Border Patrol diversity recruiting

Houston Chronicle:

The U. S. Border Patrol is looking for thousands of new agents, and agency recruiters are turning to the black community to find some of them.

Later this month, the agency's first-ever team of eight black recruiters will begin a series of visits to rural areas and cities in 10 Southeastern states from Louisiana to Virginia.

They are confident the Border Patrol's compensation package — which includes pay starting at $35,000 and increasing to $70,000 in three years — will sway black applicants who have historically shunned the agency and today comprise only 1.2 percent of agents guarding the border.

The search is part of the Border Patrol's continuing recruiting effort to meet President Bush's mandate of boosting the force to 18,000 agents by December.

''I don't think it will be a matter of going out and trying to convince people," predicts Michael Douglas, an assistant chief patrol agent who heads up the black recruiting team.

"By letting people know what the experience is, and what the benefits and salaries are, people will want to apply."

Currently, the ethnic makeup of the Border Patrol's 15,500 agents is 51 percent Hispanic, 45 percent Caucasian and 1.2 percent African-American and 1 percent Asian, according to agency officials.

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But union officials say the Border Patrol's pay, which is less than other federal law agencies, will make it hard to retain black applicants who join.

''You may be initially successful in recruiting people, but then other agencies are going to siphon them off with better pay,"' said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. ''When they wave $10,000 in their face, which is the average yearly difference in salary, they will jump."'

Douglas said blacks have been reluctant to join the agency because they were unfamiliar with the job, apprehensive about meeting the Spanish fluency requirement and unwilling to move far from family. After completing training at the Border Patrol academy, most new agents are assigned to stations along the 2,000-mile Southwest border.

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The pay differential is already a retention problem. I suspect that there is also some racial frictions by Hispanics some of whom are prejudiced against blacks. Language skills may also be a problem. Unfortunately, many blacks aren't that keen on learning standard English, much less Spanish. Bill Cosby has raised the issue of black communication skills in his new book Come On People. It is not that they do not have the ability to become proficient with languages, but there is a question about the desire of many blacks. It is a good job opportunity. I hope some are willing to seize it.