KEEP BORDER PATROLS WHERE THEY BELONG

Northern border patrols are operating at dangerously low levels.

And Immigration and Naturalization Services keeps making the situation worse.

These officers help assure illegal immigrants, drugs and criminals don't
flow freely from Canada to the U.S. The officers would like to do more, but
their budget has been held so tight, they don't even have enough staff to
guard the border during the night.

That's like Everett police only patrolling the city during the day.

Gov. Locke, Sen. Patty Murray, Reps. Jack Metcalf, Doc Hastings and George
Nethercutt Jr. have pled to INS to rectify this abysmal situation.

Congress even appropriated money for INS to hire 1,000 new officers for all
of the country's border.

But they haven't been hired.

Instead, INS is taking valuable northern border officers from their
stations and shipping them down to Douglas, Ariz. to help stave off illegal
immigrants. The entire northern border from the Pacific to the Atlantic
Ocean is patrolled by 289 border officers.

In comparison, the southern border is watched by 8,200 officers.

The officers sent from the north aren't making a bit of difference in
Arizona. But their absence in their home border offices is causing major
rift and danger.

There is a lot of evidence that links the death of Washington State Patrol
trooper James Saunders to the loss of northern border officers.

The alleged murderer had been under the watch of a border patrol officer in
the Tri-Cities, before that officer was transferred to the south.

INS Commissioner Doris Meissner and Attorney General Janet Reno will surely
get earfuls on this subject when they visit Seattle for their annual
commissioners' conference this month.

Up until now, Meissner has been good at giving lip service to the border
patrols, and giving them temporary reprieves from being transferred to
Arizona. But, according to Keith Olson, president of the officers' National
Border Patrol Council based in Ferndale, after the attention dies down, the
transfers always start up again.

The criminals are on to the INS. They know that they can thwart the law by
flying into Canada and driving south.

There are motion detectors along the border, but they are useless if there
is no one to respond.

INS must look for other ways to solve problems on the southern border.

Stripping the northern border will only make things worse.