Border crossings
Fewer undocumented immigrants from Mexico allow reflection on reform measures.
If Donald Trump manages to win the presidency in a few weeks and if, within his first 100 days or so, the master builder begins constructing his “big, beautiful” wall along this nation’s southern border, its fate is likely to resemble other ill-conceived Towers of Babel, whether a shoddy apartment complex or a spec-built downtown skyscraper out of date before the ribbon’s cut. By the time the multibillion-dollar barrier gets built, its rust-colored iron palings soaring — 40 feet! 50 feet! — into the blue Southwestern sky, it will be obsolete. In fact, as a solution in search of a problem, it already is.
According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, unauthorized immigrants from Mexico aren’t coming. Their numbers have steadily declined every year since 2007, the first year of the Great Recession. Although the overall unauthorized immigrant population in this country has stabilized since the recession ended, the total number from Mexico is now more than a million below its 2007 peak. Departures exceed arrivals.
Eduardo Porter, an economist writing in the New York Times, points out that Mexicans arriving in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s were born in the 1960s and 1970s, when their nation’s fertility rate was as high as seven children per woman. Mexico also was buffeted by repeated economic crises. “To Mexicans growing up at the time,” Porter writes, “the prospect of a job in the prosperous American economy of that era was worth braving the Arizona desert and the Border Patrol.”
Today’s Mexico is dramatically different. It’s older, its labor supply is growing at about the same pace as that in the U.S., and it no longer gets knocked off track periodically by economic storms. So, with the exception of an egoistic American politician, who needs a wall?
“Mr. Trump, knock down this wall!” most reputable economists would say (alluding to the one in the candidate’s fevered brain, that is). We already spend $30 billion a year on border enforcement; we don’t need to spend billions more on a useless barrier fated to be a boondoggle and an eyesore.
What we do need is thoughtful and thorough reform of our broken immigration system, reform not unlike the package approved by the U.S. Senate back in 2013. That bill continues to languish in the House, held hostage by immigration hardliners who would rather play politics with the issue than resolve problems.
The hope is that somehow, someday, serious elected officials will return to the basic elements of immigration reform: border security, to be sure, but also a simple, secure system for employers to verify employment eligibility; increasing opportunities for immigrants to enter the workforce and for foreign students to stay here; a guest-worker program that streamlines the process for seasonal workers; and establishing a fair and workable path to legal status for undocumented immigrants who have been an integral part of our economy for years.