Legal experts are split on whether the Constitution would allow
California to set up its own border patrol, even if voters should
approve the concept now being pushed by a Republican state
legislator. After all, foreign relations are strictly a federal
function, and what could more affect relations with the nearest
foreign country than a new kind of border police force?
Legal experts are split on whether the Constitution would allow California to set up its own border patrol, even if voters should approve the concept now being pushed by a Republican state legislator. After all, foreign relations are strictly a federal function, and what could more affect relations with the nearest foreign country than a new kind of border police force?
And fiscal experts say they’re unsure the state can afford to create a whole new agency in an era of budget cuts and seemingly constant deficits.
But these are legal and political niceties. The question talk show hosts really should be asking Assemblyman Ray Haynes of Riverside County is whether a state-funded patrol could work, whether it would cut the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico into California.
The best argument for a yes answer is the experience of the Minutemen, the group President Bush labeled “vigilantes,” also praised for their “terrific job” by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
During their several weeks of patrolling the Arizona segment of the Mexican border this spring, these unauthorized volunteer “cops” apparently did cause a slowing of Arizona’s cross-border flow. But illegal immigration from the south is a bit like silly putty or play dough: squeeze it in one place and it will somehow find another outlet.
So it was with the Minutemen: They didn’t cut the overall flow of illegals, the existing federal Border Patrol has indicated. Which probably means that the smugglers or “coyotes” who illegally lead many immigrants into America were taking their clients other places.
And regardless of where they crossed the border, the largest portion of those smuggled likely ended up in California. That’s been the history of illegal immigration for decades. Whenever a blockade is established at one place, there’s a brief downturn in the tide, but it quickly finds another ingress, and still washes up here.
That’s the rub for the notion of a California border patrol. Unless the state mounts a patrol on its eastern and northern boundaries with Arizona, Nevada and Oregon, too, merely policing the southern border will likely accomplish little. For illegal immigrants, like their legal brethren, tend to go where they feel most welcome and where they feel the jobs are. That’s here.
But California can’t mount a patrol on its borders with other states, as this would interfere with interstate commerce and Americans’ constitutional right to move freely within this country.
Meanwhile, California employers continue showing no significant reluctance to hire illegals if it will save them money. Neither is there any apparent slowdown in the number of homeowners driving by day labor pickup points to take advantage of cheap labor offered by illegal immigrants.
Which means that a vote for the Haynes proposal, filed as a possible ballot initiative by him and a group called Rescue California, might be a good way for voters to vent frustration, but would likely resolve very little.
A more constructive notion might be for the state to employ a corps of investigators to make unannounced calls on businesses of all types and check the immigration status of employees.
This is a nominal function of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the successor agencies to the old Immigration and Naturalization Service. But the INS never had the manpower to thoroughly canvass the employees of American business and neither does ICS.
Yet, nothing prevents state or local agencies from cooperating with the ICS, as some police forces have begun to do in trying to deport criminal illegal aliens.
Could a force of 1,300 or so investigators make a dent in California’s illegal alien population? Mostly likely. Should that happen? That’s another question.
Certainly the businesses that employ them don’t want them deported, as that would necessitate hiring more expensive citizen or legal immigrant workers. Politicians who live off the campaign donations of these businesses also don’t want mass deportations. Car dealers, farmers, developers and others who employ large numbers of illegal immigrants are among the largest donors to both Bush and Schwarzenegger.
Which may explain why the president wants to legalize a lot of the current work force of illegal immigrants and why the governor never mentions employer sanctions when he complains of the lack of border security.
