S.D. Border Arrests Hit 3-Year High : Immigration: Decline since reform law of 1986 ends with increases both at local border and across nation.

Reversing a three-year decline, arrests of illegal aliens in the San Diego area went up by 29% during the past fiscal year, immigration authorities reported Thursday.

Almost 475,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in the area--the nation’s major alien-smuggling corridor--during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, officials said.

Although border-wide figures are not yet complete, federal officials said they anticipate the overall figure from California to Texas to top 1 million, for a nationwide increase of almost 25%. It is the first such rise since the immigration reform law passed in 1986.

“It’s not alarming, but we have to say that the trend is in the wrong direction,” said Duke Austin, spokesman in Washington for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The figures indicate that more Mexican nationals are heading north, but that fewer Central Americans are making it to U.S. territory--a fact that experts attribute to ongoing crackdown against illegal migrants by Mexican authorities.

The 1990 arrest numbers are still far short of the record 1.6 million apprehensions recorded border-wide during fiscal 1986, when the rising tide of undocumented immigration eventually prodded Congress to pass its most recent major overhaul of U.S. immigration law. (On Tuesday, the House of Representatives took action on the latest immigration-revision plan, voting to expand considerably the number of immigrants allowed into the United States each year.)

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was expected to discouraged illegal migration, particularly through the law’s so-called amnesty provisions, which eventually resulted in temporary legal status for more than 3 million foreigners, half of whom resided in California. Many of those now-legal residents had previously entered the United States illegally via the U.S.-Mexico border.

The 1986 law also included provisions that made it a crime to hire undocumented workers. But authorities say that many immigrants easily circumvent that barrier by buying fake documents that are widely available on the black market. The failure of employer sanctions provisions and the consequent widespread availability of jobs for undocumented immigrants is a key reason why rampant illegal immigration continues to be the norm, according to U.S. policy-makers.

On a more fundamental level, observers say that the continuing weakness of the Latin American economies--particularly in Mexico, the principal source of illegal immigrants--has prompted more and more people to come north. In the United States, unskilled immigrant workers can often earn $5 an hour--an amount that is considered a high daily wage in much of Mexico and Central America.

“The economic presures that are pushing from Mexico are so great that they are coming in spite of all of our efforts,” said Ted Swofford, a supervisory Border Patrol agent in San Diego.

Federal officials keep close tabs on the border apprehension figures, which they consider the single best barometer of illegal migration. The figures are somewhat inflated, though, because many individuals are arrested multiple times.

IMMIGRANT ARRESTS

Arrests of undocumented immigrants by U.S. Border Patrol agents: (All figures by fiscal years: Oct. 1-Sept. 30) In the San Diego Border Patrol sector (includes all of San Diego County and parts of Oceanside and Riverside counties):

*1990: 473,323 1989: 366,757 1988: 431,592 1987: 500,327 1986: 629,656 1985: 427,772 Across the U.S.-Mexico border area, from California to Texas:

*1990: 1,040,000 1989: 854,057 1988: 943,063 1987: 1,122,067 1986: 1,615,854 1985: 1,183,455 *Estimate SOURCE: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.