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.
ALAN BERSINThe National Targeting Center in Virginia run by Customs and Border Protection checks the background of every traveler who seeks to enter the country.
More Alan Bersin Quotes
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If you build a 50-foot wall, you’ll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder.
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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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The idea was to restore the rule of law, to bring order to a chaotic situation.
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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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Today, the number of migrants crossing is at a 30-year low. That’s because of years of bipartisan work on this issue.
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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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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 nationalism and the protectionism that was built into the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and that characterized the Mexican attitude to the United States for much of the 20th century were difficult to overcome. But that actually has occurred. And the cooperation.
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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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People should remember that Mexican migration is now at a net negative.
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There are plainclothes US officers stationed at airports in Mexico working with Mexican immigration officials to protect the United States.
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That’s the way in which they get entry into a system that will eventually release them into the country.
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America should be working more with the Mexicans to prevent the flow of guns going south into Mexico that have fueled so much of the violence there.
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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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Mexico has become a robust democracy with a robust press and an active legislature.
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