Great post. I have added you to my digg bookmark

Do you really believe what you write?

As long as Mexico’s economy and the prospects for the Mexican worker to make a wage a family can live on are so disparate to the U.S. economy and wages, and as long as we continue to share a border (that doesn’t look to change any time soon), then there will continue to be incentive for Mexican workers to come here. We can’t fix the Mexican economy. But, we can approach our immigration policy with that understanding.

As long as there is such great incentive, an unskilled laborer can make at least about 10 times more money in wages in the U.S. than across, they will continue to risk federal prison and criminal charges to get here.

They will continue paying ridiculous amounts of money to coyotes, because getting here and earning U.S. wages is worth even 5-10K to them, to be smuggled here and coyotes will continue to charge more and get more and more sophisticated. They will get around the wall, the problem will continue, meanwhile we have thrown billions more dinero at a problem that won’t go away with just “security.”

What the U.S. needs is to create a system of LEGAL immigration for unskilled laborers from Mexico. It will need to be regulated by the demand for labor in the sectors of the U.S. economy that need and depend on Mexican labor (in Texas, that’s the oil field industry, agriculture, construction, and tourism/hotels and restaurants). Hiring staff to oversee this regulation WILL cost money. But, it will cost much less than a wall that doesn’t work. Once we have addressed the demand for illegal immigration by creating a system of legal immigration for Mexican laborers, we can better SECURE our border to keep the bad people, i.e. the drug cartels and human smugglers, out.

And, we can stop wasting money on harmless people who just want to work. Once they know there is a possible legal way to get here, they will have an incentive to not come illegally (an apprehension for illegal entry should remove a person from consideration for a legal worker visa for a certain amount of years). Right now, because there is no legal immigration for Mexican laborers, the consequence of losing a benefit that doesn’t exist is meaningless as a deterrent.

Anyhow, for anyone looking for a sensible opinion from the media on immigration, this article is a pleasant surprise. I thought Joaquin and the Chisme readers would be interested to read it.