Comprehensive immigration reform stalled in the Senate three years ago this week. Anti-immigrant hardliners have had their way since then, with billions of dollars spent on border security and no effort at resolving the status of undocumented immigrants already in the country. It doesn’t take a Center for American Progress policy analyst to tell you this narrow-minded, enforcement-only approach hasn’t improved the situation.
A CAP report released earlier this week details the billions of dollars the country has spent on border security over the past five years, including hundreds of miles of fencing, cutting-edge hardware and surveillance equipment, thousands of additional Customs and Border Patrol personnel, and upgraded ports of entry. But politicians continue to avoid talking about the problem by saying that the border must be "secure" before the debate on comprehensive immigration reform can move forward.
"Waiting for an airtight border to solve our immigration problems would be an unrealistic, impractical and unsuccessful strategy," writes C. Stewart Verdery, the report’s author and former Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for border and transportation security policy under the Bush administration.
And some programs have proven simply counterproductive. The 287(g) program, for example, deputizes local police to assist federal immigrations officers and has eroded trust between police and the immigrant communities they protect, weakening public safety.
Recent polling shows that 78 percent of Americans favor comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the country now and stricter enforcement against employers who hire undocumented immigrants. We only hope that Congress will find the political will to acknowledge that the approach so far has failed and respond to what we all recognize as a urgent problem with a clear solution.