Los Angeles Times (Op-Ed- California)
By Wayne Cornelius
August 10, 2015
In
the first Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump swore he'd build
a wall to keep out Mexican migrants and his GOP rivals lined up to
assure voters that they would
“secure the border.” What these aspiring candidates neglected to
mention is that the United States has already shoveled tens of billions
of dollars into border security, to no avail. Billions more won't
magically turn a failed strategy, fraught with unintended
consequences, into a successful one.
The
United States is now 22 years into an unprecedented buildup of border
enforcement resources: 21,000 Border Patrol agents, nearly 700 miles of
various kinds of physical
fences, a fleet of drones, high-tech electronic surveillance systems
covering all major cities along the border, a gulag of immigration
prisons to incarcerate apprehended migrants, and more.
This
massive effort, begun under President Clinton, has been sustained and
expanded by all subsequent presidents. Congress after Congress, whether
controlled by Democrats
or Republicans, has generously bankrolled the project. To what end?
Measured
by Border Patrol apprehensions, illegal entries from Mexico have
declined to early 1970s levels. The micro-level evidence mirrors this
trend. In one of the Mexican
towns studied by my research team, the proportion of residents who were
planning to go north fell to 2.5% in January 2015 from 17% in 2006.
But
tougher border enforcement has little or nothing to do with this
decline. It is largely a residue of the Great Recession, which dried up
job opportunities for would-be
migrants and created a perception that finding employment in the United
States is now quite hard. A 2011 study by the National Research Council
concluded: “Rising [border] enforcement does not seem to have played a
significant role in lowering the likelihood
of undocumented migration.”
Interviews
with many thousands of actual migrants have revealed that the obstacle
course on the border doesn't keep people out. More than 9 out of 10 who
come to the border
succeed eventually in gaining entry, if not on the first try then the
second or third. Fences can always be climbed over, dug under, or gone
around.
Today's
prospective migrants are far more concerned about exposing themselves
to violence in Mexico's borderlands than about border fences.
Today's
prospective migrants are far more concerned about exposing themselves
to violence in Mexico's borderlands than about border fences. In our
2015 survey of potential
migrants, only 7.6% cited “El muro,” the common term for today's border
wall, as their top concern, compared with 48% who feared being
kidnapped by organized criminal gangs or assaulted by border bandits
while making their way to the United States.
If
the border buildup has benefited anyone, it's professional
people-smugglers, who are now hired by the vast majority of would-be
Mexican migrants. The $3,000 to $6,000
fees that such “coyotes” can charge have risen by a factor of five or
six, reflecting increased demand for their services.
So
border security hasn't kept migrants out — but it has kept them in.
Indeed, the single most important outcome of our border buildup has been
to end circular migration,
in which migrants came to the U.S. for relatively short periods of
employment and then returned to their home communities.
By
making the southwestern border more costly and dangerous to cross, we
have created powerful incentives for those who make it into the United
States to remain here.
The rise in smugglers' fees, for instance, encourages undocumented
migrants to extend their stay to amortize that expense over a longer
period. If they go home, even for a short visit, they have to pay
heavily to be smuggled back in.
Return
migration to Mexico has dwindled to a trickle. In the 1960s, roughly
60% went back home within a year; today, fewer than 10% do. The result
is a much larger population
of permanently settled undocumented immigrants, with a much higher
proportion of whole families with U.S.-born children. The long-term
fiscal impact of this explosion of permanent settlers — larger outlays
for education, healthcare, and other services — is
conveniently overlooked by politicians who clamor for tighter security.
If
politicians truly believe that further militarization of the border is
cost-effective, where is the supporting evidence? Where is the proof
that spending more on physical
fencing — taller, stronger, longer — will do any good?
Absent
such evidence, framing the 2016 presidential debate over immigration
policy as a matter of who will do the most to “secure the border” is a
cynical exercise in
peddling a failed remedy while ignoring its significant unintended
consequences.
Rather
than double down on fence building, we should declare victory at the
border and get on with the serious work of immigration reform. That
includes ensuring that
future flows of migrants will be predominantly legal and creating a
meaningful path to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants
who are already here — and highly unlikely to go home.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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