Shelving of National Fence a Tragedy for Comics

With the recent election results still dominating headlines, I noticed an article in the Washington Post that noted that Democrats are not going to make immigration legislation a top priority. I have to admit that I am a little disappointed that we will not get to witness the public debate and the ultimate debacle that would have resulted from the attempted construction of a “national fence” to protect the U.S. border with Mexico.

Although fence legislation was recently introduced and approved, the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate is likely to shelve that legislation for the foreseeable future. While this is an unfortunate development for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, America is certainly better off for having avoided yet another humiliating policy mistake sure to draw the jeers of the international community.

While I’m clearly not a proponent of the fence solution, I do think the immigration issue is worthy of discussion and that perhaps some fresh ideas and perspectives need to be brought to the table (that sentiment sounds familiar). Perhaps instead of trying to figure out how to physically stop people from illegally entering the country and removing the “illegals” that are already here, we should try to examine why these people feel it is worth the tremendous risks they are taking to “break into” the United States. I think it is safe to say that the problem with illegal immigration in the U.S. is limited almost exclusively to our shared border with Mexico. I don’t recall hearing much public outcry to police and/or fence the Canadian border.

I can’t help but wonder why Canadians are content to stay in Canada while Mexicans and citizens of other Latin American countries are all too eager to do whatever is necessary to get into this country — legally or illegally. Clearly, conditions in Mexico and in many Latin American nations are bad enough for people to risk everything to try to build a better life in the U.S. Without getting into the countless arguments why immigrants are good or bad for our country, I’d like to suggest that we investigate and identify the primary reasons driving people to illegally immigrate to the United States. Clearly, these people are being driven by pure desperation and not by preference or convenience. Preference and convenience don’t inspire people to pay their life savings to shady human traffickers in the hopes that they will simply be delivered to an American destination alive. Desperation does.

If the living conditions in our neighboring countries to the south are bad enough to create that kind of desperation, then it would seem that no border enforcement measures are ever going to alleviate the problem. There’s a clear parallel here to the often-criticized War on Drugs, one of my favorite examples of government bumbling. Increased law enforcement, tougher sentences for offenders, and relentless pursuit of drug-producing cartels has done nothing to alleviate that problem. And it doesn’t take much effort to imagine billions of federal dollars being flushed down the same bureaucratic toilet, only this time in the name of “Immigration Reform” or “Securing the Border”.

Rather than funding a reactionary and short-sighted No Trespassing policy, why not take a look at what a similar level of government commitment could do for conditions in the countries from which our flow of illegal immigrants originate? The estimated cost of the most recent Senate Immigration Bill is estimated at over $120 Billion over 10 years. How about identifying the areas from which the majority of illegals originate and pumping half that amount into the economies of those areas over a similar timeframe? There are certainly countless tax incentives that could be offered to American companies to expand into those areas, creating jobs, boosting the local economies, and ultimately helping to stop our immigration problem at its source. All of this while providing a leadership example for the rest of the world, illustrating that anti-immigration policies are almost always doomed to failure and offer no long-term benefits for the protected or the excluded.

But before I get too crazy with my utopian policy suggestions, I will acknowledge that our current political climate and our existing two-party system may make foreign investment in our closest geographical neighbors impossible. Tax incentives for American companies to build plants or create jobs in Mexico? That suggestion may offend the political senses in much the same way that a thousand-mile border fence laughs in the face of common sense. But I’m just throwing things out there – that’s the beauty of having no political credibility to lose.

We’ve based a global war on terror on the premise that it’s better to engage the enemy abroad than to deal with them on American soil. I don’t see why the same “forward-thinking” policy can’t be adopted to best address the immigration issue. Once the illegal immigrants are in this country, the battle is already lost – for lack of a better metaphor. If we can help to improve the living conditions and the economies of the countries from which our immigrants originate, perhaps they will be less inclined to flee their homelands. Perhaps the opportunities in their homelands could evolve to the point where Americans are immigrating there in search of a better life for their families. Let their governments build fences to keep the Americans out. Again, that is virtually unimaginable at this point, but a long-term approach to the immigration problem demands that we envision and work to create just that type of solution.

Until the living conditions and economic opportunities of our neighboring countries are reasonably comparable to those found here, the immigration problem will continue. But every investment and improvement made in those neighboring countries will immediately lessen the immigration burden on the United States. The effects of such a policy would be far-reaching and potentially foster a prosperity and stability that has never been realized in the Americas.

Tags: border patrol, colbert report, daily show, illegal immigration, national fence

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