It'll take more than a border fence

Every Republican candidate for president has endorsed the need to control the porous U.S.-Mexico border, most often by advocating building a fence all along the 1,900-mile border. Or, as John McCain intoned in his successful re-election campaign to the Senate last year, "just build the dang thing."

The border fence was supposed to be built already. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandated 700 miles of fence and set deadlines for its construction. Homeland Security got $1.2 billion to do the job.

Today, less than 500 miles of fence for either pedestrians or vehicles exists in a less-than-half-hearted patchwork effort that continues to leave the border open to a scandalous harvest of violence, lawlessness and the plundering of American communities. Homeland Security has announced it will not build any more fence.

Can a fence control the border? Yes. The San Diego-Tijuana border fence is effective, up to a point.

Twenty years ago, Rep. Duncan Hunter Sr. led an effort to fund and build a triple fence along the international boundary separating the two sprawling metropolitan areas. This triple fence, extending from the eastern mountains into the surf at the Pacific Ocean, complete with lights, ground sensors and access roads for the Border Patrol, has effectively stopped illegal crossing, at least where the fence exists.

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The illegal traffic has just moved east to get around the fenced portion of the border – or gone underground.

In the last few years, 14 tunnels, most complete and operating, have been discovered under the San Diego-Tijuana fence. A total of 70 tunnels for smuggling drugs, people and who knows what else, have been discovered since 2008 under fenced portions all along the border.

Two weeks ago, 17 tons of marijuana were found in a tunnel equipped with lights and ventilation that connected a Tijuana warehouse with a warehouse on the U.S. side.

Last week, 36 tons of marijuana were found in an even more sophisticated tunnel linking a Mexican warehouse near the Tijuana police headquarters and a warehouse in the U.S. This tunnel had a rail line, ventilation, electricity and an elevator.

The level of sophistication in the construction and operation of this latest tunnel makes it obvious that this is no amateur effort. The drug cartels have the money and the connections to bring in the finest tunnel diggers in the world.

Assuming the companies that cored the Chunnel under the English Channel to connect France and Britain are not involved, that leaves the Hamas tunnel diggers whose tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border are similar in construction and operation to the San Diego-Tijuana tunnels.

People-smuggling has also become more sophisticated. Declining apprehension rates along the border have caused some to speculate that illegal immigration is declining. Those of us who live along the border know better.

People smugglers (same folks as the drug smugglers) have gone high tech. Illegal alien smuggling: Is there an app for that? Yes.

Coyotes (the popular name for alien smugglers) use their smart phone GPS app to map a route that their monitoring of Border Patrol communications tells them is safe. The coyote used to travel with the illegals. Now he directs the illegals by phone from the safety of his home base in Mexico.

The smugglers can afford their own phones, but why pay for a phone when U.S. taxpayers will buy it for you?

In 2009, at the University of California, San Diego, faculty members used a $15,000 federal arts grant to buy password-protected smart phones to hand out in Tijuana to illegals to use in safe passage across the border.

The continuing magnet for these illegals (though lessened by the continuing recession) is a job in the U.S.

People who enter the U.S. illegally are not legally entitled to work here. Whether here for 25 minutes or 25 years, Mr. Speaker, an illegal continues to break U.S. law by working a job that should be filled only by a citizen or legal resident.

Illegals working in the U.S. typically take lower-paying jobs away from legal migrants and second-generation Americans. What Republicans don't seem to understand is that vast numbers of Hispanics are ready to vote for a Republican who can stop illegal immigration and save their jobs, but do it in a way that doesn't sound like a race war.

Is there such a thing? Yes.

Mandatory E-Verify would require an employer to take a few seconds to allow the Social Security computers to verify whether the name and the Social Security number of a job applicant match. If they do, great. If they don't, no job.

Mandatory E-Verify would remove the magnet drawing illegals and, at the same time, free up jobs for Americans – not to mention stopping rampant Social Security fraud.

Would Americans do those jobs? The Bush-era raids on clothing manufacturers and meat-packing plants revealed that once illegals were removed, Americans and legal residents flocked to the jobs.

The drug smuggling is more problematic. Some advocate drug legalization, at least legalization of marijuana, citing the repeal of alcohol prohibition as the example of the way forward. Others say the failed war on drugs simply needs more money and more enforcement to work.

Nearly everyone along the border agrees that something must be done to control the border – and soon. A fence is just one part of the answer. But the need to control the border is acute.

The drug cartels now operate with impunity in every state, spreading their control to other lucrative criminal pursuits. The number of law enforcement agents indicted for corruption has soared in recent years as the cartels duplicate the subversion of the rule of law that has worked so well in Mexico and other countries.

The Obama regime has sued four states for daring to enforce existing federal immigration law, which Obama fails to enforce.Obama's federal agents knowingly allowed thousands of weapons to be "walked" across the border to arm the drug cartels. Last week, we learned that Obama federal agents had actually laundered drug money for the cartels. It was yet another sting gone wrong.

The American voter turns to the Republicans for answers – and gets what? The same old straw man nonsense: "We can't just round up millions of people." Nobody is advocating that.

Fence the border. Enforce the law, including the labor law. Reserve jobs for American citizens and legal immigrants. Go after the drug cartels before they elect more mayors and city council members, buy more cops and manipulate the liberal media. Stand up for states trying to solve the problem. Stand up for America – before it's too late.