The Bush administration said yesterday it has nearly ended catch-and-release on the southern border in the past few weeks, has almost tripled the number of criminal arrests this year of employers who hire illegal aliens, and will gain operational control of the border by 2008, two years earlier than expected.
"With respect to every population, except for one, we have achieved essentially 100 percent catch-and-remove," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a House appropriations panel yesterday.
The policy of releasing non-Mexican illegal aliens and hoping they return to be deported, known as "catch-and-release," had become a symbol of how dysfunctional the immigration-enforcement system is. About 85 percent of non-Mexican illegal aliens used to be released, and few ever showed up for deportation.
But Mr. Chertoff said a recent infusion of money, President Bush's decision to have the National Guard aid the U.S. Border Patrol and a commitment to better turnaround times for deporting illegal aliens has allowed the department to detain almost all non-Mexican illegal aliens they catch. He also said it has deterred some illegal aliens from trying to cross. Catch-and-release doesn't apply to Mexican aliens, who are routinely sent back across the border.
The enforcement numbers come as the president is trying to convince Congress he is making progress on border security, hoping that House Republicans will then agree to pass a broader immigration bill that includes a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens.
If the situation at the border is improving - and I'll wait on concluding that until I hear something from a source more objective than a member of the Bush administration, which has only paid lip service to border security in the past - I still don't see where it's an excuse for clemency for illegals already here or a guest worker program.
How long will these improvements along the border last if our government gives incentive to illegal immigration by granting people who have already flagrantly broken our immigration laws a pass?
And I'm still not sold on the guest worker program. To my mind, if you want to live in American society and enjoy the fruits of the capitalist American economy then you should actually become an American. Not a guest American or a half citizen but a full-on, tax-paying, voting American citizen.
If we need to let more legal immigrants into the country I think we should do that rather than letting some people get in with a pseudo citizen permit.