MANAGING OUR BORDERS

Hundreds of new Border Patrol and immigration agents. Gigantic,
double-layer steel fences along the California and Arizona borders.
Infrared and daylight cameras. Stadium lighting. A new surveillance
drone. Expanded detention facilities.

Call it force and fear -- America's military formula for immigration
control, embodied in legislation the House of Representatives passed
in December. The get-tough House Republicans who pushed the bill said
they're dead-set against the balance of a guest-worker program, a
measure that President Bush and most reformers now favor (and the
Senate will soon be debating).

If the House's punitive, military-style response were but an
exception, a quick and alarmed response to the flood of 11 million
illegal entrants into the U.S., it might be condoned. But it's not;
since 1990 we've quadrupled our border agents and installed big
amounts of high-tech detention technology -- only to see the flood of
undocumented migrants increase. The House bill boils down to an ugly
war on undocumented immigrants.

It's not our only war. Since the '70s, our vaunted "war on drugs" has
failed to make any dent in illegal substance use, even while making
trade in drugs ultra-profitable and creating incentive for inner city
blocks to turn into criminal hellholes.

Now President Bush keeps on reminding us we're in a third war -- on
terror. The 9/11 attack means the peril is real; few question a need
for intensive intelligence and protective measures. But does the word
"war" mean we're supposed to favor the U.S. attack on Iraq,
Guantanamo Bay incarceration without due process, "rendition" of
suspects for torture in foreign countries, and now warrantless spying
on Americans?

There are two metaphors for the America we want, says Manuel Pastor,
professor of the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at the
University of California-Santa Cruz: "One is the metaphor of war in
Iraq, on terrorism, on drugs, on immigration. The other is the Statue
of Liberty, America as the beacon of light and opportunity for all
who play by the rules."

Today's rules, Pastor and others note, create a Catch-22 for would-be
migrants responding to the United States' immense appetite for
low-cost labor. Either they apply for legal entry and face years of
bureaucratic delay, or they enter illegally, manage to get work and
income for their often impoverished families, but face deportation if
they're apprehended.

We do need rational immigration policy that controls the flows over
our borders, says Pastor: There's "concern whether our labor markets
can absorb unlimited numbers, whether we can assimilate politically
and culturally and socially all who want to come."

What we need, he argues, is a realistic debate about such issues as
guest-worker programs and possible amnesty for workers already here
- -- "approaches that don't tear apart our moral character."

Too often missing, Pastor adds, are complementary steps to integrate
new immigrants -- adequate English classes, better job training,
helping parents get involved with their children's schools -- "steps
that benefit everyone, lifting up our human capital and our
productivity as a society."

The issue is "close up and personal for me," says Pastor: His own
father came to the U.S., undocumented, in the 1930s; in World War II
he chose the U.S. Army over deportation. "A generation later, his son
is a full professor at the University of California."

The reminder is apt: With the exception of Native Americans, all our
families came to these shores as immigrants, with motives no more
exalted than those of today's low-income migrants clamoring to get
across our southern border.

Of course it's grossly impractical for us to accept any and all
migrants from across a poverty-scarred globe. But does that mean that
we can employ boundless force and fear and successfully stop
migrants? Or really believe the stiff penalties on employers who hire
undocumented workers, incorporated in the new House bill, will ever
be enforced?

Retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican and expert on
immigration and border issues, has it right when he says the House
bill will just "throw words and money at the problem."

Radically fresh thinking is critically needed. Let's just make sure
it's not about another war.