Ugh! Thank God the Boston Globe doesn’t run foreign policy! The headline on today’s editorial — “Want to stop border crossings? Give aid to Central America” — is about as wrong-headed as you could possibly go.
Forget about the disaster of throwing money at corrupt governments and their subsidiary drug cartels and expecting to somehow benefit the impoverished citizens of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Forget about the fact that paying off Central American countries is essentially surrendering to extortion. The United States has no moral obligation to pay off other countries and should not be expected to suffer consequences if we fail to pay them “protection” money.
Forget about the fact that such a policy would promote moral hazard by encouraging other foreign states to use their own impoverished citizens as pawns to extort foreign aid from the United States.
Forget all that and there is still an even better reason why the Boston Globe’s suggestion is pitifully inadequate to solve the problem of illegal immigration. That’s because no matter how much money we throw at Latin American countries, they would still pale in comparison with the freedom and prosperity in our own country, which are the natural lures to illegal border crossers.
You want to solve illegal immigration? It’s easy, and you don’t even need to build a wall. Here it is in a headline even the Boston Globe should be able to understand:
“Want to stop border crossings? Start enforcing the law!”
It would be simple. Don’t allow companies to hire illegal aliens to work in the United States. Make e-Verify mandatory to ensure that illegal alien workers are exposed as law breakers. If they can’t work and they can’t get social services, they would have to leave. One of the few intelligent things Mitt Romney ever said (and which he therefore backed away from) is that illegal immigrants would self-deport if they could not get work. What other choice would they have?
Of course, we should also enforce simple, straightforward laws that illegal aliens apprehended in our country are subject to immediate deportation, but that would be a minor concern. Few people would bother making the long, dangerous journey across Mexico if they were not drawn by the magnet of employment prospects in the United States.
The problem isn’t the Central American countries; the problem is our deceptive Congress doing the bidding of its Big Business donors to keep a steady flow of cheap labor pouring across the border.
Heck, maybe this should be the real headline:
“Want to stop border crossings? Buy a new Congress that works for us!”
Frank Miele writes from Kalispell, Montana, at www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com and is a columnist at Real Clear Politics. My new book is “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake.” To support my work, please consider buying “The Media Matrix” or my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy, which documents the downward spiral of the USA before Trump arrived on the scene. The books are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. Thanks!
“Want to stop border crossings? Start enforcing the law!”: That would seem the American way as that is what we do, enforcing laws, for everyone else here isn’t it?. RLS