PERSPECTIVE ON IMMIGRATION : Border Control: Smoke, Mirrors : The Administration’s get-tough stance--more personnel, hardware-- only raises the risk of illegal crossing.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s $540.5-million plan to tighten border control is already being implemented with, among other measures, the installation of 62 stadium-style lights along a two-mile segment of the San Diego-Tijuana border.

The basic elements of the Clinton Administration initiative are not new: putting more Border Patrol agents on la linea; continuing the “blockade” strategy in the El Paso, Tex., sector; supporting the development of a forgery-resistant worker identification card, and hiring more investigators to help enforce the 1986 law that prohibits employers from hiring undocumented immigrants.

These measures fall considerably short of a borderwide “militarization” effort to choke off illegal immigration--a step for which U.S. law-enforcement officials readily admit there is still insufficient political will. Further proof of that is the cold shoulder given to Sen. Barbara Boxer’s proposal, approved by Congress, authorizing governors to deploy National Guard troops to assist border authorities. Not one border-state governor has taken the opportunity.

Given the political reality, the Clinton Administration is pursuing a more modest goal. As stated by Alan Bersin, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, it is “the cumulation of incremental measures . . . so that an effective degree of border control is established.” Thus, the door will be closed, but slowly, and with little expectation that it will completely shut off the flow of undocumented immigrants.

There is, however, a difference in how the new border enforcement resources will be applied. They will be concentrated in just a few, heavily transited points of entry for indocumentados, mainly in the San Diego and El Paso sectors.

The Clinton plan is perhaps significant more for what it does not explicitly say or include than for what it does. Examples:

The principal approach to immigrant control embodied in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)--changing the hiring behavior of employers through fines and criminal penalties--is given short shrift. Only $38 million (7%) of the more than half-billion dollars allocated for Clinton’s border plan has been earmarked for tougher enforcement of employer sanctions.

As Atty. Gen. Reno said, in announcing the Clinton plan on Feb. 3, “Our strategy to control the border is deterrence through prevention (of entry).” The Clinton Administration has chosen to take its stand at the border, raising the barriers to illegal entry rather than systematically hunting down undocumented immigrants in areas away from the border after they have become employed.

The one policy alternative that could conceivably have a significant deterrent impact on illegal immigration in the short term is getting really tough with employers, of all types and sizes, by seizing their assets or by imposing such heavy fines that they could be driven out of business. But the political costs of such tactics are daunting, which explains Gov. Pete Wilson’s striking lack of enthusiasm for this approach.

Seriously targeting employers also would be highly disruptive to sectors of the economy that are heavily dependent on immigrant labor, at a time when much of the country is still struggling to recover from the recession.

In sum, it is much less costly, politically and economically, to go after migrant workers and their dependents as illegal entrants or users of social services.

Equally significant in the Clinton plan is the omission of any reference to the strategy of immigration control promised by the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Clinton Administration and other supporters of the treaty frequently argued that cutting off unauthorized migration at its source, by creating new, trade-generated economic incentives for Mexicans to stay home, was the only approach likely to succeed.

Now, chafing under criticism from those unwilling to wait for NAFTA to work, the Administration is rushing into place law-enforcement measures that supposedly will achieve an “effective degree of border control” in the foreseeable future.

The most likely immediate consequences of the Clinton plan are twofold: an increase in the potential for violence along the border, and a shift of attempted illegal crossings to remote areas away from the newly fortified sectors.

Violence involving Border Patrol agents, illegal immigrants and the “coyotes” whose business is smuggling them into the United States has been on the decline for several years. This trend could be reversed, however, as ever-larger masses of determined would-be illegal entrants form along the Mexican side of the border and make increasingly desperate attempts to surmount the new barriers to entry.

For those who care about human rights and the state of U.S.-Mexican relations, this is not a trivial problem. Violent altercations between the Border Patrol and Mexican citizens have a highly inflammatory effect on Mexican public opinion, which generates pressure on Mexican officials to “do something.” Thus the Clinton Administration’s project to fortify border controls has the potential to put new stress on the bilateral relationship at a particularly delicate moment in Mexico’s internal political evolution.

The Administration’s emphasis on stronger controls in the San Diego and El Paso areas will probably rechannel the existing flow of undocumented immigrants without reducing it appreciably. The measures now being implemented are analogous to tossing a few more boulders into a swiftly flowing stream.

Evidence of what seasoned Border Patrol agents refer to as the “balloon effect”--squeeze it in one place, and it just bulges somewhere else--is readily available. The apprehension of illegal entrants along the Arizona section of the border has risen sharply since the El Paso “blockade” was initiated. Similarly, a build-up of border enforcement hardware and manpower in the San Diego sector will simply shift the paths of migrants eastward.

The ultimate futility of this approach has been demonstrated by numerous changes is Border Patrol tactics and capabilities over the years, to which highly motivated illegal border crossers and those who assist them have quickly adjusted.

This picture is unlikely to change in any significant, enduring way unless the fundamental demographic and labor market forces that drive Mexican migration to the United States are altered. Politicians armed with symbolic “solutions” will have little or nothing to do with this transformation, if indeed it ever occurs.