U.S. Sen. John Cornyn knows the U.S.-Mexico border better than most other members of Congress. During his two decades in Washington the San Antonio Republican has authored and endorsed many bills to update border infrastructure, improve trade and make many aspects of cross-border activities better.
Cornyn took to the Senate floor Monday and said border issues need to be a legislative priority. Unfortunately, some of his comments echoed those made by xenophobic demagogues who don’t know what they’re talking about.
He noted that “the border crisis is consuming all the oxygen in the room, but this must be addressed before we’ll be able to come to an agreement on any other immigration reform.” He repeated the old GOP talking point of blaming President Joe Biden for problems the past several presidents, of both parties, have endured.
It’s unfortunate to hear such talk from someone who knows better. Worse, nothing constructive comes from his suggestion that his party will consider no immigration reform until the border is secure.
For starters, there is no agreement on any definition of a secure border. Some hardliners have said they won’t be satisfied until not a single person is able to enter this country through our southern border*** without detection. However, while the federal and Texas governments have spent billions building walls and planting shipping containers along the border, people have still been able to clamber over them and about 100 tunnels have been discovered beneath them — some decked out with elaborate bracing, climate controls and even railways. Big, beautiful walls didn’t work in China, they didn’t work in Berlin and they aren’t working here.
Private companies have equipment that can find pockets of oil and gas that are just lying there, hundreds of feet beneath the ground. Instead of stubbornly sticking with border walls that have already proven ineffective, officials should invest in seismic devices that can detect any excavation as it occurs, and any other modern surveillance equipment that might not look so good on a campaign poster but might actually get the job done.
Most importantly, officials need to know whom they’re dealing with. A majority of them aren’t trying to sneak across the border; they’re coming right up to border officials and asking to be taken in as refugees.
Of those who aren’t seeking asylum, officials estimate that as many as half actually entered this country legally, on work, education and other kinds of temporary visas. This suggests that they passed whatever background checks are used to secure those permits, and should enable them to be fast-tracked through the system if they seek renewal or something more permanent.
Our biggest border problems are a long, inefficient and outdated system of processing applications that created that backlog at the border in the first place. Eliminating those issues can help eliminate that backlog and the problems they create at the border.
Immigration reform must come first. If we can make the process fair, fast and dependable, then the incentives for bypassing it might essentially disappear — and with it, much of the border problem itself.
