Four out of five border-crossers detained in South Texas are Guatemalan, Honduran or Salvadoran. They are driven by violence and poverty in their home countries and the desire for family reunification.
ALAN BERSINUntil we have a legitimate labor market between Mexico and the United States, people will attempt to come here to work.
More Alan Bersin Quotes
-
-
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
The National Targeting Center in Virginia run by Customs and Border Protection checks the background of every traveler who seeks to enter the country.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
We make things together. We have shared production platforms.
ALAN BERSIN -
Walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
Every air traveler entering Mexico is vetted against US databases.
ALAN BERSIN -
The potential of Mexico, Canada and the United States is enormous.
ALAN BERSIN -
In large part this is because of the success of policies followed by the United States to create an environment, a peaceful period in history in which economies could grow and countries could benefit.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
The prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
There have been enormous advances since 9/11 to build a very robust set of targeting procedures and watch lists to screen travelers coming to the United States.
ALAN BERSIN -
Our security in a global world must be looked at on a continental basis.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
We can’t defend the country by looking at the borderline as the first line of defense rather than as the last line of defense.
ALAN BERSIN -
The idea was to restore the rule of law, to bring order to a chaotic situation.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
To add insult to injury, most Americans never knew that, and most Mexicans have never forgotten it.
ALAN BERSIN -
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.
ALAN BERSIN -
We do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada.
ALAN BERSIN -
The law change during the Bush administration gave the Department of Health and Human Services a central role in relocating Central American minors in the United States.
ALAN BERSIN -
For the first time since the second World War, we are not the sole dominant economy in the world.
ALAN BERSIN