By Douglas Doan
Sunday, January 1, 2006; B07

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) recently announced that he would not seek re-election after serving 11 terms in Congress. His quiet announcement was barely covered in the national media, which is a real pity. His leadership, especially on issues of immigration and border security, will be sorely missed.

Consider, for example, the immigration bill recently passed by Congress with much sound and fury. This bill has only one idea: to muscle up on more enforcement along our borders. The sad fact is that we have already tried this. During the past 15 years, we have more than quadrupled the number of border patrol agents. We have invested billions in new security with only marginal success.

Kolbe, who said the bill "pretends we are doing something to secure our border when in fact we are doing nothing except throw words and money at the problem," was one of the few in Congress to have thought through the problem and develop a much more coherent approach. His candor and honest reflection made him unpopular to some, but his leadership and insights were exactly what the nation needed.

I met Jim Kolbe eight years ago when working on developing technology to improve border security along the Arizona-Mexico border. He had spent a great deal of time and research on immigration and border security, making him one of the most well-informed elected officials on these difficult subjects.

Kolbe understood that the border was a complex economic, social and international zone that requires a more comprehensive solution than the typical knee-jerk responses. Year after year, he introduced legislation that featured stronger border enforcement, a guest worker program, closer cooperation with Mexico and improved efficiencies for legal commerce. The legislation never passed.

President Bush has now wisely taken a similar position. He recently announced (in Kolbe's home town of Tucson) a two-pronged strategy of tougher enforcement and a guest worker program. He sadly omitted the other two aspects of border policy that Kolbe understood were critical: the importance of building better relations with Mexico and the need to make our legal processes for immigration and cross-border transit more efficient.

We rarely hear about the long and shameful wait of up to five years facing a person seeking to immigrate legally into the United States, or the legitimate cross-border business that finds roadblocks at every turn. Kolbe consistently pushed the government to treat the people caught in this bureaucratic wastelands with respect. To be sure, he was a strong advocate of tougher border enforcement, but he knew that enforcement should be only a single component of a much bigger strategy.

The sad truth is that border officials and the Department of Homeland Security view Mexico mostly as a hostile entity. They seize few of the opportunities to work together to solve mutual problems. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has surrounded himself with a bevy of former Justice Department employees that believe almost exclusively in enforcement. The opportunities to engage Mexico or the private sector as a real partner on border issues are hardly ever mentioned by DHS.

The need to promote trade and legal immigration was rarely addressed without Kolbe's leadership. He pushed through Congress the customs modernization program that was the single most important program the government has enacted over the last 10 years to make legal crossings and trade processing across the border more efficient. While most officials are preoccupied with the militarization of the border and the role of well-meaning but misguided folks like the Minutemen, only Kolbe was willing to push specific measures to remove impediments to the 50,000 trucks, 350,000 cars and millions of people that cross the U.S.-Mexican border each day contributing to almost $750 million in trade daily.

I had the good fortune of working with Kolbe to engage the private sector to help improve and build additional infrastructure for legitimate trade across the border. Local tradesmen, small shippers and importers pitched in their own money to help finance traffic lanes to reduce congestion and lower costs for honest shippers.

Despite all the federal attention dedicated to border issues, this road at Nogales, Ariz., is the only new crossing that the U.S. government will commission over the next five years. On both sides of the border and in Washington, we will miss Jim Kolbe's leadership.

The writer worked in the Office of the Private Sector at the Department of Homeland Security before leaving in October.