Border Security a Priority for Immigration Reformers
by Chad Groening
April 27, 2005
(AgapePress) - Led by a veteran conservative radio talk-show host out of San Diego, grassroots lobbyists are congregating in Washington, DC, this week, pressuring lawmakers on Capitol Hill to secure the nation's borders and enforce the immigration laws that are on the books.It is called "Hold Their Feet to the Fire." The national drive for immigration reform contends that illegal aliens "and their friends in Congress" are attempting to derail legislation in Congress that would strengthen America's borders and prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses. Roger Hedgecock, a prominent talk-show host in San Diego, is co-sponsor of the rally. He says his city has been battling for more secure borders since the late 1980s -- and that as a result, the flow of illegal aliens has been forced to move eastward.
Hedgecock is now proposing that the Bush administration use San Diego has a model for determining the most effective method for protecting the nation's borders. He maintains the Southern California city has led the way in combating the influx of illegal immigrants.
"I've seen this firsthand," the former San Diego mayor says. "We had our first border demonstration in 1988. We've been talking about this a long time -- and as a result, by the way ... of demonstrating and talking about it [in San Diego], we had Operation Gatekeeper. We put up the fences, we have the lights, we have the Border Patrol agents. We have secured the border at San Diego."
That success, he says, along with the more recent success of the Minuteman Project along the Arizona-Mexico border, shows that real enforcement of immigration laws is possible. "My hope is that we can take this model of securing the border and stretch it all the way down to Brownsville (Texas), and for that matter all the way from Vancouver out to the east coast of Canada, too," Hedgecock says.
The radio personality is convinced, for example, that a security fence could be built along the borders right now. "The fence should and could be built," he says. "It's obviously there to do. We've shown how to do it. They also need the sensors, they need the 'eye-in-the-sky,' they need the Minuteman-type project, they need the eyes and ears of citizens."
Hedgecock is convinced that border security will happen one way or another. "I'll tell you, if the government does not secure these borders in all the ways we know it can be done -- in fact, is being done today in Iraq and Afghanistan -- then the people are going to have to do it," he says. "The Minuteman Project will expand, it will go across the border, across the entire Mexican and Canadian borders -- and I think if that's what we have to do, that's what we'll do."
James Gilchrist, the co-founder of the Minuteman Project, is in the nation's capital for the immigration reform rally. He says he was not surprised at all at the success of the operation in the Arizona desert.
"I knew it was going to be successful. I said before we even started that there will be almost no illegal alien invasion while we're there manning that line, and that there will not be any violence because that was not in our creed," he says.
And according to Gilchrist, there will be an even bigger operation this fall. "For the month of October, the first through 31st, [we will] man the entire border from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California," he explains. "We expect somewhere between [10,000] and 14,000 volunteers and [we will] literally seal off the entire southern border."
Also taking part in "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" is Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, a former military attaché to President Bill Clinton. While complimentary of the leadership President Bush has displayed in waging the war on terror abroad, the former Air Force pilot believes the president is not adequately dealing with the border problem.
Patterson believes the President Bush's friendship with Mexican President Vicente Fox is driving U.S. immigration policy.
"I believe that George W. Bush and Vicente Fox made an agreement a couple of years ago to give Bush the Hispanic vote -- and I think now Bush is not going to go back on that agreement," Patterson offers. "His father didn't do anything; Clinton didn't do anything; and I expected George W. Bush to be a strong, Republican, conservative president -- and he has not done anything either. I think it goes back to the agreement between himself and Fox."
He describes what Bush has done overseas in battling terror as "revolutionary" -- but emphasizes that the fight needs to be taken to terrorists stateside as well, beginning with border security.
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
