Today, the number of migrants crossing is at a 30-year low. That’s because of years of bipartisan work on this issue.
ALAN BERSINWalls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.
More Alan Bersin Quotes
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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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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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An increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.
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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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As a result of the U.S.-Mexico War in the 19th century, and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, half of what was Mexico was severed and became much of the western part of the United States.
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We make things together. We have shared production platforms.
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And they seek out Border Patrol agents or Customs and Border Protection officials to surrender to them and request political asylum.
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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts it will have a larger economy than Germany by 2042.
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But in fact as Secretary of Homeland Security General John Kelly acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.
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Until we have a legitimate labor market between Mexico and the United States, people will attempt to come here to work.
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In the last two years, the Mexicans have detained nearly 400,000 migrants whose intent was to come to the United States.
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The Mexican people are increasingly middle class, and Mexico has substantially become a middle-class society.
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The idea was to restore the rule of law, to bring order to a chaotic situation.
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Migrants come up and no longer seek to evade the Border Patrol, but are actually left at the border by their smugglers.
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This is true despite the significant poverty, and the class and geographic inequality that have deep historical roots.
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It has gone from being a sending country for migrants to a transit country, and increasingly a receiving country for migrants in its own right.
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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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For the first time since the second World War, we are not the sole dominant economy in the world.
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To 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.
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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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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 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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We need to realize that the economic situation between Mexico and the United States is not just one in which we trade with one another.
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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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The work the Mexicans are doing in terms of migration control on Mexico’s southern border is crucial to our own border security.
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Homeland security is inherently transnational today. There’s hardly anything adverse that happens in our homeland that doesn’t have a cause or effect that’s generated abroad. Increasingly.
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