The Fence and the Market

Remember the vaunted border fence that would protect us from Mexico? Well, it has a few problems.

Because the border between Mexico and the US is defined by a river prone to flooding, the fence actually has to be built some distance from the border. Which means some Americans wind up on the other side. And that means they have to have a way to get back and forth between their land and the rest of the United States.

The solution is to install gates:

The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?

How will the gates work?

Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.

So, there will be hundreds if not thousands of people who will have the codes to open these gates. And they would never accept bribes for the codes, or could never be coerced on pain of death to reveal them. Brilliant.

And how does the fence work in general?

But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat. 

"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.

I guess that's why Herman Cain wanted an electrified fence and a moat with gators. But unless there are guards along the entire 2000-mile length of the border, even the more severe obstacles are trivial to breach. If Cain were still in the race at this point he'd be suggesting we lay Claymores along the border.

Now, I know what you're thinking: why was Obama so stupid to build the fence on our side of the border? Why didn't he just steal land from Mexico? Well, first off: the fence was started under Bush. And second: taking land from other countries is a dandy way to start a war. Sure, we could win a war against Mexico. But we already had two wars going. And after we won the war against Mexico we'd have to build a giant embassy in Mexico City and spend a trillion dollars rebuilding their infrastructure. And then we'd have to deal with pesky Mexican terrorists for the next century.

So, why are we building the fence again? Generally there are two answers:

1) To keep out illegal aliens out who are willing to do jobs that Americans won't at the wages American employers are willing to pay.

2) To keep out evil murdering drug smugglers who fill the incessant demand of Americans for cocaine and marijuana, while smuggling weapons back into Mexico.

Both these problems seem to be within our control. Illegal aliens wouldn't come here if American employers refused to hire them. And drug traffickers wouldn't smuggle drugs here if we didn't buy them, or smuggle guns into Mexico if we didn't make it so easy to get guns.

These are issues of simple market-based supply and demand. If we eliminate the demand for illegal alien workers and illegal drugs, the supply will dry up. The magic of the marketplace will make the problem disappear.

What, you think getting Americans off illegal cocaine and marijuana is harder than putting down dozens of criminal gangs financed by billions of dollars in foreign drug money and armed by lax American gun laws? You think getting American employers to obey employment law is harder than correcting centuries of intractable poverty and illiteracy?

If we really want to solve these problems, we've got to make hard decisions that require serious tradeoffs. One of them is pretty straightforward: end the war on drugs. Let non-violent drug offenders out of prison, put them into treatment and save billions of dollars a year on prisons. That also ends most gang warfare in the United States and reduces our murder rate. It does increase the unemployment rate. Well, can't win 'em all.

The illegal alien problem is harder, but there are still options: we can more strictly enforce employment laws, which will force many farmers, slaughterhouses, restaurants, motels to either go out of business or raise their prices so that they can afford to employ Americans who need to make a living wage. That would also help reduce the unemployment rate, at the cost of more expensive food, lawn care, restaurant meals, hotel stays, etc.

Or we can reform immigration laws and open the flood gates to accommodate American businesses who want to hire cheap migrant labor while millions of Americans can't find work that pays enough for them to live on.

Or -- and I know some of you are thinking this -- we could take those non-violent drug offenders from problem one and form work camps, selling prison labor to the highest bidders in the private sector. Then we can be just like communist China, using slave labor to do the dirty jobs no one else wants to do.

Or we could let the non-violent drug offenders out of prison on work release and have them do the jobs usually reserved for illegal aliens. Even if the salary needed to be subsidized to make it a living wage, it would still be cheaper than keeping them under lock and key 24/7.

These solutions have trade-offs and winners and losers. But as it stands now, we've got both sides of these problems and none of the benefits. The winners are the drug cartels and private prison industry, while the rest of us are the losers.