End reasons for illegal immigration

The U.S. is trying to solve its immigration problems on the southern border without getting to the root of the problem. After all, a 20-foot wall just creates demand for 22-foot ladders.

We lived in south Texas off and on for 12 years and crossed the border countless times. I once paddled the Rio Grande River and watched as Mexicans floated a refrigerator across from the U.S. to Mexico.

Believe me, the border can’t be closed.

The job is too big, even for a country as rich as America. A trillion dollars to build a 30-foot electrified fence from coast to coast would be a waste of money and wouldn’t stop illegal immigration.

To solve the problem, we must attack the reasons thousands upon thousands of migrants are flocking to our southern border. Why are families so desperate that they are willing to separate children from parents to get into our country?

The majority of these migrants are from Central America. To understand why families would abandon their homes and land and walk hundreds of miles through dangerous gang-infested areas with little hope of actually getting into our country requires an understanding of why they are so desperate.

Guatemala is one of the key countries whose residents are fleeing. Many of the Guatemalans flooding our borders are simple small-plot farmers. Their key crop is corn. However, for the past three years there has been an extreme drought in Central America caused by global warming, and the corn crop has almost completely failed.

These families will walk hundreds of miles to the border to let their children cross, knowing the children have a better chance of being allowed to stay in America.

These migrants are different from those in the past, who were mainly from Mexico. These are true refugees trying to escape bone-wrenching poverty. They don’t want to flee their country, but because there aren’t sufficient resources there, they turn to the United States.

If 20-foot or 30-foot fences aren’t the way to solve the problem, how do we return to a time some 50 years ago when the border did little to prevent migrants—far fewer than we’re seeing today—from entering our country? We lived within a 90-minute drive from the border and crossed and re-crossed it multiple times. There were no long lines, and it was safe and orderly. If we want an orderly border, what do we need to do?

Don’t spend another nickel on the wall. Instead, help the Central American countries whose farmers are starving during a time of unprecedented drought, which will remove a big part of the reason for them to go through hell to send their kids across the border.

That will take an unprecedented amount of direct foreign aid, which would be focused on these families. If the billions already spent to build the wall had been sent directly to help Central American farmers, we would have greatly reduced the disaster we have today.

We must also have an aid program in place until drought conditions subside.

Funds for this proposed aid program should be available after leaving the military mess in Afghanistan, which has cost our country an estimated $2 trillion. That follows the Vietnam War. Those forays were horrible investments. Vietnam is communist, and the Taliban controls a large swath of Afghanistan. If those dollars had been spent to directly help struggling people in Central America and southeast Asia, think how much better our world would be today.

During this time when America’s economy is recovering from the pandemic and jobs are readily available, the draw to come here pulls migrants to the border. They know that if they can cross, they can easily get a job.

It would take thousands of new government workers to properly document the able-bodied men and women who come to take jobs available in the U.S. Those jobs should be made available only to fully documented immigrants.

We have laws which penalize companies that hire illegal immigrants, but enforcement is spotty and fines are minimal. The solution is simple: Greatly increase the fines the companies must pay if they hire an undocumented worker, make the fine mandatory, and funnel the collected money into the aid package.

Let’s quit wasting money on useless walls and foreign wars. This country has the resources to help starving people and the military might to protect our country and our allies. Hopefully, we know how to do a better job protecting our citizens and responding to hunger in the world.

I watched on TV as someone dropped at 3-year-old from the top of a 15-foot wall to be caught by someone on the other side. That’s what encouraged me to write this column.