Border Fence: April 2009 Archives

From the election year 2000 presidential campaigns of Vincente Fox and George Bush, one would have thought the United States-Mexico relationship would have been better and closer 4 years later.  After repeated attempts, the relationship started and stopped, and eventually went silent.

President Obama heads to Mexico this week to seek resolution on a multitude of topics.  Most visible is to find an immigration resolution between the two countries.  However, it shouldn't be an immigration debate or calls for more reform. 

The United States has spent the last 3 years building fences and/or barriers on the border, staffing up on Border Patrol agents, building several high capacity H2A/H2B processing centers (the Backlog Elimination Centers were closed at the end of Dec. 2007), boosting staff levels at USCIS (with new IT resources and applications), processing citizenship applications faster than ever, and implementing e-verify for employers.

These were the key components that many of the Congressional opponents requested to have in place before any further discussion on immigration matters; they have now almost all been accomplished. 

We now have the appropriate infrastructure in place to resolve a lot of unfinished business between the two countries, and both countries are seeking resolution to these matters in the very near future.

For the first time in years, Mexico is now back on the map for the United States and even the White House website says so.