January 06, 2007

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01/05/07 - An Arizona Reader Has Stopped Wondering About GOP

A Reader Announces A National Association of Former Border Patrol Agents Forming To Fight Amnesty

Kent Lundgren [send him mail] writes

My name is Kent Lundgren.  I am coordinating the formation of a fledgling organization called the National Association of Former Border Patrol Agents.  We are not as yet formally organized, but we are in the process of doing so. Events are driving us, though - there is bad law on the horizon, and we are attempting to have an impact before our feet are firmly set, so please bear with us if we are a little ragged around the edges organizationally. 

This is our mission statement:

"Our paramount mission is to contribute to the security and stability of the United States.  To that end, we shall propose and be advocates for immigration policies and laws that we believe serve those national interests, and we will oppose those that do not contribute to the national well-being."

Does the country need another immigration control organization?  That's debatable, but we see ourselves as what I'll call "tribal elders" in these discussions.  Our knowledge of these issues is not narrowly-focused, for many of our members were Border Patrolmen who went on to high positions in the old INS.  We have a unique institutional knowledge, and an outlook tempered by experience, for we've been intimately involved in the debacles of the last fifty years and more, and many of us have the scars to show for it.

This is our credo:

"If we didn't live it, if we don't know it, if we can't prove it, we won't say it."  It is our intention to become an unimpeachable source, the gold standard for information about what has actually happened on the ground as a result of the immigration laws and policies of the last half of the twentieth century.  We will also apply our expert knowledge to form judgments about what is likely to flow from proposed legislation and policies. 

I'll not go into details of how we have come to be, but it started with a position paper one of us wrote back in October to draw signatures as a letter to . . . whomever might listen.  Over two hundred and fifty former Border Patrol officers signed on to it, including four former Chiefs of the Border Patrol, and the numbers continue to increase.  That paper, those signers, and events have brought us to this point. 

The paper sets forth four positions, with a page or two of justifications based on our experience for each position. The positions are:

1. We oppose illegal immigration;
    
2. We oppose amnesty, by any name;
    
3. We favor enforcement of existing employer sanctions laws, and we need no others;
    
4. We are in favor of statutory creation of a temporary worker program, to operate only when the Dept. of Labor certifies a labor shortage in a particular industry of area.

(This is a particularly complex issue, and we are not yet fully of one mind about the details).

If you are interested in the position paper and supporting material, please visit our interim website here.