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 BERSINBut in fact as Secretary of Homeland Security General John Kelly acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.
More Alan Bersin Quotes
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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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Every air traveler entering Mexico is vetted against US databases.
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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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The image and the costs of a Berlin-like wall or a Great Wall of China is something that the American people have not accepted to date.
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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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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 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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People should remember that Mexican migration is now at a net negative.
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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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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.
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The Mexican people are increasingly middle class, and Mexico has substantially become a middle-class society.
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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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To add insult to injury, most Americans never knew that, and most Mexicans have never forgotten it.
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The National Targeting Center in Virginia run by Customs and Border Protection checks the background of every traveler who seeks to enter the country.
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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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Twenty-nine US states depend on Mexico as their primary export market.
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Migration should take place in accordance with lawful norms and secure and safe procedures.
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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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The Mexicans return the detained Central American migrants by bus or by air to the countries they come from.
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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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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.
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The prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States.
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We make things together. We have shared production platforms.
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The idea was to restore the rule of law, to bring order to a chaotic situation.
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Our security in a global world must be looked at on a continental basis.
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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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