Immigration Reform Must Start with Securing the Border Print
By Ashton Ellis
Wednesday, April 03 2013
[E]ven for a regime as corrupt as this one, deliberately sabotaging the government’s ability to secure its own border for the sake of creating millions of new Democratic voters is breathtaking.

If the Obama Administration can’t be bothered to secure the border with Mexico, then congressional Republicans should oppose any deal on comprehensive immigration reform.

It all comes down to one word: integrity. 

For three years, members of Congress have been waiting for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to produce a border security measure called the “Border Conditions Index,” or BCI. 

Originally, BCI was supposed to improve on the traditional measure of “operational control,” which was mainly a subjective estimate by section chiefs who based their opinions on the amount of manpower and technology deployed in their area.

BCI was intended to get beyond the typical government response of “How much more?” by answering the question “What is working?” 

Or so Congress thought. 

At a hearing in March entitled “Measuring Outcomes to Understand the State of Border Security,” the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security asked one of the top DHS technology officers for an update on how the federal government plans to measure control of the border. 

The response was stunning.  “I don’t believe that we intend, at least at this point, that the BCI would be a tool for the measurement that you’re suggesting,” the official told the subcommittee members.  “The BCI is part of a set of information that advises us on where we are and, most importantly, what the trends are … It is not our intent, at least not immediately, that it would be the measure you are talking about.” 

With that, the Obama administration’s strategy burst out into the open.  Reneging on its promise to replace the traditional “operational control” metric with the more innovative BCI means that there is currently no way to measure border security along the U.S.-Mexican border. 

The ploy was premeditated.  “Obama administration officials said on Thursday that they had resisted producing a single measure to assess the border because the president did not want any hurdle placed on the pathway to eventual citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally,” the New York Times reported on the day after the committee hearing. 

These candid admissions reveal the liberal approach to immigration policy: delay, deceive and demand capitulation. 

Delayed action on BCI lulled border security supporters into thinking that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and others could be trusted to make good on their representations without being scrupulously monitored. 

Deception from executive branch officials means that there is now not enough time for lawmakers to judge whether any proposed changes to the nation’s security strategy will accomplish the goal of controlling the border and preventing large-scale illegal immigration in the future.

Now Senate Democrats are moving in for the kill by demanding a fast-track process to approve a secretly negotiated, comprehensive immigration reform bill. 

U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, announced last week that he and the other members of the chamber’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” were within sight of a deal on immigration reform. 

According to his timetable, Schumer’s bill would be in and out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by the end of April, with a vote by the full chamber sometime in May. 

Notably, Schumer outlined the steps in the reform process in a way guaranteed to give border security short shrift.  Rather than secure the border first, as most Republicans and many Democrats want, the Gang of Eight proposal would grant legalization first, then border security, followed by a pathway to citizenship. 

In other words, in Schumer’s bill, border security would become a legislative afterthought sandwiched between the two elements needed to enact amnesty for up to 11.2 million illegal immigrants. 

At this point, no one expects the Obama administration – hobbled as it is with trust-destroying scandals like Fast and Furious, Solyndra and Benghazi – to exhibit anything approaching the level of integrity Americans deserve from their public servants. 

But even for a regime as corrupt as this one, deliberately sabotaging the government’s ability to secure its own border for the sake of creating millions of new Democratic voters is breathtaking.

It’s also the number one reason why congressional Republicans should oppose any deal on immigration reform that fails to create a useable border security metric first.