Professor Wayne (igotmydegreefromeducationconnection.com) Cornelius say's, "building a border fence is pointless"

At this week's California gubernatorial debate, Republican candidate Meg Whitman said that the state could secure its border with Mexico by creating not one, but two fences.

But according to University of California, San Diego Political Science Professor Wayne Cornelius, it doesn't matter how high, or even how many, barriers there are. If you build them, migrants will still come.

Speaking at Stanford University Thursday night, Cornelius presented his research with UCSD's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies to highlight the current flaws and wasteful spending of border states' current illegal immigration policies. A hot button issue with current gubernatorial and U.S. Senate contenders, illegal immigration has become a political battlefront for candidates looking to secure crucial votes.

Cornelius focused largely on California, whose 140 miles of border with Mexico are regulated by everything from border patrol officers to triple-fenced barriers in parts of San Diego County. The effort has been largely futile, he said.

Cornelius stated that about 61 percent of illegal immigrants crossing into California made it on their first try, and 98 percent of those who were caught the first time eventually made it to California on subsequent attempts.

While highlighting these failures, Cornelius also pointed out the amount being spent on enforcing our borders was roughly $17 billion annually.

"One thing we have managed to do is spend a lot of money," he said.

The professor also highlighted another cost of augmented border enforcement: human lives. Calling border-crossing fatalities a "slow motion death march," Cornelius stated that there had been more than 6,600 documented deaths from failed border crossings.

And while border apprehensions have declined over the past decade, Cornelius was hesitant to conclude that the trend was a result of improved border enforcement. He qualified a claim from Secretary of Homeland Security Jennifer Napolitano, who said last November that decreased immigrant flow was in part due to better security.

"'It's the economy, stupid' argument that's kind of explaining it," Cornelius said, pointing out that potential immigrants lost the desire to immigrate with the decline in employment possibilities.

"The great recession has strongly discouraged new migration from Mexico, both legal and unauthorized, by changing the cost-benefit calculus of migration," he later added. "But for most, migration is only being postponed until the U.S. economy improves."

The founder of UCSD's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, also touched on efforts to imprison and prosecute illegal immigrants, which he said places an unnecessary strain on the nation's prison systems and court resources.

When asked of possible solutions to curb illegal immigration, Cornelius supported an overhaul of federal and state policies, supporting guestworker programs and workplace enforcement of legal documentation status. Yet regarding the latter, he suggested that there could still be businesses looking to cut costs that could shirk such regulations.

Cornelius acknowledged in an interview after his presentation that immigration would prove one of the main sparring points for statewide candidates this election. In the senate race, he said, "the immigration issue seems to be working in Barbara Boxer's favor as her opponent, Fiorina, identified with the Republican hardline."

Yet in the race for governor , the issue remains murky, as Whitman struggles to find firm footing on immigration, especially in light of the current revelations involving her former housekeeper, who is an undocumented immigrant.

"It's not clear how Meg Whitman will come down on the issue," he said. "The less she says about it, the less likely she is to offend Democratic voters and probably Independents. Republicans probably want her to take a harder line as in the primaries, but she's moved toward the center of the issue."

http://www.baycitizen.org/immigration/story/researcher-securing-states-borders/