April 30, 2008

El Paso BP chief Victor Manjarrez promotes immigration "reform", busboys-style (Alicia Caldwell)

Alicia Caldwell of the Associated Press offers "El Paso border chief urges immigration reform" (link). The person in question is Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., chief of the U.S. Border Patrol's El Paso Sector. Over several paragraphs both the AP and Manjarrez simply offer a long-winded version of the busboys canard previously employed by Barack Obama, Tamar Jacoby, Michael Chertoff, Rudy Guiliani, and more:

"Most of these people are economic migrants but we have to deal with them between the ports of entry because we have not, in terms of a legislative fix, determined what we do with these people... I think it's pretty obvious that the country has a need for economic migrants. To what degree, I don't know. That's for the country to decide and for the politicians to decide... When you look at the series of events that have happened over the last five, six years ... our mission changed... Our primary mission changed from our traditional focus. Our primary mission now is terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. That's what we should be focused on. We can't focus on that as much as we would like because of all the other issues that we deal with."

He then goes on to say there might be a "terrorism nexus." Just because his remarks are highly political and he was probably ordered to give this interview by higher-ups doesn't mean there isn't such a "nexus", but it would be more credible coming from someone else.

Posted to Immigration2008a at April 30, 2008 12:32 PM