The Liberal Capitalist Immigration Solution: Part Two

The borders of the United States are completely controllable. They're just not controllable in the way we've been trying to control them for the last eighty years. But the first thing we have to do in order to start thinking clearly about the problem is to make an honest, open-eyed appraisal of what is actually going on here. Number one, the term "illegal immigrant" is an oxymoron. An "immigrant" to the US wants to live here permanently. That in itself implies a desired legal status in the definition of the term. Who in heaven's name would want to permanently move to another country and spend the rest of their lives living underground, unable to ever fully participate in their community lest they be detected and deported at a moment's notice? What would be the point? Even if your homeland is an impoverished, oppressive mess, what would be the point of exchanging that for a life on the lam? You could never own a house, take a steady job, indeed, you could never stay in the same community for very long without risking being detected and deported or jailed. And as far as I know, here in the US, if you're ever caught here illegally you can never obtain legal residency in the future. So essentially, if you want to spend the rest of your life in the United States, sneaking across the border and living and working here clandestinely is about the worst imaginable way to go about it.

But that millions of Mexicans are here illegally is indisputable so how can this be? Because they're not here seeking to immigrate, they're mostly here for something else. We are not witnessing a massive wave of immigration as many reactionary social conservatives assert, what we are actually seeing is capital—in this case labor capital—seeking its highest rate of return. Most of the Mexicans illegally in the US today have no intention of remaining here. Most are here to make a quick buck to invest back home in Mexico. About half of all illegal Mexicans are very young single men, many of them looking to put together sufficient savings to establish themselves enough back home to take a wife and start their families. But regardless of what they want money for, they're illegal workers, not illegal immigrants, and this distinction is important to our understanding.

So everyone needs to calm down, please. America is not being "invaded" by Mexicans or anyone else. This is not to say that our border isn't currently broken, but by understanding what we're really facing, we can alter our law to radically change the situation. By creating a legal vehicle by which Mexicans can legally enter the US and work in the numbers demanded by the US labor market, an irresistible pressure—the pressure of supply and demand—will be neutralized at the border, permitting normal border measures to be sufficient to control them. Gone will be the mobs of border jumpers that have overwhelmed our border defenses for years. Instead they will all be waiting patiently in a quick line to pay their admission, be fingerprinted and photographed and issued an identity card that enables their movements to be tracked. The few people left with reason to try a border jump will be easily interdict-able by our current enforcement regime. We won't need Federal employment verification systems, national ID cards or pernicious hiring regulations. We won't need hundreds of thousands of border patrol agents...and we won't even need a 2000 mile-long wall.