CBP chief: Sealed border is unrealistic
The commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agrees that Arizona’s border needs to be better controlled, but he said completely sealing the international line is unrealistic.
“This is not about sealing the border,” Commissioner Alan Bersin said Friday in Tucson. “Until we have a legitimate labor market between Mexico and the United States, people will attempt to come here to work.”
To get that legitimate labor market, though, will take immigration-law change, he said. To get backing for it will require reducing the flow of illegal immigration in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector - the busiest for apprehensions, drug seizures and border deaths for a decade - to levels similar to those of other sectors.A steady decline in apprehensions in the Tucson Sector over the past six years is a good trend, but it’s still unacceptable that the sector has more than three times as many as the next-busiest sector. However, with more agents, fencing and technology than ever before, the agency is ready, he said.
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