Word: bordered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Belatedly, Congress is trying. After long hesitation, the House last week began debate on a bill, already passed twice by the Senate, that is supposed at least to slow the torrent of illegal immigrants across the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border. A floor vote on the Simpson-Mazzoli bill (named for its coauthors, Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky) is expected this week. President Reagan put in a plug for passage at his news conference Thursday night. Said he, with a touch of hyperbole: "We have lost control of our own borders...
Simpson-Mazzoli is an intricate compromise, combining amnesty for many illegal immigrants already in the U.S. with a system of fines against employers who hire future evaders of the border patrols. The employer sanctions are supposed to dry up the supply of jobs for pollos. The bill has been attacked as both too soft and too tough, and denounced as "racist" by some Hispanic leaders. Indeed, its opponents span the ideological spectrum from Jesse Helms on the Republican right to Jesse Jackson on the Democratic left, and include both Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. Less political critics question whether Simpson...
...hire illegal immigrants, with little or no effect. California has had such a law on its books since 1971, and it probably draws more pollos than any other state. Moreover, these critics say, even a limited amnesty would set a precedent that might lure still more aliens across the border in the hope that if they could evade the INS long enough, they too might someday become legal residents. Immigration experts in Texas apprehensively note that in the past, false rumors of amnesty have spurred an immediate jump in the numbers of aliens heading north...
...opponents of Simpson-Mazzoli, however, have been unable to offer any convincing alternative. Some contend that tighter enforcement of wage-and-hour laws in the U.S. and beefing up the INS border patrols could slow the tide of aliens. That seems unlikely; Cornelius, for one, believes that only "fullscale militarization" of the U.S.-Mexican border, a step that nobody advocates, could do the job. Others contend the real solution would be to build up the Mexican economy so that it could offer good jobs to those now crossing the border. But that is wishful thinking: American voters...
David MacMichael, 56, who until April 1983 served as a CIA estimates officer specializing in Central American and Caribbean affairs, claims that intelligence reports of cross-border arms shipments "fell off to nothing" after the failure of the Salvadoran guerrillas' "final offensive" in the spring of 1981. Now, he says, he believes the Administration has "systematically misrepresented Nicaraguan involvement in the supply of arms to Salvadoran guerrillas to justify its efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government." Secretary of State George Shultz says of MacMichael, "He must be living in some other world...