Border guard

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 17, 2006

President Bush was unusually sober and judicious in trying to stake out something resembling a middle ground on the emotional and increasingly politicized subject of immigration Monday evening. That his worthy effort is likely to fall flat, or even fail, suggests just how polarizing this topic has become, and how little interest seems to exist in finding practical solutions.

The first part of the speech sounded like an effort to reach out to his natural base of conservatives, who have been restive lately over the administration's spending habits, over things not going well in Iraq, and mainly, if polls are reliable, over the belief that the president just doesn't "get it" about illegal immigration. Thus, he emphasized hiring more Border Patrol officers, improved technology, a renewed commitment to border enforcement -- and in the short-term assigning as many as 6,000 National Guard members to support administrative functions along the border.

There are reasons to be wary of the last proposal. This may not amount to "militarizing" border enforcement, but it asks people trained for military service to perform essentially civilian law enforcement activities, which raises legal as well as practical questions. If the National Guard is asked only to do administrative and construction work, rather than serve in a law enforcement capacity, couldn't civilians be hired in nonsworn-officer positions?

National Guard members, we know, can be mobilized more quickly than administrative civilians. But the plan reflects a potentially troubling urge to turn to the military whenever a problem seems intractable. That is unfair to the military, even as it could increase the role of the military in civilian law enforcement in troubling ways. And with our armed forces already stretched to the breaking point by other missions and responsibilities, this might be a bridge too far.

The Senate immigration bill not only includes a guester program similar to what the president advocates, it increases quotas for legal workers in every category and includes a path toward regularizing the status of the 11 million or 12 million workers now here illegally. It may have enough votes to pass, unless one of several "killer amendments," such as a requirement that those here illegally return to their home countries before beginning a regularization process, is approved.

If the president has any political capital left, he might improve the chances for the Senate to pass a bill by Memorial Day, as Senate leaders have vowed. The question is whether the president's speech will influence the House.

The House passed a bill last December that focuses on border enforcement and makes being in this country without documents or government authorization a felony, which is not the case now. It has no provisions for a guest-worker program or a path to citizenship for those already in the country illegally.

To get it to the president's desk, both Houses of Congress must approve the same bill. Has the president influenced enough House members that a reconciliation committee can find ways to incorporate elements of both the House and Senate approach, or will compromise be politically infeasible? With an election in November, one doubts whether serious legislating is possible.

It is a sad irony that when a president often criticized for seeing the world only in black and white tries to nuance an issue, he stands in danger of alienating those who have been his most faithful supporters. We give him points for trying, and for acknowledging that government rules cannot repeal the law of supply and demand, at least as it pertains to labor markets. But sadly, at this point, the debate may have become far too polarized to find a workable middle ground.

Fire and forget

What the University of Colorado at Boulder does next in the Ward Churchill affair will demonstrate whether the school is at all capable of enforcing standards and policing faculty misconduct -- a litmus test, in some ways, of whether it will continue to be taken seriously as an institution of higher learning.

That a single faculty member could put that reputation at risk is a sad commentary not only on the troubled state of higher education, which seems permeated with radicals and charlatans, but of the way this case was been dragged out and mishandled by the school. We rue the day Churchill burst from much-deserved obscurity to become the most recognizable member of the CU faculty. It must be galling, as well, to the truly outstanding scholars on staff.

If Churchill had any decency, he'd resign in response to findings that he engaged in academic misconduct -- offenses that justified termination in the judgment of three investigators and suspension in the view of two others. But decency these days seems as antiquated a notion as academic accountability or intellectual integrity. Shameless as always, Churchill threatened to sue the school for wrongful dismissal if the more serious sanction is leveled.

But some things are worth getting sued over -- and this is one of them. It's not Churchill's outlandish ideas that justify his dismissal, in our view, or even his questionable claim to Native American ancestry, which seemed designed to take advantage of the school's affirmative action policies. As upsetting as those things are, they pale in comparison to a finding of academic misconduct by a panel of Churchill's peers. That's a firing offense, in our view. How can we ask CU students to uphold the highest standards of academic conduct, if it can't even hold faculty members to such a standard?