Invite: Thur, Aug 8th - "A Border and Immigration Reform Seminar"

Submitted by Emma Buckhout on 7/31/13

Now that the debate over immigration reform has moved from the Senate to the House, Simon will be offering weekly seminar-style presentations of an updated version of a PowerPoint we’ve been giving around town these last few months: “The Border Is Safer, The Immigration System Is Better, and Mexico Is Modernizing and Growing.” This fact-filled presentation showing how successful the Obama Administration has been in managing the complex US-Mexico border and improving our immigration system is increasingly important as the border emerges as the center of the whole immigration debate.

We've conducted three of these briefings in the past few weeks, and have one left - Thur, August 8th, noon.  Please RSVP here. Lunch will be served at 12noon, the presentation will begin promptly at 12:15. The half hour presentation will be followed by a half hour Q&A session.

At its core this presentation is a refutation of the border hysteria far too common in our politics today, a hysteria that has been largely abandoned, for example, by the Republican Party of Arizona, the state perhaps most responsible for exporting this politics to the rest of the country.  Among the statistics we will cover in the presentation tomorrow: 

  • In recent years spending on border security has tripled, the number of border patrol agents has doubled.
  • The net flow of unauthorized immigrations to the United States is now ZERO.
  • Crime on the US side of the border has plummeted, and is violent crime rates in the 2 largest border cities, San Diego and El Paso are one third of what they were a decade ago.
  • Apprehension rates in 2 of the 5 high traffic corridors are already over the Senate goal of 90%, and 2 are over 80%.
  • Due to the drop in flow and huge increase in border patrol, the apprehension rate per border patrol agent has dropped from 327 in 1993 to 19 last year, or one every two to three weeks.  
  • Meanwhile, trade with Mexico across this very same fortified border has exploded, growing from $300b in 2009 to $536n in 2012.  Mexico is now the US’s third largest trading partner, and second largest export market.  

For more of our analysis about the border and immigration reform, visit this page on our site, which includes a link to an earlier version of this presentation and related materials.  Also see Simon’s op-ed in The Hill, "On the Border, DHS Has Earned Congress' Trust," arguing that the Republican party must acknowledge the positive work done by the Department of Homeland Security at the border in order set realistic and achievable goals for immigration legislation.

We hope you can join us for this timely and informative discussion.  And please don’t be shy about forwarding this information, which is so important to the current debate, to others you think might be interested.