Aggressive immigration policy making things worse

A new CNN poll found that 58 percent of Republicans support separating children from their parents at the southern border. While the poll doesn’t delve into the reasons why, there are two popular lines presented by the White House: there is a crisis at our border with Mexico and by stepping foot in the US, people have broken the law, therefore they should be treated like the criminals that they are.

Now, if you are a hard-line anti-immigration person, I doubt I’m going to change your mind. I would like to offer up a few interesting points supported by facts and research.

But first, an emotional common sense plea. Can we all pause for a moment and ask ourselves why people are making the journey to the United States in the first place? They aren’t on vacation. How desperate would you have to be to literally walk to a country where you didn’t speak the language and had no guarantee of work or shelter? This is more of a rhetorical exercise in empathy. When many of these people do make it into the States, they end up working jobs that Americans refuse to do. Just go ask the apple growers in Eastern Washington if you don’t believe me.

Now, let’s talk crisis at the border. The notion here is that there is a flood of immigrants and embedded among them are MS-13 gang members and other criminals. Turns out, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s own statistics, arrests for border infractions has been in a steady decline for two decades.

There is an unexpected dynamic happening with immigrants the more that the U.S. clamps down. It actually makes things worse. In his most recent episode of Revisionist History, bestselling author Malcom Gladwell explores this with the help of the Mexican Migration Project. The MMP is the most comprehensive database on the movements of migrants across the southern border. Prior to the U.S. clampdown at the border, most migrants did not want to stay in the States. They would come north for part of the year, make some money, then return to their homes and families.

Once the U.S. started to clamp down, it actually forced people to make an impossible choice. Stay in the U.S. full time and not see their family, or try and figure out a way to bring the wife and kids north. By restricting their movements, millions of people felt compelled to stay in the U.S. permanently. It’s exactly the opposite of the intention of increased security. The Mexican Migration Project has calculated that if the United States had done nothing at the border, there would actually be a third fewer immigrants in the U.S. than we have now. It’s counter intuitive, right? It’s called circular migration, and just to reiterate: at least half of all migrant workers would work part of the year doing jobs Americans don’t want to do, then they would return to their homes.

It turns out that the more hardline we get, the worse the problem will be. Plus, do we really want to keep young children in cages?