TOUGHER DRUG, IMMIGRATION LAWS WILL FAIL

The war on drugs and undocumented immigration has brought great changes to
those who live close to the Mexican border.

But the tougher measures will fail because they don't address the root
cause of these problems.

Seeking to reap political hay by attacking the scourges of drugs and
undocumented immigration, Congress toughened federal laws, lengthened
sentences and dramatically expanded federal police agencies that deal with
these matters.

While these measures caused an explosion of the federal prison population,
there has been no significant reduction in the availability of illegal
drugs and undocumented immigration has not decreased.

What has happened is that the borderlands have become the nation's most
heavily policed zone, and plans are in place to increase law enforcement
staffing and surveillance to even more startling levels.

"I spent two days hunting in Brownsville at a farm right on the border,"
said Lee A. Woods, who says he is "a very conservative Republican" from
Houston. "And I was stunned by the level of Border Patrol manpower and all
the lights, towers and everything else.

"We arrived at the farm before sunrise," he continued, "and driving
parallel to the river, it looked like we were driving up to the Super Bowl,
with the Border Patrol riding around on horseback. It was absolutely
mind-boggling."

Since the changes have been gradual, border area residents have grown
accustomed to most of them, but not with how constitutional guarantees --
especially protection from unreasonable searches and seizures --have been
eroded.

After I related how Senior Federal District Judge Filemon Vela of
Brownsville was pulled over by roving U.S. Border Patrolmen twice within a
year -- both times for reasons the jurist found legally flimsy -- readers
began sending their own experiences. Apparently, the feds are stopping and
questioning large numbers of people, often with little or no justification.

One Laredo native laughed at my last headline: "Is the border area becoming
a police state?" "Becoming?" she laughed. "It's been a police state for years!"

And a distance cyclist from Laredo complained that since the Border Patrol
discovered that some smugglers were outfitting undocumented immigrants to
look like distance cyclists, her practice rides now include being stopped
and questioned.

Attorney David Almaraz, a former federal prosecutor now in private
practice, has seen things from two perspectives. He wasn't surprised by the
cyclist's tale.

"Border Patrolmen have seen it all," he said. "So now everybody in (the
border area) is suspect."

Several who were stopped for no discernable reason blamed racial profiling,
but a surprising number of Anglos contradicted them by reporting similar
treatment when they were stopped and questioned.

"I felt like I was witnessing the Berlin Wall," said Woods about his border
hunt. He also questions the wisdom of such large expenditures in view of
the pale results.

But let's be clear about why tougher laws enforced by ever-larger numbers
of agents can't work: They don't address the real reason drugs and
immigrants flow north: unstoppable market forces.

Jorge Bustamante, perhaps Mexico's leading authority on immigration, once
observed that we could halt undocumented immigration from his country in
one year.

"If they didn't find work, they would stop going," he said.

Likewise, if Americans weren't eager to spend big bucks for drugs, there
would be no drug suppliers.

Is that so hard to understand? Now, consider the cost of this folly.