Despite the Administration's best efforts
to develop an integrated approach to controlling the nation's
borders and protecting the flow of legitimate trade, travel,
commerce, and immigration, competing agendas in Congress continue
to promote the interests of various stakeholders at the expense of
advancing a comprehensive, integrated, and prioritized program. The
Administration and Congress need to agree on a bipartisan approach
to border security that gives precedence to the efforts that will
make the nation significantly safer and more prosperous while
protecting individual freedoms. Five steps should top the "to do"
list.
Step #1: The
U.S. needs a single border services agency. The
government's current organization reflects an outdated vision of
how to protect America's borders. Responsibilities for visa
issuance and monitoring, border security, and internal enforcement
of customs and immigration are divided among three separate
agencies in two departments on the erroneous assumption that
threats and countermeasures can be neatly segmented in discrete
activities. However, there are no frontiers in 21st century
national security, nor are all border security issues best handled
at the border.
Protecting the United States against
terrorist threats and significantly reducing transnational crime
(e.g., drug, arms, and human trafficking); environmental dangers
(e.g., contagious diseases and invasive species); and illegal entry
and unlawful presence in the United States requires addressing
these threats from their points of foreign origin through
transiting the border to their U.S. destinations. Distinguishing
clear lines of responsibility between foreign, border, and domestic
security is a thing of the past. National security, economic
growth, and the liberties of American citizens (as well as visitors
and international business partners) can no longer be considered in
isolation. The visa-issuing activities of the Department of State
and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agencies in the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) should be merged into a single border services agency under
the DHS.
Step #2:
Monitoring and servicing legal entry into the United States should
be the highest priority. Improving the infrastructure and
programs that oversee and support lawful means of trade and travel
should be funded first. This includes upgrading immigration
services and physical infrastructure at the busiest points of entry
and fully funding programs like US-VISIT (tracking the entry and
exit of visa holders); Smart Borders Initiatives (employing
technology to speed the flow of people and goods); and Secure
Flight (checking airline passengers against terrorist watch
lists).
Most
goods, services, and people enter and exit the United States
through legitimate means. These networks are the lifeblood of the
U.S. economy and must be appropriately managed and protected.
Likewise, virtually all known terrorists who have entered the
United States came in through legal channels. In addition, as the
United States improves its capacity to reduce illegal entry,
illicit attempts to penetrate legal networks of trade and travel
will likely increase. Effective border services must already be in
place to meet this challenge if the United States hopes to improve
its overall security.
Step #3:
Internal enforcement and international initiatives should take
precedence over interdiction at the border . Too often,
policymakers have assumed that the best place to reduce illegal and
illicit activity is at the border. In practice, internal
enforcement policies and programs, followed by working with
point-of-origin and transit countries, probably offer a greater
return on investment. For example, approximately 85 percent of
illegal immigrants who receive final removal orders abscond.
Focusing on deporting people already
ordered removed from the country is a good starting point. In the
long term, initiatives such as effective workplace enforcement to
discourage employment of individuals unlawfully present in the
United States, domestic counterterrorism investigations including
means to track down criminal aliens,and the Millennium Challenge
Account (foreign aid that encourages countries to adopt polices
that promote economic growth, sound governance, and the rule of
law) will have a greater impact on illegal entry and unlawful
presence than will simply hiring additional border guards.
Step #4: Border
security must become a system of systems. Addressing the
challenge of illegal entry between the points of entry cannot be
ignored, but Congress needs to establish clear priorities and
invest in resources that create a system-of-systems approach to
security. Rather than trying to control the entire border, the
United States requires a network of assets that direct the right
capabilities to the right places at the right times to provide
appropriate responses. This will require a combination of
investments in high-speed and armed-airborne assets and in robust
airborne sensor capabilities linked to an intelligence and early
warning network. The network would provide knowledge of activities
at sea and along the border, as well as the means to analyze and
share that knowledge effectively. Modernizing the CBP's air and
marine interdiction capabilities in concert with increasing funding
for the Coast Guard's Deepwater acquisition program ought to take
precedence.
Step #5: The
federal government should engage state and local governments and
the private sector while respecting the principles of federalism
and a free-market economy. Very little of this effort
should rely on throwing money at the problem through federal grants
or establishing unfunded Washington mandates. Rather, the federal
government should take measured steps to strengthen the means of
state and local law enforcement to conduct security and
criminal-related immigration investigations, to maintain strong
legal authorities for sharing law enforcement information, and to
promote the development of effective national intelligence and
early warning systems. Cooperative efforts with the private sector
should focus on removing the barriers to effective information
sharing between the government and non-government
entities--information that is essential for conducting risk
assessments and implementing effective vulnerability reduction
measures that promote economic growth and protect the privacy of
citizens and proprietary information of companies.
Conclusion. Protecting the nation
against terrorists, transnational crime, and environmental and
economic threats neither begins nor ends at the border. Addressing
these dangers effectively requires investing money, time, and
effort to get the biggest bang for our security buck.
James Jay Carafano,
Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow for National Security and
Homeland Security in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute
for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.