The work the Mexicans are doing in terms of migration control on Mexico’s southern border is crucial to our own border security.
ALAN BERSINTo the extent that President Trump means strengthened border security, I am fully in favor of the idea that the rule of the law, secure borders and public safety should prevail. Drugs should not enter illegally.
More Alan Bersin Quotes
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The Mexican people are increasingly middle class, and Mexico has substantially become a middle-class society.
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In today’s digital online world, those who don’t share information will be isolated and left behind. We need the data of other countries to connect the dots.
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In the last generation we’ve moved past a U.S.-Mexico relationship that while friendly on the surface, and demilitarized for the most part, really was not a genuinely cooperative relationship.
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Most people who live at the border or are familiar with the border know that a Berlin-like wall stretching from San Diego to Brownsville is not necessary. And the costs would be prohibitive.
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Migration should take place in accordance with lawful norms and secure and safe procedures.
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Walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.
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During the last eight to 10 years there have been continued efforts which have resulted in a strategic alliance with the Mexicans and improved safety and security at the border.
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You need a strategy that involves layered defense: deployed patrols, sophisticated sensor equipment, and surveillance from the air. That is what has had a positive impact over the last generation.
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In today’s digital online world, those who don’t share information will be isolated and left behind.
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As former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed out, if you build a 50-foot wall, you’ll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder.
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We have to secure the flow of goods and people by engaging with foreign entities.
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In the course of 25 years, we have developed a constructive relationship with Mexico that was nonexistent before.
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Six million jobs in the US depend on trade with Mexico. Ten border states – six in Mexico and four in the United States – combined have the third or fourth largest economy in the world.
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More Mexicans are leaving through deportation and voluntary return than are entering the United States legally and illegally.
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We should be wary, particularly with our closest friends and allies, of breaking down the trust and confidence that lie at the foundation of relationships.
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We have to remember that information sharing is restricted by legal barriers and cultural barriers and by the notion that information is power and therefore should be hoarded so if you share information you can extract something in exchange.
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People in our so-called Rust Belt have lost out, and politics and society have not been responsive either in providing the kind of additional support they need or to retrain them for jobs that are being created in the new economy.
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And we have to work together to secure the continent in order to keep dangerous people and dangerous things out and strengthen perimeter security on a continental basis.
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We assure our security by securing the flows as early as we can before they arrive and as far away from our borders as we can.
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And there are places on the border, such as the Arizona desert or the open terrain around the Big Bend in South Texas, where Mother Nature has created her own barrier that is not easily passable. Or if you do pass through it, you are easily detected.
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Not only are the numbers of migrants entering the United States at the lowest levels in a generation, but they are now largely Central American.
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Every air traveler entering Mexico is vetted against US databases.
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We make things together. We have shared production platforms.
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We must recognize that this massive economic bloc that’s emerging in North America cannot be accomplished unilaterally. It must be accomplished in partnership with Mexico and Canada.
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Cross-border trade is part of a single production process, and while apparently the Trump administration will seek to re-examine elements of that production platform, it is what it is and won’t be easily dismantled.
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And the smuggling of cash and the money laundering that transnational criminal organizations have instituted in North America, including in the United States.
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