Immigration Crackdown: Sister Mary Ann Walsh on the Whack-a Mole Immigration Policy

The Americas MexicoBlog talks about the "whack-a-mole drug war." Sister Mary Ann Walsh, Director of Media Relations, United States Conference of Catholic Bishop, goes after the U.S. whack-a-mole immigration policy.

Go, Sister Mary Ann!

Sister Mary Ann Walsh: Whack-a Mole Immigration Policy: "The U.S. government and Congress play their own version of Whac-a-Mole when it comes to immigration. The results are about the same as when people play with mallets and pop-up moles at an arcade: lots of noise, mindless excitement and no productivity. Smack a mallet in one place and up pops a mole elsewhere. The players can toss dollars at the game and pound themselves into a frenzy but never really win.

Whac-an-Immigrant has been through many incarnations. There has been -- whack! -- the border blockade strategy begun in the 1990s. The effort, known as Operation Gatekeeper in California, Operation Hold-the-Line in Texas, and Operation Safeguard in Arizona, concentrated border patrol agents in cities, driving migrants into remote regions of the desert. Travel became harder, smuggling networks became stronger and thousands of migrants died in the American desert. The visceral drive for a better life exceeded the will to keep the stranger out, and the immigrants still came."