Border Security Debated at BU

Border Security Debated at BU

By Andrew Benjamin




BOSTON - A somewhat sparse crowd gathered in the Tsai Center to hear six distinguished guests speak on the importance of border security.

Based on the Cambridge-Oxford debate rules, both sides had the chance to explain why they were right, and then there were audience comments and feelings on the issue, then rebuttals from the lead speakers.

In choosing this semester’s topic, moderator Bob Zelnick, a journalism professor, stated that it was chosen after having a discussion with a politically astute friend of his.

“It’s the defining issue about us and who we are, what we are,” Zelnick said, quoting his friend to the 250-plus audience members. “And it will decide the presidential race in more states than any other issue.”

The lead speaker on the side that called for stricter security, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the think-tank Center for Immigration Studies, explained the way to solve this problem was through attrition of businesses and the border through enforcement.

“In our studies, this would create a realistic, gradual reduction in the size of the problem,” he said.

Second-year law student Stephanie Hoffman agreed that securing the borders would quell the vigilante groups at the borders.

Louis J. Barletta, mayor of Hazelton, Pa., spoke of his city’s problems with illegal immigrants. He was also the only speaker on either side to use the term “illegal aliens” to describe illegal immigrants. He mentioned his city was the first to crackdown on businesses and landlords that hired and rented to illegals. He also complained about lack of help from the federal government in dealing with the issue.

“Hazelton was the first city to go after businesses that knowingly hired illegal aliens and fined the landlords who rented to them,” he said. “The government was doing nothing. The drain on our resources was destroying the quality of life in small town America.”
The other side started off with B. Lindsay Lowell, the director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. He supported border enforcement, but said it has to go beyond that to guest worker problems. “Yes, there are criminals, yes there are bad components, there are a lot of
problems. But they aren’t the majority,” he said. “The majority of these people want to work, and that’s the human dimension we have in mind.”

The student speaker of the negative side, SMG senior Anuj Shelat, reasoned that America had to help the country of Mexico economically to stop the influx of illegal immigrants, citing NAFTA and farm subsidies as problems. “To us, subsidies mean slightly lower prices for food,” Shelat said. “To 15 million Mexican farmers, that means that their livelihoods are being wiped away.”

The last speaker was Shuya Ohno, the director of communications of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA). He argued that America has been protecting the borders sufficiently. “Stricter border patrols and workplace enforcement are no longer needed,” he said.

The audience then got to chime in. The most striking speaker was Jim Rizoli of Framingham, Ma on the affirmative side. “The town where I live has been taken over, and no one does anything, including cops,” he said. “It’s a problem no matter what they [the negative side] say, and something must be done and it is not amnesty.”

In the end, Zelnick declared the winner the negative side. Not everyone agreed. “I thought the negative side made good points, but the affirmative side made even better points,” said COM junior Lyle Moran. “The negative side ran too much on emotion and not enough hard facts to back up their claims.”