Originally posted by: babylon5
We can launch shuttle in space, land on the moon, but we can't secure our own border?
How is it that other countries in the world are able to secure their border then?
Something doesn't sound right.
This isn't a hard concept. Well, actually it is, because like the dumbasses we are, we're looking at the problem all wrong. The main "solutions" right now are being proposed by militant guys who think the only way to eliminate illegal immigration is with bombs, guns, walls, mines, or some other form of force applied to the internal organs of the illegal immigrants.
But this appears to be stupid in the extreme when you look at, as you suggest, what other countries are doing. After all, lots of countries share borders with each other, but few have the same level of illegal immigration issues that we do. And it's not because they have well-armed civilians standing on the border ready to shoot any Mexicans they happen to see, it's because there is much lower demand for illegal immigration. We really can't compare ourselves to other countries, because we are somewhat unique in our situation.
We are a first world country that is slowly but surely moving away from blue collar type jobs, especially labor intensive service work and manufacturing. Much of that is being outsourced to countries like China, but service work in particular can't be outsourced totally, so we still have a demand for low wage, low skilled workers for many jobs in this country, jobs that the American workforce is orienting itself away from. We also have generally good worker protection laws, which we all know are the bane of any serious capitalist. But lucky for us, we have a nice 3rd world country right to the south of us, ready to fill the demand for illegal, low wage workers. There isn't a problem with white collar workers from Canada coming in and taking our high skilled jobs (well, except perhaps in the field of acting) because there isn't the same kind of supply and demand. Other countries do not have similar situations, for the most part, at least not with their geographical neighbors. Every first world country has some of this, but very few actually border a country like Mexico.
Walls and guns and cameras and land mines are not going to solve the problem any more than arresting drug dealers is going to end the drug problem in this country. The real cause of the problem isn't that we don't protect the border well enough, protecting a border in the middle of the desert that's almost 2000 miles long is very difficult no matter how much money you throw at the problem. Poorly protected borders don't cause illegal immigration, they simply allow it to happen. Our best bet is to fix the problem, not simply slap a band-aid on it. One extremely helpful thing would be to drastically increase the penalties for EMPLOYERS that hire illegals. Throwing the illegals in prison isn't going to help, because there are a lot more where they came from. But if you remove the demand by throwing business owners in jail (something that's far easier to do), you remove the incentive for the illegals in the first place. And even beyond that, if we could change the underlying issues that caused the business owners to hire illegals in the first place, that would be a big improvement.
Why is it that when we are faced with large, compelx issues, our only solution is "build a wall" or "shoot somebody"?
