Article Critique

IMMIGRATION POLICY, BORDER SECURITY, AND MIGRANT DEATHS: AN IMPACT EVALUATION OF LIFE-SAVING EFFORTS UNDER THE BORDER SAFETY INITIATIVE

Article Introduction

The US Border Patrol implemented several ways in the past to counter the high rise of immigrants trying to penetrate within the US, due to its attractive and plentiful opportunities. This initiative, however, compelled many forceful immigrants to adopt perfidious and remote ways to enter the US, resulting in an increased amount of migrant deaths, turning over to hundreds in a year. As a result, the BSI Initiative was launched in 1998, for the prevention of migrant deaths across the US Borders.

Research Design Used

The Border Safety Initiative (BSI), along with the Border Search Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR) teams and the Local Repatriation Program (LRP) were analyzed independently using individual migrant death data from national and vital sources. The BSI initiative and its impact on the migrant deaths was assessed using simple interrupted time series design (Cook and Campbell 1979) for which the data from 1984 to 2003 was used and plotted against a 100,000 border population. In a Time Series Design, the measurements of the variable are taken along a certain period, which helps in determining the general trend.

Three factors were employed in checking the effectiveness of the Border Safety Initiative and of the BORSTAR (Border Search Trauma and Rescue) teams; the rate of migrant deaths recorded before and after the BSI initiative was launched, the success rate of BORSTAR agents in rescuing migrants alongside the borders and how the LRP (Local Repatriation Program) of 2003 counted towards the reduction of migrants in the Tucson Sector.

Type of Data Used to Conduct the Analysis

For analysis of the effectiveness of the BSI, the numbers of individual migrant deaths were gathered from two primary sources; the state and the national vital registration system (Eschbach et al., 2001). Data was collected from the years 1984 to 2003 and incorporated with the data from the Incident Tracking System of the BSI, which provided migrant deaths from the years 1999.

The volumes of illegal immigration at the US border and its changes over the past years were also analyzed using estimated data from US Border Patrol. This gave an overview of the Border Patrol Activity and the number of the illegal immigrants.

Sampling Procedure Employed

Bivariate and Multivariate analysis were performed on the BORSTAR data, for year 2003, to check the effectiveness of migrants' deaths at ...