Gonzalez: President Obama calls on Congress to act on immigration reform while patrolling the border has become big business for the government

Jason Reed/Reuters

President Barack Obama speaks on the sweeping bipartisan immigration reform bill delivered by the U.S. Senate, though a legislative battle may be brewing to hammer out the details.

Barely a week into his second term, President Obama made a stirring call Tuesday for Congress to act on immigration reform before the end of the year.

Any bill must include a ?pathway to citizenship? for the 11 million undocumented migrants now living in the shadows, Obama insisted.

But the devil is bound to be in the details of any compromise.

A bipartisan Senate proposal unveiled this week is filled with hurdles for the undocumented.

It would require them to pay fines and back taxes, pass a background check and then receive a ?probationary? status.

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The Senate plan also requires the nation?s borders be certified as secure before anyone on probation can apply for permanent residency. And then, those applicants would have to go to the end of the line.

Some advocates warn it could take as long as 20 years for most of the undocumented to qualify for citizenship under that scenario.

Only those brought here illegally as children, or workers needed to pick the nation?s crops, could hope for a faster process.

?It definitely could be a long and difficult pathway,? advocate and Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago told me, acknowledging that even the Senate bill would have a tough time in his own Republican-controlled chamber.

Obama, meanwhile, lauded the Senate bill ?as very much in line with the principles I proposed,? though he refrained from explicitly endorsing the proposed ?certification? program.

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How does anyone certify our borders are completely secure?

Such a nonsensical requirement becomes the excuse for continuing to feed a huge new industry in America ? the border enforcement industry.

Last year, the federal government spent more money by far on border enforcement ($18 billion) then it spent on the $14 billion combined budgets of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to a Migration Policy Institute study.

Meanwhile, the number of people caught trying to enter the country illegally is lower than it?s been in more than a decade.

Militarizing the border is a new version of the war on drugs.

It?s a way to sabotage immigration reform while claiming you?re for it.

Source: http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/nydnrss/news/columnists/~3/p6sgTPsdiHs/story01.htm

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