Humane Borders Essays And Opinion Pieces: Public Policy Strategies For 2003: A Position Paper. Nov. 02

 

Humane Borders was founded June 11, 2000 to respond in a humanitarian way to the people risking their lives crossing the US-Mexico border and to advocate for changes in US policies that perpetuate this risk taking. We have accomplished much of this task by carving out a social space in which persons of conviction can and will provide meaningful assistance to persons in peril while working within the confines and constraints of our legal-political system.

Today I am announcing that in 2003, we will be working as comprehensively upon public policy as we are upon humanitarian assistance. In effect, we are carving out yet another social space. The cluster of policies we refer to as border policy must change for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they kill our neighbors. First some background.

In 2001, we adopted a well articulated social strategy for change. We held up our hands, pointed to death in the desert, said that it was wrong, asked anyone with warrant and wisdom to come to the table to talk about it, and then marshalled resources and people to do something about the problem.

This strategy included establishing and maintaining water stations in critical, strategic locations in the deserts of southern Arizona. Today, we have 36 of our barrel-type water stations in Arizona, and during the summer months, we operate more than 130 pole-type stations in southern California.

We took as our symbol the big dipper constellation. In American history during the movement to abolish slavery, it was known as the drinking gourd. Slaves yearning to be free would follow the drinking gourd north. To that symbol, we added pouring water.

We chose to be an organization of organizations, and membership is by organization, not individual. Most of the work is performed by a core group of volunteers numbering somewhere near 100. More than 1,500 persons have volunteered on water servicing trips in the desert. Some volunteers have been as many as 50 times. Humane Borders has four corporate officers, and we have more than 40 member organizations that include congregations, denominational agencies, human rights organizations, immigration legal assistance organizations, and businesses. Currently these stretch from Los Angeles to El Paso.
As a side bar, last year and so far this year, Humane Borders has raised approximately $75,000 and probably received $25,000 in the form of in-kind contributions of goods and services. Almost all of the funds are used to pay for two trucks and all of their related expenses or for water station equipment such as tanks, stands, flags, etc.

From the beginning we wanted to be binational as soon as possible. To date, we have not chosen to become a corporation in Mexico, but we do have several congregations and organizations in Mexico in our membership.

We are decidedly a faith-based organization. Arguably, only the faith communities have the motivation, the staying power, the good will of the larger community and other necessary resources to provide this kind of sustained work and witness.

We knew from the first day that part of our mission would be to tell our story away from the border. Only when people away from the border understand that this chaotic border is a national problem and not some unfortunate regional problem will change be possible.

In that regard, we have been phenomenally successful. In our office, we have more than 400 major news articles that have been written about our work. A major part of our work is in interpreting what we do to journalists and broadcasters around the world. Film crews from at least nine nations have filmed our work in the desert. We have had video segments on all the major networks and all the major cable networks in English and in Spanish. At least six documentary film makers have paid us a visit, and at least 50 hours of radio talk shows and interviews have featured spokespersons for Humane Borders. Some book chapters are in progress. Quite simply, we have had major coverage in every media market in the United States and at least as much media attention in foreign countries as we have in the US.

What was not forseen in June 2000 was how important would be the roll of the various land managers in southern Arizona. We work with land managers to reduce the deleterious environmental effects of the migration and attempt to reduce the inordinate expenses. Of particular concern to Humane Borders are the local taxpayer expenses incurred by healthcare and other service providers, especially Pima County Government through University Medical Center, Pima County coroner's office, and law enforcement. We work with the National Park Service, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. Some of our permits have been negotiated between the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice, and signed by the Solicitor General of the United States. The water stations are not only legal, they are now a part of comprehensive land management strategies in our region and in California. Similar efforts in southern California are taking place through Water Station, Inc. founded by Dr. John Hunter.

The strategy is working. November 12, 2002 my wife Sue Ann and I were on a one-hour Phil Donahue special on immigration aired on MSNBC. The program featured the Rev. Al Sharpton, Arizona rancher Roger Barnett, American Border Patrol president Glenn Spencer, National Immigration Forum director Frank Sharry, and Pat Buchanan. Audience guests included the parents of Kris Eggle, the National Park Service law enforcement ranger killed on the border by a Mexican national drug dealer. Also present was the family of a woman whose husband had been imprisoned and then deported under the new Patriot Act. Finally, as evidence of the American dream, the audience guests included a man who crossed from Mexico at age 19 who now is a partner in a $17 million a year business. In that crowd, Humane Borders spokespersons represent a position somewhere in the middle.

Humane Borders works with representatives of Mexican President Vicente Fox's cabinet and the Mexican consulates in Arizona. We communicate fairly regularly with staffers in both the US House and the Senate. We regularly work with representatives of the Department of Interior. We have enjoyed the support of both city and county governments in southern Arizona. Our doors are open to all interested parties.

In 2003, Humane Borders fully anticipates operating even more water stations. Some additional stations are being negotiated now. We anticipate expanding our institutional membership to more than sixty organizations. The organizations under consideration at this time are in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and especially the Lower Rio Grande Valley area of Texas. The goal is to aggregate the voices of those concerned with migrant safety and immigration reform into one voice. They will speak with one clear agenda and receive significant public recognition. The idea is that officials in the US and in Mexico will have to include Humane Borders when migrant safety and immigration reform issues are on the table.

Humane Borders is a 501(c)(4) organization. That is a little different from the C3s we usually talk about. As a C4, Humane Borders cannot receive tax deductible contributions, though that's irrelevant since most of our members are C3s. What is important is that as a C4, Humane Borders will be able to lobby Congress each time new legislation is proposed, considered in committee, or up for a vote on the floor of the house or the senate.

In the public policy arena, the claims of various groups with an interest in immigration reform must be recognized.

• Ranchers affected by the migration have a legitimate claim for immigration reform. Debris left by migrants effects livestock production. Fences do get cut. Water sources are damaged. Unwanted wildcat roads are established.
• Environmentalists are alarmed at the effects of the migration through public lands, especially in the west desert. Public land managers receive both political and legal pressure to reduce the numbers of migrants crossing lands in their charge.
• Human rights and civil rights groups rightfully complain about the systematic, even structural, abuses experienced by migrants once they cross the border. Structural abuses are those that are built-in to the system such as the errors of omission committed by Border Patrol agents who for lack of training, do not ask migrants about their fears of being repatriated to their countries of origin. These groups are also rightfully frustrated with the practices of federal officers in the field that do not respect the actual policies of the federal agencies employing the officers.
• Faith communities are seeking reform of immigration laws because of human rights violations, the imperilment of migrants, and the deleterious effect of the immigration laws concerning family unity. Faith communities support the human right of persons to migrate, concern themselves with migrant safety issues, and abhor the effects of the 1996 legislation that imposes mandatory deportations and bars to re-entry. For example, parents of children who are citizens can be deported and prohibited from ever visiting their children in the US.
• The city, county, and state criminal justice systems are effected significantly along the border by incurring non-reimbursed expenses, often running into the millions of dollars in various jurisdictions.
• Many of the law enforcement officers operating along the border are disheartened by the lack of support from their various agencies and jurisdictions. For example, the most frequent violation of law is Entry Without Inspection (EWI) an extremely minor violation of US law which is not prosecuted and for which no fines are levied. With no teeth in the law, agents often don't believe that the US values the law enforcement function they provide. With the rising number of deaths and the amount of time agents have to spend on search and rescue operations, one agent of the US Border Patrol has said he is now a mortician instead of a law enforcement agent.
• Counties along the border incur inordinate expenditures in the form of non-reimbursed healtcare expenditures, coroner services, and law enforcement activities which are mandated by federal and state laws.
• Not only are public service providers effected, even private healthcare providers are burdened with non-reimbursed healthcare expenditures.
• Groups and organizations that raise questions of national sovereignty and national security raise legitimate questions that also must be addressed in comprehensive immigration reform proposals.
  

The first steps that must be taken in the effort to reform immigration laws must focus on rescuing people from the desert. To rescue means to remove from imminent peril. Historically, a lot of the undocumented traffic across the southern border has been southbound. Migrants return to Mexico, or another country of origin, to visit family, to observe religious holidays, and to work at home until seasonal jobs begin again. As a matter of fairness and justice, any attempts to provide legal status for the undocumented must begin with those already living in the U.S., contributing to the economy.

The second step is to provide legal opportunities for migrants seeking employment in the US. Humane Borders supports distributing the right to work to the migrant and not to the employer. This year is the 60th anniversary of the first so-called Bracero program which was rife with systemic abuses. In the Bracero programs, migrants were encouraged to come to the US to work while many citizens were out of the country at war or when the economy was rapidly expanding. It is our position that migrants should be afforded basic protections against abuse in any reform efforts.

If Congress chooses to do so, it can exempt Mexico from the worldwide quota of visas, enabling more Mexicans to work in the United States without becoming eligible for citizenship.

INS could update the registry. Persons in other countries wanting to come to the US for work or to reunite with their families must choose either to wait several years to cross the border legally or to pay a coyote and cross the desert. By updating the registry, persons are not forced to wait for 10 years or more and not encouraged to cross the desert and risk their lives. By processing the paperwork more quickly, migrants could wait 1-3 years to legally migrate rather than crossing the far too often fatal way across the desert.

All of these kinds of changes will get people out of the desert, screen who is entering the US, move the migration back to the ports of entry, and largely reduce the need for the notorious smugglers.

Another set of changes needs to come from the distribution of costs and benefits. On the whole, the United States economy and its people enjoy great benefits from the annual migration and the contributions of foreign workers. Without question, however, the communities on the border suffer dramatically. As mentioned above, unfunded mandates exist in the form of requirements to absorb costs in healthcare, law enforcement, criminal justice, education, infrastructure, etc. These mandates are based on seriously flawed assumptions. For instance the federal requirements of local hospitals to pay indigent healthcare expenses are based upon the assumption that these kinds of costs are evenly distributed across the healthcare providers in the United States. Such is not the case. The United States government has a moral obligation to share in the costs of migration with the border communities. After all, the border communities benefit the least.

A fourth set of changes needs to occur right on the border and in the zones to either side. Federal officers (USBP, Customs, INS, FBI, DEA, and all the others) need to respect human rights, civil rights, and the fundamental right of persons to migrate.

On the other side, Mexican officials need to adequately inform migrants of the risks that they incur by entering the United States in various locations. It is a fundamental requirement of ethics to have informed consent prior to undertaking a dangerous crossing.

Land managers: federal, state, county, private, and tribal must accept responsibility for what is happening on their properties under their watch. Water and other humanitarian resources should be placed in the paths of migrants. One measure of Humane Borders' success on the humanitarian front will be when land managers erect and maintain water stations with federal funds.

Rational and not racial choices must be made by inspectors on the border. Racial profiling and racial rhetoric are rampant.

Persons seeking asylum in the United States must be granted appropriate access to information and legal representation if the United States is to re-claim its role as a country that protects those who have been the victims of persecution, prosecution, and torture around the world.

A fourth set of changes includes de-militarizing the border. Persons along the border have the perception that they live in an occupied zone with fewer rights than US citizens living away from the border. The closing of the traditional, urban crossing points has led migrants to choose to cross in more remote and dangerous locations. The result of the militarization of the border is more dead migrants in the desert. Relocating the migration in the desert has burdened land managers, destroyed thousands of acres of pristine desert, and heightened the hypocrisy of the border policies.

Humane Borders will be expanding membership to include additional faith communities, more businesses, and open its doors to other groups that are seriously affected by US border policies. With an expanded membership, Humane Borders will achieve not only media recognition but the requisite political influence in our political economy to effect the changes that will finally make our border a humane border.

 

 

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