security.
Indeed, legalizing and regularizing the movement of workers across
the U.S.-Mexican border could enhance our national security by
bringing much of the underground labor market into the open, encouraging
newly documented workers to cooperate fully with law enforcement
officials, and freeing resources for border security and the war
on terrorism.
Real immigration reform would drain a large part of the underground
swamp that facilitates illegal immigration. It would reduce the
demand for fraudulent documents, which in turn would reduce the
supply available for terrorists trying to operate surreptitiously
inside the United States. It would eliminate most of the human
smuggling operations overnight. The vast majority of Mexican workers
who enter the United States have no criminal record or intentions.
They would obviously prefer to enter the country in a safe, orderly,
legal process through an official port of entry, rather than put
their lives in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers. By entering
legally through a temporary worker program, they could travel
freely across the border for multiple visits home rather than
incurring the risk and expense of re-crossing the border illegally.
As a consequence, legalization would drain the underground channels
through which terrorists might try to enter the country.
Just as importantly, legalization would encourage millions of
currently undocumented workers to make themselves known to authorities
by registering with the government, reducing cover for terrorists
who manage to enter the country and overstay their visas. Workers
with legal documents would be more inclined to cooperate with
law enforcement and provide evidence if they do not fear deportation.
Furthermore, we would free up enforcement and border-control resources
to focus on protecting the American homeland from terrorist attack.
Our Department of Homeland Security should concentrate its limited
resources and personnel on tracking and hunting down terrorists
instead of raiding chicken processing plants and busting janitors
at discount stores.
Congress should respond to the leadership shown by President Bush
and reform our dysfunctional immigration system. We need to create
a legal channel for peaceful, hardworking people to enter our
country temporarily—and to legalize those workers already
here—so they can fill a whole range of jobs where the supply
of domestic workers falls short of demand. Immigration reform
would help our economy grow, it would reduce illegal immigration,
and it would enhance the federal government's ability to wage
war on terrorism.
Thank you.
[1]U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security, "Monthly Statistical Report" and Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.
[2]Associated Press, "No terror suspects nabbed on border: But death toll rising among migrants along Mexican frontier," November 3, 2003.
[3]See Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, Public Law No: 107-173.