“When the economy recovers, we’re going to see an increase in attempts to get into the country, and at about the same success ratio,” NBPC President T.J. Bonner said. “Are we anywhere close to border security? No, we’re not. True border security means that no thing and no person crosses that border without our permission.”
This much is certain: The number of illegal immigrants apprehended along America’s southern border plummeted by 54 percent between 2005 and 2009. But, like everything else surrounding the fractious immigration debate in this part of the country, there is little agreement on exactly why.
Federal officials say the decrease is due to the right mix of “personnel, technology and infrastructure” accomplished by deploying 76 percent more U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to the area.
But the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents more than 17,000 Border Patrol agents, says the decline is actually a blip on the radar screen, due less to greater enforcement than to the nation’s faltering economy.
“Unemployment affects illegal aliens, that’s the real reason” that fewer border-crossers are making the perilous trek into the U.S., NBPC President T.J. Bonner told FoxNews.com. “Right about [2005], our economy started to sour, which means fewer jobs available and fewer people trying to cross the border. The preponderance of people who we catch are trying to find work in the United States.”
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