Border Is Place to Block Immigrant Influx : * Fence, While a Lifesaver, Would Serve Purpose Better if Located Near Entry Point

As a symbol of resolve to get tough on illegal immigration and to save lives, it is hard to top the image of a seven-mile-long, eight-foot-high fence. It went up last summer in the median strip of Interstate 5 near the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint south of San Clemente. Now some results are in: As of the end of last month, no pedestrian fatalities had occurred along an 18-mile stretch north of Oceanside to the checkpoint.

This is great news, for the short term. However, tempting as it may be to declare victory in the campaign to stop fleeing immigrants from being killed, the situation is more complicated. Karl Hansen, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, notes the “positive impact” of the fence, but cautions that people still could be hit by traffic while trying to cross the freeway at any time.

Certainly, the $458,000 spent constructing the fence has been well spent as a stopgap measure. As wildly erratic as the death statistics are from recent years--seven fatalities in 1992, two in 1991, 15 in 1990, for example--there’s no quarreling with a measure of deterrence. Credit efforts of the CHP’s Mexican liaison office to warn people in migrant labor camps of the dangers of Southern California freeways. But ultimately, as Hansen says flatly, the good record turns as much on luck as anything.

Ultimately, there remains no substitute for dealing with immigration problems at the border, not miles inland. Dr. Thomas Shaver, director of trauma services at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, knows better than anyone the human cost of the freeway tragedies, because his facility treats many of the victims. And he makes sense when he asks why there needs to be “a dangerous obstacle 66 miles” north, after the border has been crossed.

For now, the fence is a lifesaver. But for the long term the same old question remains. Why try to stem the tide there when the border is so obviously the place to do it?